Welcome to another episode of Good Cents by Payactiv! In this edition, your host Eric Rosenberg is joined by budgeting and personal finance expert Allison Baggerly from The Inspired Budget. Together, they explore lucrative career paths that don’t require a college degree. From commercial pilots to electrical power line installers, dive into a variety of professions that offer considerable earning potential without the a formal degree. Join them as they uncover opportunities for financial success and inspire listeners to consider alternative paths to achieving their career and financial goals.

• Overview of high-paying careers without college degrees: from pilots to power line installers.
• Insights into earning potential and opportunities in aviation, firefighting, real estate, and trades.
• On-the-job training and certifications for career success.
• Thinking creatively about career paths for financial success.
• How new career possibilities can lead to financial wellness.

Listen below or read the transcript that follows. 

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Eric Rosenberg:

This is just a quick and friendly reminder that today’s episode is intended for education and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered legal or financial advice. Hello, friends. Welcome back to the Good Cents by Payactiv podcast. As always, I am your host, Eric Rosenberg. And also, as always, I’m excited for today’s episode. We have a really fun one for you today that is focused on helping you earn more money. Now, I know a lot of people think, “Oh, earning more money, that’s easier said than done.” And yes, that’s true. It’s not always easy to grow your income. But if you can grow your income, it can lead to amazing financial results for you in the long term. And one way to do that might be a career change.

So what we did today is we did an investigation into some of the top jobs you can get based on income without a college degree. So that means you don’t have to go get a new degree, you don’t have to go to a four-year college or university. If you just have a high school diploma, that should be plenty for most of the positions we’re going to talk about here. We also have a really fun guest, a budgeting and personal finance expert, Allison Baggerly from The Inspired Budget. She is a ton of fun and she did some research and found some interesting jobs too that fit the bill, high-income jobs with no college degree. So let’s dive in and chat with Allison.

All right, everyone, here we are with Allison. She is such a wealth of knowledge when it comes to money. And we have a fun list to chat with you today about some of the best jobs you can get without that college degree. And college degrees, they can be helpful for sure in growing your income, but you don’t have to have one. There’s a handful of jobs we found that are particularly suited for someone without a college degree. Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t need some kind of education, but sometimes the companies will pay for that education or you can learn on the job. So Allison, welcome to the show. Are you excited to dive in?

Allison Baggerly:

I am. Thank you so much for having me. And I just want to add, sometimes you just have to think outside the box. And if you’re willing to think outside the box or have someone else think outside the box for you and give you ideas, then, like you said, you can still make good money without a college degree.

Eric Rosenberg:

Totally. And if you are a two-income household, even if both of you don’t have college degrees, if you work together and manage your money right, with higher income jobs, you can have a really bright financial future ahead. Let’s dive into that list. So the first one that I found that I think is really fun is to be a commercial pilot. And that can be for one of the big airlines that we ride on as passengers, or even somewhere like UPS or FedEx. Cargo planes need pilots too. Piloting, I think, is fun. I actually have my private pilot license so I can fly little planes, not big planes. What do you think about somebody who wants to be a pilot, Allison?

Allison Baggerly:

I think it’s a great idea. I mean, definitely a great option, especially if you love to travel and you’re like, “Hey, I just want to kind of get out of my own little town, my own little area.” I’m sure there is some schooling involved, but you had mentioned earlier off camera that, hey, maybe there’s companies that will actually help pay for that schooling or cover that cost of the schooling for you so that way you can just kind of start and get that license. And I personally like the idea of doing it for not a commercial airline, because then you don’t have to deal with the people.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah, passengers can be a hassle to deal with, but packages don’t complain. They just-

Allison Baggerly:

Exactly.

Eric Rosenberg:

Someone will load them in the back of the plane and you’re off. And another perk for people who are into that, they’re usually, not all airlines, but most of these jobs are union jobs. So you get great benefits, get certain guarantees for raises that are negotiated for you. So that’s a great way to earn sometimes a six-figure income. Once you get some experience under your belt and start flying the bigger planes and the longer routes, that’s a great income source.

Allison Baggerly:

Eric, there’s one I found that I think is really interesting, and it is actually a fire inspector and investigator. So-

Eric Rosenberg:

Oh.

