August 14 - Investing

Last class Mr. Hallam talked about investing, specific incomes for different professions, and his personal investing history.  Using Moneychimp, the class played around with different interest rates and monthly savings to see how much money we could earn over a certain time period.  The results were shocking to me.  Never before had I thought about how my money could grow so much just by sitting in the bank.  Mr. Hallam said he started investing as a 19 year old, which inspired me to start as well since I’ll have a job in a few months.  In class we discussed the median salary of a teacher: about fourty grand.  I took the time to search the median incomes of different professions in America.

My family history contains a long line of lawyers so I looked into the average salary of an American lawyer and came up with $112,000.  An American pilot was $100,000 and an orthodontist $374,000.  A median salary is the average salary of these professions.  Of course there will be some individuals well over and well under the median.  The median American salary is $41,000.

Gross income is a person’s total income before any taxes or deductions.  Net income includes the costs of taxes and deductions.  The average net income of a student recently out of Duke University is $79,000.

            I asked my dad about some of his financing.  He told me that he doesn’t really regret anything he’s done financially in his lifetime.  He has always made a profit from buying and selling houses.  One thing he has never tried however is personally buying stock.  I might be interested in that one day.