I am a buy side equity analyst and have been in that role for about 6 years with two different firms. I really like the work and my current company lets me work from home one or two days a week if I like. I make 125k base, no MBA and bonus can be anywhere from 0 (although that never happened yet) to my base salary.
I have the opportunity to take a position with a firm in an analyst/client portfolio manager role. I have no problem talking to clients, but I fear that once I go down this path I’m going to be labeled a “client” person forever and I’m not sure I want to close doors on the pure investments track. This role also comes at a 40% raise to base, which could definitely make a difference in the life of me and my fiance and could even allow me to retire more quickly.
What a fantastic dilemma to have. What I would give to be in your position.
I think you need to consider which will ultimately be more fulfilling for you. You will be doing this day in day out after all.
The thing is there will be other opportunities that arise for you in the future too, not just this one. Do you think there will be better ones? If you do then it may be worth sticking with what you are doing at the moment. It clearly makes you happy and pays the bills; it also means you can stick to pure investments.
I actually heard that Frost, the cynical f*cker that he was, was actually hinting at the self-righteousness of poets with this poem. He said that this was evidenced by the repetition of “I, I took the one less traveled by” indicating that the writer (the poet) placed his ego above the actual work, perhaps even chose that line of work to satisfy his ego and confirm to himself that he was different. At least, that is what Frost said it was about during a talk he gave.
Anyway, what to do? A couple other considerations:
my fiance makes about double what I make doing sales (salesy people always make the most, it seems), but has to travel a few days a week. Me making more money would take some burden off of her.
While I can work from home a couple of days a week, my commute when I do go into the office is about an hour. New job’s commute would be about 15-20 minutes, but probably more travel (and less international travel).
and your fiance makes roughly double (lets say 350k)
combined 500k. I don’t see how you making more money would actually take a burden off her since at this point I’m assuming her pay is driven more by what’s required of her as opposed to her going the extra miles to get a few more Ks.
But then again I’m an idiot analyst with less experience.
Not a dumb question, but the answer is because she does sales and the amount she makes is pretty well correlated to how long and hard she works. She used to love her job, but had some health issues and her boss and co-workers really treated her poorly as a result of it. It is a pretty chauvinistic environment that she used to able to handle because she trusted her boss. Now she cannot stand him. These aren’t nice people, they are sales driven, good looking, cutthroats and I personnally cannot stand them. So, I would like for her to get out of that and do something where she will be more happy, but she’d certainly have to take a pay cut. It we have kids, then obviously at least one of us will have to work, and since I don’t hate my job I’d prefer it be me.