I recently became a paralegal a little under a year ago. I started at my first entry level firm and hated it, it was all copy and pasting more like a machine than anything.
Any how I got extremely lucky and managed to land an in-house position for a massive company and have been working there since. With that came a big pay increase from what I was making at my first firm.
My concern is that with cost of living I don’t know if I will ever make enough as a paralegal to be able to support myself, even with my current job paying well for a paralegal position.
I’m in my early twenties and all I can think about is this salary is not going to be enough for me to ever own a home and move out of my parent’s house. I also quite frankly have no desire to stay in the state I currently live in (TX) which adds more stress as TX has a decent cost of living and decent pay in comparison.
I think like many paralegals I’ve been looking into law school, purely because I’m familiar with the field and the pay increase (but admittedly added stress) of becoming a lawyer.
I’ve done a lot of research, but a lot of the answers seem to vary. Realistically to me I think my pay in my area would cap a little over 100K if I’m lucky and if I stuck to the field and maybe job hopped some. I know DC, California, and NYC have decent pay but high cost of living which kinda cancels out in my mind.
Anyone have any insight as to living on just a paralegal salary (aka no partner, parents, etc. for additional income)?
Any further insight to the top end of a paralegal salary for different areas?