Mindy Jensen: Your career is one of the biggest factors in determining how quickly you can reach financial independence. Today, we are ranking the best careers for FI and breaking down which jobs give you the biggest advantage when it comes to income, flexibility, and long-term wealth building. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me today is my co-FI co-host, Evan Lawler. Evan, thanks for joining me today.
Evan Lawler: Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on today. I am so excited to discuss this topic. We all know that your job is just one piece of accelerating your financial independence journey, ’cause you could have a very high-paying job and save none of it and not make any progress towards your FI goal. So I think it’s really important today to break this down, to really understand which career is best for FI.
Mindy Jensen: Yeah, and things like side hustles, house hacking, tax optimization, they all help you on your journey to financial independence, but often the primary engine of your journey is your full-time job. It can be your largest form of income. It can shape your expectation of lifestyle. It can define where you need to live and a whole lot more. Evan, what do you think is one of the top careers, or the top career, for people who are pursuing financial independence?
Evan Lawler: My answer is simple, and I’m totally biased in saying this, but I think that engineers are in the best position to achieve financial independence, better than everybody else.
Mindy Jensen: Why is that?
Evan Lawler: I think engineers are best positioned to FI for three main reasons. Firstly, because engineers typically have very high starting salaries, but their top-line salary is not always huge. Outside of a software engineer, or today an AI engineer, a top-line salary for an engineer that’s been doing it for 40 years could be in the range of $200,000 to $250,000, which is great money, but it’s not in line with a lawyer making $850,000 per year. So I think that helps engineers better maintain their lifestyle inflation and keep it to a more moderate level to help them achieve FI. Next, it only requires four years of schooling, so it’s often a high-ROI degree and the student loans are super manageable, especially early on. And finally, I think engineers are usually quite willing to tackle the technical side of financial independence—the math, the growth rates, the safe withdrawal rates are all super easy for engineers, who are typically very technical people, to understand. But I also think that resources like BiggerPockets Money and the tools you and Scott have developed can help more and more people with that technical side of FI.
Mindy Jensen: Evan, I hear what you’re saying, and I think that engineering is a great profession for people pursuing financial independence, but my top profession is going to be sales in general. We had Mr. and Mrs. Planting Our Pennies on episode 32 of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. So it’s been a few years since they’ve been on, and Mr. Planting Our Pennies was a salesperson, and he said, I was in a good company and sales is really, really lucrative. It’s a grind. But anybody out there who had graduated with a humanities degree like he did, I heavily recommend sales. I know it’s difficult. I know it’s not for everyone. I’m an introverted philosophy major. If I can be successful in sales and get to FI through a sales job, anybody can. The world needs good salespeople. So that’s something I did. I got better at my job, I increased my earnings power, and we just kind of kept our expenses where they were. The upside—the top of your salary is unlimited, essentially, because salespeople are typically paid a commission. So the more you sell, the more you earn, which is cliché, but it’s true.
Evan Lawler: And I think another element that lends itself really well to financial independence if you’re in that sales world—an area that I agree with you, Mindy, on is that if you are earning a very large amount of income in kind of unexpected areas, maybe different sales come through during different years. So one year you have a huge spike in income, then it can be difficult. I think for some people, your lifestyle inflation won’t necessarily immediately uptick when you make more money. It could be that you maintain your expenses at a reasonable level, a level you feel is comfortable, and all that extra money can automatically be applied to your financial independence goals. So I think sales is a great answer. Yeah.
