Honestly it sounds like she will subsidize the trips to me. It seems like your relationship is quite serious if she is talking about making joint purchases, marriage, trips etc. You need to find that out from her or work a compromise. Like maybe if you guys go to Europe or the Carribean she can pay for the flights and lodging and you can buy your own food and drink, etc.

It's natural she wants to take advantage of her financial situation and if she's willing to bring you along on these trips, that's great for you. On your end, definitely be as frugal as realistically possible to be able to contribute at least a bit to more expensive activities that she subsidizes, and make more $$ asap.

Agree with all that mullen. As for making more $$ asap, that may be a little difficult. Legal market isn't great right now, there aren't that many jobs. I have a couple friends still looking for work right now. I'm casually looking for other opportunities as I'm quite sure my employer pays near the bottom for first year associates.

My contract is up for renewal in January. I already know my firm wants me back as they've given me a bunch of work/court dates for January and February, but I'm not sure what sort pay boost, if any, I'll get. Our firm isn't exactly bustling with clients so there just isn't that much work.

In my experience even really smart girls aren't really good with realizing how expensive super bowl, good bball, etc seats are and how much money that entails. I think it might be slightly too early for the frank talk about who pays but I think it has to come at some point because you can't really be in limbo. She agrees to going out to dinner less but I would imagine when her friends/coworkers are talking about a good new restaurant in town she'll want to check it out, seeing as though she has the $ for it.

In general, is she frugal? I get that sense because of the 150k salary/5k car story but that could just be anecdotal. If she is, that obv changes some things. I would assume she would not be covering your whole europe/caribbean trip if that's the case. I make around what she makes and would have to save up quite a while to afford a week long eurotrip for 2.

With respect to making more money have you consider outside law? Law is really not doing well in Canada.

You do need to do something about your pay. $50k is not enough money given what law school costs, what being a lawyer costs, and what Toronto costs. That is considerably less than most of us were offered to article fourteen years ago and we had subsidized law school so paid less in tuition for the full degree than you paid for one year. I know salaries had not increased much but it seems like they have actually gone backwards. I think articling at Parkdale was paying in the $32-35,000 range back then so for an associate to make $50k that is a problem

If you're going to stay in law you need to network a lot otherwise just cold applying for openings will be a long shot. Unfortunately hanging out after work costs money so try to look for less expensive methods of integrating into the community.

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Agree with SteelersDMW that I don't think she fully understands the costs of her suggestions. A Super Bowl trip you're looking at $5000+ for a weekend -- closer to $10k to do it properly. $150k is only $100k take home so blowing 5% on a weekend while suggesting expensive stuff makes me think she doesn't fully realize cost or she makes a lot more than $150k. The things you listed if you did them all would be half her take home.

Going off the making more money, did you not want to go into big law house? Or just the opportunity wasn't really there. (Assuming big law in Canada = big law in states)

Opportunity wasn't there. Marks weren't good enough. Ended up with this low paying job to satisfy the articling requirement. Stayed on this summer after articling because I wasn't going to quit without something else to go to. I know a few others that make similar to me. If you're not at a big shop, you make very little.
As for her, I expect she still get a large education deduction to minimize taxes. Shes also expecting a 10-20k bonus this xmas. And yes, she's aware of the costs of tickets. And yes, she is also frugal which shocks me and also makes me less inclined to believe she'd fully cover joint costs.
As for me, I need to make more of an effort to look for other work. I am networking to an extent which is definitely the better way to get a job than simply applying.

If it's any help, at least down the road you have the chance of making good money. In NZ even at big law firms 5 years in you are on probably 70k. Not horrible money by any means, but not worth the suffering to get there. I left simply because it wasn't really a financially viable option long term, unless I dedicated an entire lifetime to it (100k after 10 years, 150k after 20 etc) which I wasn't willing to do. I lasted 6 months on 28.5k/year as a lawyer and bounced.

From what I understand Canada is more like the states where the earning potential is much more lucrative.

It is not the same as the States. My understanding is that at big law in the States you start north of $100k and a couple of years in it is realistic to be over $200k. Canada the top firms pay $90k to start and the increases after that is much less drastic than in the States.