Allison Baggerly:

… if you aren’t the one that wants to run into the hot house on fire in the suit, that’s okay. You can actually go afterwards and start examining, seeing how did a fire start, looking for clues. And even beforehand, going and examining different public buildings for any potential fire hazards, making sure everything’s up to code.

Eric Rosenberg:

That sounds great. And I bet you there’s both insurance companies that hire for that and governments. So you could work for maybe a city or a county. That’s a really fun one. Yeah, I don’t personally want to run into a burning building. I think that sounds dangerous. And I’m really glad there are people who are willing to be firefighters and do that to keep all of us safe. Going after the fire and doing an investigation, that sounds really interesting. You could find the source, find the spark where it all started, the loose wire or whatnot.

Allison Baggerly:

Yes.

Eric Rosenberg:

That’s a great one.

Allison Baggerly:

I know. It’s a fun one.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah. So another one that I thought was really interesting, which, again, most of these you’ll need some kind of training. Sometimes it’s on the job, sometimes it’s a certification. You might have to go community college or something like that and get the certificates or whatnot that you need. But one is elevator and escalator repair person. It says repairman on the list that I found, but I have seen repair women working on escalators and those moving sidewalks in airports. And we got to be safe on those elevators. Everyone’s seen a movie where something happens on an elevator and it comes crashing down. This is a job that is really important to make sure that never happens. You don’t want to get stuck on an elevator.

Allison Baggerly:

Yeah. I will say that those are things that we just don’t think about. That’s very out of the box, right? Very out of the box thinking like, “Oh, I didn’t even think that there was someone that needs to be specialized in that.” And I’m sure that there are these companies that sell all of these types of elevators and escalators, and then they have to have their own repair people.

Eric Rosenberg:

I know Otis is a big elevator company. When you get on the elevator next time, I mean, there’s elevators all over, even small towns have elevators. Next time you get on, look at the little panel and you’ll see the company that made it. It’s on there. It’s kind of fun.

Allison Baggerly:

I’m going to do that next time. I have never thought about doing that, but I like it.

Eric Rosenberg:

And there’s also an elevator inspection certificate. I know here in California they have to be accessible to the public. The elevator has to be checked every certain number of months or years. I don’t know the exact schedule. But if you are a certified elevator repair person, you will definitely know what that schedule is and you can go in and make sure all the screws are tight and all the springs are in the right spot. And escalators, they’re also all over. I was at our local mall and the escalator was broken the other day. As Mitch Hedberg once said, a funny comedian, “I love an escalator because it doesn’t really break. It just becomes stairs.” But you really want that escalator to work when you’re somewhere you need one.

Allison Baggerly:

And according to this article, it says that the average salary is $94,000 for elevator and escalator installers and repairs. So hey, that is some good money to fix-

Eric Rosenberg:

And that’s the average.

Allison Baggerly:

… them moving stairs. Yeah.

Eric Rosenberg:

So that means that half of the people in that industry make more than that. That’s an easy path to see someone making six figures. I mean, not easy, but it’s a job that could lead to a six-figure income, for sure.

Allison Baggerly:

Another one is realtor. And I hesitate with this one because it is commission-based, but it doesn’t really require any schooling. It will require training, but especially if you’re an enthusiastic person that is very people-oriented, this could be a really great way for you to make some good money, especially when the housing market is doing well.

Eric Rosenberg:

You generally have to go through and get licensed to be a real estate agent. That’s usually done at a state level. And if you want to work independently, that means not working for a big real estate agency, usually it’s something called a broker’s license. There is some schooling. You have to do a little bit of an investment for that. But most of it you can do with online courses. I know because my wife has a real estate license and I’ve sat in the same room as her when she was on her laptop renewing her license. She’s not active in that world, but she used to be and she has her license, so I know it’s doable. If she can do it, you can all do it. And like you said, those commissions add up. It’s usually a 6% of the value of a home is the commission. So if you can get into luxury homes and expensive homes, those can be really, really big paydays. And you only need to sell a few houses a year to make a really good income.