Mindy Jensen: And kind of a sister to sales is real estate agent. Not a sister, it is sales. And again, the potential is unlimited. That has a high commission. There’s no base salary traditionally. I’m a real estate agent. I don’t get paid if I don’t work. I’m not gonna say I’m a lazy agent, but I’m not an ambitious agent. I’m not out there looking for every single person that I can possibly represent. I wanna represent one person at a time. But the median house price in my area is about $550,000. So I’m making maybe $13,000 to $15,000 when I sell that house. I sell one house in a month, I’ve made $13,000 to $15,000. I sell 10 houses in that same month, that’s $130,000 to $150,000. You can make as much money as you want to. There was a kid that graduated with my 19-year-old daughter. He already has his real estate license. His mom’s an agent, and he’s out there selling real estate. My daughter is not making $13,000 in one month. And if she is, she’s working a lot harder. I think being a real estate agent is an excellent path to financial independence, and it doesn’t have to be your full-time job. And I know there’s a lot of real estate agents yelling at the radio right now, “What do you mean? You have to be a full-time agent to be a good agent.” You really don’t. You have to be detail-oriented. You have to be on top of your calendar, and you have to be personable and knowledgeable. And you can do that at any age. You can do that at any time that you have. Evan, you’ve got a traditional 9-to-5 job, right? Approximately.
Evan Lawler: Right.
Mindy Jensen: When are people looking for real estate? After their own traditional 9-to-5 job. So you work your job, and then at night you go show houses, and on the weekends you go show houses and you write up the contracts, and you may need somebody to be there during a home inspection, or you may need to take time off during a home inspection. I’m very fortunate that I have a flexible day job of recording a podcast, so when I have a home inspection coming up, I just make sure that I don’t have a recording scheduled at that same time. It does need a little bit of flexibility, but it’s a great career. And all that money can go into my self-directed solo 401(k), so I’m not paying taxes on it because I am a 1099 employee. It all goes into my pre-tax 401(k). I just—I can’t say enough good things about being a real estate agent.
Evan Lawler: And there’s so many things that I love about your pick of sales, especially with that uncapped income potential. Somewhere that I would potentially add is that great salespeople who go on to earn lots of money can apply that money towards their financial independence goals in a really powerful way, especially if they’re someone who really finds their rhythm very young. But if I were to push back on my point of engineers and your point of sales, it’s that I think the variability could prove to be a problem when you’re pursuing financial independence. Sometimes we’re making 10- to 15-year plans, right, where I’m going to invest X each year or each month, and in a place like sales, potentially real estate, it could be difficult if the market moves in a way that you don’t expect and then you don’t have that commission you were counting on.
Mindy Jensen: Yeah, I think there is a real concern about variable income, and that is the variable income that comes with sales. And the way to combat that is, okay, this month I made my base salary and that’s it, but I know next month I’m going to have a huge month. You don’t spend everything in that huge month. You take into account, okay, I want to save or I want to invest $2,000 a month, and this month I’m not able to, but next month I will have way more than the $2,000 for this month and the $2,000 for next month. You don’t spend what’s left over. You either invest that ahead of time and account for these slower months, but you need to have a plan. And I think that that’s where some salespeople get into trouble—they don’t necessarily have a plan for the lean times. Okay, Evan, I can hear people listening to the show saying, I really don’t wanna be in sales and engineering isn’t for me. I don’t know if you know this, but college is not the choice for everyone. One of the things that I really like for people who do not want to be in college is the trades—your plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians. I don’t know if you’ve ever had anything that broke recently. I had something that broke and tried to find somebody, first of all, to answer their phone or to give me a quote. The world needs more trades, and this is an AI-proof job. I think that’s something that you should be considering, especially if you’re younger and listening to this episode and thinking, hmm, what am I gonna do with my life? Look for something that’s AI-proof. Physical, in-person jobs are going to be far more AI-proof than anything you can do typing on a computer.
Evan Lawler: Yeah. And some of the salaries that you see posted on these different trade positions can be absolutely spectacular. And Mindy, you’re totally right. If I have something break around my—now I’m in an apartment, so they have on-site maintenance. But I mean, I’m helpless, right? And I’m a mechanical engineer. I think I should know a thing or two about how to fix something. I don’t know a thing, right? So I think that the trades is an awesome answer to what career can lend itself to financial independence, because you can really build a very strong income and there is so much potential for side hustling, for building income outside of a traditional job. There’s so much opportunity there. And like you said, AI-proof, future-proof, allows you to plan long into the future. I think that’s a great option.