I was really disappointed in the compensation which was a big factor in my decision to not continue with law. I had the opportunity to article at pretty much whatever law firm I wanted but having never researched law in Canada my knowledge of salaries came from American television where the pay is 2-3x what I could hope to make. When you consider what big law asks of you for $100k there is no way it was worth it. I don't see how law is ever a good choice in Canada,

just out of curiosity, henry what industry would you be trying to break into if you were graduating this year from a good canadian university (u of t, western, queens)

It's not very sexy, but I think data analysis - particularly if there's a ton of data - is going to become increasingly valuable, and may actually still be around in 50 years, unlike a lot of current careers.

Knowing the amount my friends work at big firms for less than 2x what I make it no way seems worth it. The gf works about as much as them but gets 3x (if not more) since she works for a US-based firm in the city. My work/life balance is great, but the low wage is not sustainable. I'd prefer to work a bit more for a significant increase in pay. I assume most people would say that, but given the law school qualifications and the amount of money we bring in for the firm it's a fair request.

I think this largely depends on what you are graduating with. A BA doesn't get people very far these days.

confirmed ^. I have a friend who went biglaw, top 5% of his class and he's starting at 140k. He also works 8-7pm 5 days a week + some hours on weekends. It's definitely a sacrifice in lifestyle, but the money is ridiculous for a 24 year old kid at his first real job.

yeah fair enough. let's say graduating with a business or economics degree.

i had my heart set on law school a year ago, i think it was actually one of henry's posts that made me rethink that and do some real research. i could probably get into queens/western law but realistically i wouldn't be at the top of the class.

8am to 7pm on weekdays and only some weekends seems really cushy. I'm more like 930 to 6 and no weekends, but lots of my friends are 9am to 9pm and at least 1 day if not both days on the weekend.

This is what my background is in although my current job involves probably only 50% data work.

I make ~80k+bonus and just turned 24. I work 8:30-5:30.

It requires grad school though(although I work with people straight out of undergrad it's rare).

Would be an easy step for Econ majors especially if you like econometrics

You also must not hate coding. Although there are data science jobs where you don't need to know coding they are few and far between and you will code in grad school

I've basically stumbled into it being a large part of my job, and I think that's going to happen to a lot of people as we get better at collecting and more importantly, parsing data. I also think it's hard to automate, strange as that sounds, so should be around for a while.

Edit: I probably do the least coding of any business development manager in the world. Most of what I do is in Excel and in bespoke back office tools.

That is my job also and I really love it. Would recommend it to any young person who is smart, curious and enjoys problem solving.

The coding aspect of what Custer mentioned is what stops me from potentially going to grad school for business analytics (econ undergrad). I really enjoy econometrics and use excel mostly for it, but have 0 clue about coding

I hate all of you

LT5, why do you have 0 clue about coding?
If you enjoy econometrics, you must have had some experience with various tools (MatLab, SPSS, Stata, R or whatever people use).

Also, have you ever had a look at it? Coding is pretty simple once you understand how a code is structured. After that it's learning by doing and getting to know the entire spectrum of a programming language.

It's a bit of a shame that people still learn foreign languages in school but no programming languages.


And yeah to anyone who has no idea what they want to do, learn coding or at least have a reason as to why you dislike it ("I've never learned it" is not a reason, it's an excuse and signals that you are lazy - no pun intended).

It obviously depends on degree but given how underpaid professionals are (you'd make more working construction straight out of high school than going to law school) I'd be inclined to say science / engineering but that generally requires having made that decision early as you can't really go from Arts undergrad to Science grad school.

The actual answer is you don't want to be employed. The way Canada is structured there is no way to make enough money to have a good life by traditional employment so starting a business is really the only realistic option at wealth. That is not saying you can't make a lot of money in finance or law but we're basically talking about situations much like going for it at being a professional sports or entertainer.

If you really don't care about having more than just average I'd say trying to get into the public service but that could be the Ottawa influence. You'll never unlikely to make much more than $120k but you'll get into the $70k+ range pretty easily and for $80k you can't ask for a better work life balance and education is meaningless as long as you can speak French.

If you are good at Excel I'm pretty sure you'll be able to figure out SQL or whatever they will be using. Coding really isn't that hard if all you need to do is get the basics.

Coding is pretty broad but for data manipulation it is generally scripting languages which are very easy to pick up.

damn i cant speak french, maybe i'll just sell drugs.