Allison Baggerly:

Exactly.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah. So another one that I think is important to think about is someone who comes to our houses or our apartments or our condos quite regularly, and that is trade workers, mostly plumbers and electricians. If you’ve ever had a mega pipe clog in your home, you know how important and desperate you are to have someone come with the right skills and the right tools to fix your problem and get your toilets working again and get your sinks working again.

Allison Baggerly:

Yes, and I will also point out that if you live anywhere where pipes freeze, I’m thinking personally of where I am. I’m in the Texas area. Our pipes aren’t insulated, our homes aren’t built for cold weather. And when we do, pipes freeze, burst. And let me tell you, there are plumbers that are making some serious money when these things happen because they are there for you. They can come and work overtime and be there to really help you out whenever people find themselves in that position.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah. And if you’re up north, places like Michigan, Minnesota, upstate New York, they get freezing seasons every year. So-

Allison Baggerly:

Yes.

Eric Rosenberg:

… they have to have someone on standby ready for that fix. And then on the flip side, on the electrical side, people when they remodel homes, they need to have someone come and do that electrical work. We might have to upgrade our electrical panel on our house, and that is something I definitely don’t know how to do. I can change a light switch or a light fixture in a bedroom, but I can’t run new circuits through the house. I don’t know how to do any of that. And if I tried, I’d probably shock myself and end up in the hospital.

So I’m happy to pay someone to come do that for me. And those are also positions you don’t need a college degree. Usually, you’ll need some kind of a license, but you can learn on the job. A lot of companies will set up kind of a mentorship program for new people and you can stay at that company as long as you want. Eventually, maybe go out on your own or find a company that’ll keep paying you more. You’re never stuck with one job for life. But when you have that skillset and that knowledge, you can leverage it to grow your income.

Allison Baggerly:

Exactly.

Eric Rosenberg:

So another one that I found that I think is really cool is locomotive engineers. Where I live, we are pretty close to train tracks. On a quiet night, we can hear the trains as they go by. We see both Amtrak trains and cargo trains. I don’t know if you call it cargo, shipments, whatever stuff trains are called. We get both of those through our area. And the average salary there is $74,000 a year. There’s often more than 2,000 openings per year. And like a pilot, you get to travel, you get to go different places. All you need is a driver’s license and you can learn to drive the train on the job. And that could also mean commuting trains. Maybe if you live in New York, there’s subway drivers. If you live in Denver, there’s light rail drivers here. Like I said, we have Amtrak, we also have Metrolink. There’s the big train companies like Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, BNSF. So that’s an awesome job, I’d think. My kid, my little boy, he loves watching trains on TV, so you’d be his hero if you are driving trains.

Allison Baggerly:

That’s a good one. Yeah. My kids used to watch a show where it was just a train, just a video just looking out as a train was moving. So I agreed, you’d be a lot of kids’ heroes. The next one I want to talk about is, actually, I realize my cousin does this and he makes over $100,000. And he is an electrical power line installer. And this is really great. You need, typically, to get started, no prior experience. You’ll learn on the job. You can eventually become a full lineman. He has his own little truck that he drives around for the company he works on, and he goes all over a certain large city and works on these electrical lines. He really enjoys it, never had a college degree, and makes good money.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah. And that’s such an important job, especially if you are in Texas or California, anywhere that has been getting these fires recently. A lot of fires happen because of poorly maintained power lines. We actually got evacuated from my house a few years ago when two power lines snapped together and made a spark.

Allison Baggerly:

Wow.

Eric Rosenberg:

And that started a big fire. So they’re critical jobs. They keep us all safe. It’s all part of our infrastructure. Everyone’s really mad when their power goes out, so people like the power people who go out and fix the power lines. We actually have the power lines in my backyard, I’m looking out the window right now, we have power lines that go across our backyard between our house and our neighbor’s house. And just a few months ago there was someone hanging up there on the power pole doing work on the line. And I said hi to him. He was really nice. And it was a beautiful day. He was out working in the sunshine, getting fresh air. And when you know what you’re doing, it’s a very safe thing to do. That’s what the training’s all about. You don’t want to just be playing with power lines, but if it’s your job, there’s a reason you get paid a lot. It’s because you know how to do it.