Mindy Jensen: And you can work literally as much or as little as you want. I have a friend who’s a plumber. We call him Mike the Plumber. Hi, Mike. And he installs water heaters. That’s all he does. He is always booked. He can get you in, but he’s always booked, and he works as much or as little as he wants. That’s a job that I could not do because I’m not a plumber, but also, a water heater is a really unwieldy, big thing. Mike’s a big guy. He can heft these water heaters around, no problem. But like an electrician, that’s a very easy, lightweight job. Electricians, please don’t yell at me.
Evan Lawler: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Mindy Jensen: You’re not hauling around these big, heavy things. Also, my father-in-law was an electrician, and I have done a lot of electrician work with him side by side because I used to be a stay-at-home mom. But anyway, these are the kinds of jobs that—I don’t want to say they’re easy to do, but you don’t need to go to college to do them. You traditionally have an apprenticeship with them. In fact, we had Tinian Crawford on the show back on episode 44, where he talked about how he got his associate’s degree, which is a 2-year college degree, in just six short years. And the reason it took him six years is because college was not his jam. He was not a great student. He didn’t want to be in college. And then, funny enough, he went and worked at a college as their onsite electrician until he went out on his own, making as much money as he wants. He works as much or as little as he wants. It lends itself to the financial independence space because you don’t have to quit. You can just not take jobs for however long you don’t want to, and then you jump back into it.
Evan Lawler: Absolutely. Yeah, I totally agree. I think the trades are a great option here. I actually have a hot take for my next one for what career I think might lend itself to the financial independence community. I think it could be teachers. My girlfriend is a teacher, and she does a spectacular job. They typically have a very strong pension program. Teachers, you know, they don’t have the highest starting incomes. It can grow over time pretty substantially, but the teachers I know are very good at budgeting their money, making sure that they have enough, and that lends itself well to budgeting and keeping track of your financial picture. I also think the stability of the job makes it very easy to project forward. You know what you’re going to make if you continue to teach for 5, 10, or 15 years, which I think is a really big superpower in financial independence. And I also think that it lends itself well to side hustles. That can be tutoring, it could be getting jobs in the summer. And a pension is a great way to know that your traditional retirement is covered. So I think that teachers are a great option as well.
Mindy Jensen: That’s really interesting because my first thought was, what are you talking about? Teachers don’t get paid squat, even though they should. Everybody should give their teachers like a 300% raise these days. But all these reasons make a lot of sense. The stability, the summers off—you can work all summer long, you can work weekends because you get off at around 3 o’clock. The pension, absolutely. I really like that idea. That is a hot take. I love it.
Evan Lawler: One of the reasons that teachers were on my radar when we were talking about financial independence is that the Ramsey Solutions team—we all know Dave Ramsey—did this huge study, and they found that the top five careers for millionaires, everyday millionaires they call them, teachers are one of them. Engineers, accountants, teachers, management, and attorneys. And so I don’t know if everyone would expect to see teachers on that list, but I think when you really think about it and you imagine it, it makes a lot of sense.
