Considering becoming a teacher and influencing the next generation? In this post, I analyze how much do teachers make — and how much they get to keep, after taxes and cost-of-living expenses estimates. Because teaching and optimizing money are not the same (if that wasn’t blatantly obvious) – I give suggestions on ‘best plays’ you can do: how to make more as a teacher while maximizing impact.
If you’re considering being a teacher, this is an important post to read. How much teachers make isn’t the whole equation, but it’s an important part of the equation. So read on!
How Much Do Teachers Make?
NYC has highest “average” salary adjusted for COL. And Texas has highest annual “average” starting salary, adjusted for COL, according to this. Assuming you enjoy not being broke, let’s assume you’d work in one of those 2 places.
You may know I prefer medians over averages as averages don’t say anything. But I couldn’t really find any median numbers:
This is extraordinarily annoying, so let’s just stick with the averages…
- Texas has an average starting salary of $46K.
- New York has an average salary of $77K.
- Overall, median pay is about $62.8K/yr.
So if you’re starting out, you may want to seek opportunities in both Texas and New York to see which you like better + more profitable.
But if you’re more seasoned, it seems like the stats suggest you may have better luck in New York.
OK, But How Much Do Teachers Get To Keep?
But let’s find out if these numbers even hold any weight. From my ‘How Much Do Flight Attendants Make’ post, I researched that a COL of 100 is about $2,813/mo.
- Texas, according to this, has an overall COL of 93.9, or $2,641/mo. Texas annual expense = $31.6K/yr.
- New York, according to this has an overall COL of 187.2. Or $5266/mo. NYC annual expense = $63.2K/yr.
- Note that the website compares New York state vs. New York City. I opt for the latter because 1) it’s the worst case, and 2) why migrate to New York just to not live in the city?
I actually disagree with the NYC expense situation. As an example, outside of ‘travel months’ where I pay exhorbitant amounts for flights/hotels, I spend about $2.6K pre-rent:
With rent, split with a partner, is about $4.6K/mo or $55.2K/yr expense in NYC.Keep in mind this is an upper bound because a lot of my expenses are paid for my partner and I get Venmo’d back later. It’s likely your expenses can be made much lower than $55K/yr living in NYC. So going forward, let’s do the analysis at $55K/yr if you’re going to live with someone, and $63.2K/yr if you’re going to live alone.
Also keep in mind: $55K/yr is in Hudson Yards, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in NYC. So you if you split with a roommate as a teacher, you can almost certainly go much lower than $55K/yr.
There are 3 incomes to consider:
- $62.8K/yr as an overall median vs. the 100 COL of $33K/yr expense.
- NYC $77K salary with an annual expense of $55K/yr.
- Texas with a $46K starting salary and an annual expense of $31.6K/yr.
Overall Performance
At 62.8K/yr, assuming you work in Nevada, an income tax-free state, you’ll keep $51K. Keep in mind you should add any additional state taxes to your calculations. But I make the assumption that if you were to pick a state to work in, you’d probably want to pick an income tax free state if you’re not going to opt for better hubs for teachers like TX or NYC.
You’ll get to keep about $51K-$33K = $18K, if you live in a tax-free state, as a median teacher. This actually isn’t bad at all and you’ll be saving way more than most people. This is quite feasible!
The downside with this is that this is with an income tax-free state assumption. You’re likely to keep a lot less depending on your actual situation. So $18K as an upper bound…not bad, but not so great either.
New York City Performance
Note that you can probably keep more money if you worked in the city and commuted from Jersey or something. I’d assume teacher pay in the city is much more than upstate New York due to supply/demand dynamics (also the stats above are for NYC, so let’s just go with that).
A $77K annual salary nets only $54.7K per year in the city:
This is less than the $55K/yr expenses I projected above.
You are not likely to save any significant amount of money being a teacher in NYC. In order to save nonzero money, you’re likely to have to:
- Live in squalor
- Commute from Jersey
- Penny pinch, all the time
So yes, it’s physically possible to save money being a teacher in NYC, but it seems like a bad move just looking at the math. Why make life harder for yourself when you don’t have to? If you want to be a teacher, my advice is to do it somewhere else.
Is Everything Bigger In Texas, Including How Much Teachers Make And Keep?
A $46K salary in Texas becomes $38.7K/yr after taxes:
At $31.6K/yr expenses, you get to keep roughly $7.1K/yr.
Not the best, not the worst. You won’t be Warren Buffett, but it’s good enough to put away money every year to invest and compound.
So Should I Become A Teacher?
No, at least not financially speaking. If you look at the numbers above, you’ll save some money, but not that much. Also, traditional teaching is becoming more and more outdated with the pandemic and the prevalence of Zoom and YouTube. You’d hate to be in a situation where you’re barely saving money for the next 20 years and then the entire teaching industry gets outdated. And you’re out of a job with no real skills to make money.
Being a teacher means competing with the likes of Coursera, YouTube, Udemy – where students can pay much cheaper for far superior education. With the internet, students can pick and choose the skills they want to learn and get really good at those things. A mathematically oriented student no longer has to learn AP US History to be skilled. And someone into English no longer has to take multi-variate calculus to hone their writing skills.
If you want to make an impact by teaching, do it by being an influencer online and teaching that way – you might make more and you’ll actually make an impact. Instead of cramming pre-ordained prereqs down their throats – you can actually teach them things you think are useful.
These promotional skills of gathering paying students online is a skill you inevitably will need to learn anyway, so you should just learn it now – at the beginning of your teaching career, as opposed to waiting until you’re left behind. At the very least – teach IRL (which is financially suboptimal) and moonlight teaching students online. This way, you won’t be way late when teaching evolves into something fully remote in the future. You’ll also enjoy it more.
Lastly, let’s do an ego check. Has it ever been the case for you that you’ve had such a great teacher that your life has been impacted in a significant and positive way?
I haven’t. Most of my high school and college learnings is just working through the curriculum. No context of why I’m learning any of this is explained. And in the rare times the context is explained, the explanation is insufficient: “You should learn history so you can learn the lessons of history.” That makes no sense. The problems and solutions in history don’t map 1-to-1 to modern-day problems. If you can “learn from history” – why not take similar sets of problems & solutions that’s happening in today and learn from those instead?
(I’m being somewhat facetious here because I now enjoy history now that I don’t have to study it. Point is: if you’ll teach history, make sure to relate the lessons to modern problems. Otherwise, it’s just some abstract crap. For example, if you study history — the number of generals in an army is inversely proportional to the number of people killed. This by itself is useless information. But if you relate it to IRL by saying: “you can relate this to modern day companies when you go out to work — companies with more leaders generally lead to more miserable performance,” then that makes it more concrete).
Anyway – I haven’t had a single teacher that’s had some crazy inspiring impact for me, ever. It’s mostly just ‘let’s get through the curriculum so I can get to the next step and make money’. Purely transactional.
And if you haven’t ever been ‘inspired’ by a teacher – why do you think you’d somehow be an outlier and be an inspiring teacher solely responsible for your students’ lifetime success? Pure ego, that’s why.
It’s impossible – especially in the conventional school system. If you want to be inspiring, you’d have a much better chance in an unrestricted platform like YouTube or Twitch or something.
TLDR: People want to become teachers to inspire and teach. Not to maximize money. As a financial blog, I’d advise against being a teacher. But you can maximize your impact of teaching, inspiring, and money if you 1) took a day job being a teacher, so you can 2) transition into teaching online on YouTube or some other social channel.
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