Allison Baggerly:

Another neat thing about a lot of the jobs we’ve talked about is that many of them, it seems like they would qualify for overtime. And-

Eric Rosenberg:

Oh, yeah.

Allison Baggerly:

… I’m sure there’s many opportunities for overtime. So not even taking into consideration base salary, when you do have that availability for overtime and you can take it, that’s even increasing your income even more.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah. And when you get on-the-job training, and that’s also so valuable, and you don’t think about it, but in a lot of ways it’s not just the company paying for you to learn something. They’re paying you while they’re paying someone to teach you. So I know when I went to get my pilot’s license, I did it as something I just kind of wanted to do. It wasn’t for a work thing. So it was a lot of money, it was a lot of time. And that was okay for me. But if you, as we talked about in the beginning, there’s a shortage of pilots for a lot of airlines.

So they will pay for you to go to a flight school. They’ll pay for the school and they’ll pay your time, they’ll pay your hours. So it’s just such a great value when you start to think about some of these different career path because you don’t have to pay. College, as we all know, is very expensive, especially if you go to one of the big universities. So if you find a way to just get a certification maybe at a local community college or trade school or get your new employer to pay for it, you could be on track to fixing elevators before you know it.

Allison Baggerly:

There you go. I love it. Or inspecting why a fire started. I think if I could-

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah.

Allison Baggerly:

… go back in time, maybe that’s what I would do. That sounds like a fun one.

Eric Rosenberg:

I could see you wearing a fire person outfit with a clipboard going through.

Allison Baggerly:

Magnifying glass.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah, and a little flashlight like, “Oh, I found it.” It’s like Sherlock Holmes for fires.

Allison Baggerly:

Yeah. That sounds fun.

Eric Rosenberg:

This was a great conversation. I hope it inspires all of you listeners out there to know that if you think outside the box, there are so many jobs, many that pay 50, 60, 70, 100,000 a year or more. And you don’t have to go to college to get those jobs. And you’re never too late in your career to change. I did a huge career change more than once in my career path, and I probably will again. And it’s okay if you find one of those jobs. And a great place to find them, there’s a government organization called the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the BLS. They have a list of basically every single job you can do in the United States and what the average salary is for those people broken down all sorts of ways. If you’re sitting on the train or the bus on your commute or have a few minutes of downtime in a waiting room somewhere, pull it up on your phone and scroll through the list and you might find your new favorite career. Could be an awesome life transition.

Allison Baggerly:

I couldn’t agree more.

Eric Rosenberg:

Allison, thank you again so much for sharing your time. It was super fun chatting with you about all these different jobs. If somebody wants to learn more about what you do and they want to connect and follow you on all the places, where should they go?

Allison Baggerly:

Well, if you’re listening to a podcast, I guess you enjoy podcasts, so you can go listen to the Inspire Budget podcast, comes out every Thursday. And then you can go to inspirebudget.com, connect with me there.

Eric Rosenberg:

Awesome. And also make sure to follow Allison on Instagram. She has-

Allison Baggerly:

Yes.

Eric Rosenberg:

… one of my favorite Instagrams out there.

Allison Baggerly:

Oh, thank you. Yes. If you want to see budgeting, go follow me on Instagram. I have some real people budgets. I know you’re going to love them.

Eric Rosenberg:

Awesome. Well, thank you again so much and we’ll talk to you later.

Allison Baggerly:

Bye.

Eric Rosenberg:

Well, thanks, everyone, so much for listening and sticking with us till the end. That was a really fun one. I’m definitely interested in chatting with some elevator repair people or escalator repair people to learn a little bit more about what they do and how they landed in a career that they can make six figures or more without a college degree. And of course, we always want to be your partner in helping you improve your financial wellness, whether that’s improving your budgeting, automatic saving, finding a new job, or a whole lot more. If you’re not already using the Payactiv app¹, be sure to head to the Apple App Store or Google Play Store and search for Payactiv and get that app downloaded and set up right away. There are so many awesome and free tools in that platform to help you better manage your money. Thanks so much, everyone, for listening till the end. And until next time, keep on living the life you’ve earned.

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