Mindy Jensen: You know, another reason teachers are now on my radar—I am remembering this—is the 457(b) plan. A lot of teachers have access to a 457(b) plan, which has the same contribution limits as a 401(k), but when you separate from your employment, you can then access that 457(b) plan without penalty. You’re only paying the taxes on it unless you did it as a Roth, and then you’re not even paying the taxes on it because you already paid those. So if you are a teacher married to someone who has a job that you can both live off of, you could essentially throw all of your salary into your 457(b) and 403(b) plans. As we are talking about teachers, I am remembering episode 650 with Dave Fleischer, who is from financiallyindependentteachers.com. He also has a podcast called Financially Independent Teachers, and he talks about the differentiation in states and how they are paying their teachers, how their pensions are working, et cetera. It is a great resource if you are considering becoming a teacher. I also want to recommend themillionaireeducator.com. He talks about the 457(b) plan. This is where we really started getting into the 457(b) plan and all the benefits of it. He used it to change jobs frequently and reduce his taxable income, then have access to those funds, went to the next job and put that salary into the 457(b), and then would just pull from his previous 457(b) plan. A lot of benefits to being a teacher. If you’re thinking, “Oh, I’d like to be a teacher, but I’ll never reach financial independence,” definitely go back and look into that a little bit more.
Evan Lawler: Absolutely.
Mindy Jensen: Yeah.
Evan Lawler: I wasn’t even thinking on that 457(b) thing, and it sounds like those are awesome resources. So I appreciate you mentioning that.
Mindy Jensen: Another one I’m going to bring up is travel nursing. So my daughter, my 19-year-old daughter, is changing schools actually, because she wanted to be a nurse and could not get into the nursing program at the state school she was in last year. She’s changing schools and is now directly admitted into the nursing program. Travel nurses are a great way to combine travel and, you know, seeing different things. You take a short-term contract at a hospital, and then you stay on for the next short-term contract, or you change. You’re like, “I don’t really want to be in Duluth, Minnesota in December. I think I’ll change down to Florida for December.” Or maybe I do want to be in Duluth, Minnesota for December because that’s where they’re paying a lot of money, because nobody else wants to be there. There’s some huge upside potential. In my opinion, the downside is you got to see blood and gross things, but I am not a nurse on purpose, and I am so thankful for all the nurses who are there.
Evan Lawler: I totally agree with you. And I think you really highlighted a point that I think we’ve been mentioning—that with each of these careers, there’s the income consideration and there’s the lifestyle consideration. And I think the travel nurse is a great one because, like you said, it’s those short-term contracts. You’re going out to potentially these towns that not many people have heard of. You’re going to all these different places. Maybe you’re renting a cheap Airbnb and you’ve got this huge contract, and it really lends itself well to financial independence that you can keep your expenses super low. You don’t have to go buy a house in each different place, and you can use that money to pursue your financial goals. So I think that’s a great take.
Mindy Jensen: Especially during COVID, travel nurses were in huge demand and they were making massive salaries. I am certainly not hoping for another pandemic, but the nursing situation is pretty dire. We need more nurses. In my opinion, we should allow more people into the nursing program, but nobody asked me for my suggestions on that. But right now, that’s a great program to get into if that’s something that you’re interested in.
Evan Lawler: Absolutely. The next career that I want to mention, and we kind of mentioned it before with the everyday millionaires, are accountants. I think that, like the engineer, like the teacher, this is traditionally a really stable career with a medium to medium-high income. And I think that there are certain elements in that that do well with financial independence. You can diligently invest towards your financial goals. You can grow your income over time, 3 to 5%, and you can maintain your lifestyle so that you can invest more and more over time. And of course, accountants are great with money, right? They—or at least they know how to do the math, right? So if you’re an accountant, then things like compound growth and interest rates are your everyday work. So I think that accountants are another great option.
Mindy Jensen: And right now, the accountant profession has seen some shrinkage for a couple of years. I don’t know if there was just a bunch of accountants retiring. I mean, there were a bunch of accountants retiring. I don’t know what predicated them retiring. But I have a couple of accountant friends who have said, I have so much business that I can afford to fire clients. So somebody who is taking up a lot of my time, someone who isn’t giving me the information that I need and then demanding rapid turnaround once they do give it to me, somebody who’s not somebody I want to work with anymore, I don’t have to, because when I fire them, I have 100 people coming to me saying, can you help me? Can you be my accountant? I have another friend who is an accountant. She ran the numbers, like you said, she ran the numbers and she’s like, wow, if I continue to live in the United States, I will be at least 5 years before I’m financially independent. But if I move overseas, I’m financially independent now. I like what I do. I am going to move overseas. I am going to fire all of the clients that I don’t want to work with anymore. I’m going to keep ones that I do want to work with, and I’m just going to work on a different timeline. I never call up my accountant to be like, hey, I need an answer right now. I send them an email and say, can you get back to me? So it lends itself to geographic arbitrage as well. You’re outside of the United States, you’re paying less in your expenses, but you can work during your time and then just send it back. It’s not unusual to have your accountant get back to you the next day or the next week. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Evan Lawler: Absolutely.
Mindy Jensen: One last one that I want to bring up. I was just in Bonaire and made a new friend, Nicole. Nicole is a flight attendant, and she has been a flight attendant for about 10 years. This is an awesome FI career, but I think this is more suited to somebody who really likes to travel and is already Coast FI or is working on Coast FI. It doesn’t pay a super ton until you have a lot of seniority, which takes a lot of years to get, but there’s huge travel perks, and you have the ability to work as much or as little as you want within the constraints of the law. I think you can’t work more than like 14 hours a day or something. So she gets her schedule every month and they’re like, hey Nicole, you’re going to work 12 shifts this month. And she’s like, oh, I really didn’t want to work any shifts this month. She can give those shifts away and then not work at all that month. And then the next month she can be like, hey, I’d like all those shifts that I gave away last month to be added to this month. So anytime somebody is like, hey, does anybody want this shift? She can grab it. So you can increase your income and increase your time off really easily. And you get the travel perks, you get like free flights.
Evan Lawler: I like that a lot because it’s already kind of like a non-traditional role in the sense that you’re not in a cubicle, right? And so that already has that element of flexibility. So I wouldn’t have picked that. I wouldn’t have even crossed my mind, but that is such a great pick. I like that a lot.
Mindy Jensen: Yeah, I like that one too. Shout out to Nicole. All right, you got any more for us, Evan?
Evan Lawler: That’s all I got.
Mindy Jensen: All right. I think this covered quite a few really interesting and varied careers. If you are listening to this and you’re like, oh, I’ve got a kid in high school or college, have them listen to this episode to see the different options they have, especially if they haven’t chosen their major yet. There are a lot of different and varied careers that you can be working in to pursue either Coast FI or traditional FI or any of the other flavors of FI that we talk about. And I want people to pursue financial independence because working because you choose to instead of because you have to, and opening up all these possibilities for you is just the best way to live.
Evan Lawler: So Mindy, we covered a lot of careers here today that we think could lend themselves well to financial independence, whether that’s because of flexibility, or a high income, or a certain lifestyle that that career lends itself to. But as we will both acknowledge, you do not have to pursue these careers to achieve financial independence. There are so many routes you can take to achieve FI, and we cover them extensively on this show. Things like keeping your housing, transportation, and food costs low, increasing that savings rate, diligent investing. These are the things that really matter when pursuing financial independence. And you can do that from almost any career.
Mindy Jensen: Absolutely. You have a plan and you stick to it. And keeping those big three expenses low, keeping your savings rate as high as you can comfortably keep it, those are the big factors in your financial independence journey. Evan, this was a really great conversation. I super appreciate your time today. Please remind our listeners where they can find you online.
Evan Lawler: Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. I loved our conversation. You can find me on any social media. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, @the_financialfoundation.
Mindy Jensen: All right, just because Evan and I are done talking doesn’t mean that you have to be done learning. We have a whole website devoted to helping you on your financial independence journey. It is biggerpocketsmoney.com. We have free resources, calculators, a blog. You can sign up for our newsletter, and you can find all of our partners at biggerpocketsmoney.com/fipro. And it’s all free. All right, that wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. He is Evan Lawler. I am Mindy Jensen, and we’re out, Sprout.
