Six-Figure Jobs You Don't Need a College Degree For

14 Ways to Get to Six Figures Without Doing Four Years First

Maybe you don't want to spend all that time taking classes in obscure subjects while hoping to find your calling and piling up student loan debt. Maybe you don't really care so much about college. You just want to work and make money.

You can do it, but there aren't many fields where it happens very often. In our list (see below) of 14 potentially six-figure jobs that don't require a four-year diploma, only two have a median wage of above $100,000. For the rest, you'll have to be in the top 10% of earners, and even then you may find yourself working 50 to 60 hours a week.

Dr. Al Lee, director of quantitative analysis at Payscale.com, says that most of these jobs share a few qualities. (Payscale's research provided the numbers that made this list possible. The company measured the average earnings for people with eight or more years in their field.)

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More from Forbes.com:

* In Depth: Jobs That Can Earn More Than $100,000 Without College
* In Depth: The 10 Top Jobs for Today's Grads
* In Depth: Top 10 Recession-Proof Jobs
* In Depth: Government Jobs You Should Apply For Now

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No test can tell an employer how good you might be at some of these lines of work -- real estate broker or fashion designer, for example. That's why a degree is less important to a potential employer than field experience and demonstrated past success. Either you're good at it or you're not.

Many of these jobs rely on variable pay (commission and overtime) to break six figures. Good plumbers, ultrasound techs and construction managers generally do a lot of overtime. It's far more valuable to a company to pay them extra than to hire an additional employee, Lee says. And that means workers can break past what they would earn if confined to 40 hours a week.

Stress is pretty much a given in all these occupations. A high price for failure is not uncommon. Cost estimators can't estimate too high on a project or they'll risk losing it to a competitive bidder. They can't go too low or their company won't make money on the deal. Radiation therapists and ultrasound technologists have to worry about the danger of malpractice suits. Court reporters mustn't miss a word in the courtroom. Air traffic controllers know that hundreds of lives ride on their actions.

Almost all these positions produce revenue that can give them a clearly defined monetary value. An executive chef at a hotel can pull in guests or send them fleeing. An ultrasound technologist or radiation therapist paid $100,000 a year can bring the hospital several times that. A sales manager's value can often be pinpointed in dollars and cents at the end of the year. Also, a few of these jobs -- air traffic controller, police supervisor, court reporter -- have unions to thank for their good pay.

Lee says now is as good a time as any to start on the path to one of these jobs. The market may be in bad shape, but companies will still need competent workers. When better to find out if you're truly good at something than when it's most difficult?

He says of people who make more than $100,000, "At the end of the day, the largest percentage of them are degree-holders." But you definitely can get there this way -- not that it's easy. "You learn on the job. You pay attention. You move your way up."

Could it be time to design your five- or 10-year path to six figures? Below is a list of 14 options for possible six-figure jobs without a degree.


1. Real Estate Broker
2. Air Traffic Controller
3. Small Business Owner/Operator
4. Fashion Designer
5. Plumber, Pipe Fitter or Steamfitter
6. Non-Retail Sales Manager
7. Network/Data Communications Manager
8. Construction Superintendent/Manager
9. Radiation Therapist
10. Police and Detective Supervisor
11. Ultrasound Technologist
12. Hotel Executive Chef
13. Court Reporter
14. Construction Cost Estimator

In Depth: The 14 Jobs That Can Earn More Than $100,000 Without College

Uses for $700-B bailout money ever shifting

Uses for $700-B bailout money ever

WASHINGTON - First, the $700 billion rescue for the US economy was about buying devalued mortgage-backed securities from tottering banks to unclog frozen credit markets.

Then it was about using $250 billion of it to buy stakes in banks. The idea was that banks would use the money to start making loans again.

But reports surfaced that bankers might instead use the money to buy other banks, pay dividends, give employees a raise and executives a bonus, or just sit on it. Insurance companies now want a piece; maybe automakers, too, even though Congress has approved $25 billion in low-interest loans for them.

Three weeks after becoming law, and with the first dollar of the $700 billion yet to go out, officials are just beginning to talk about helping a few strapped homeowners avoid losing their homes in foreclosures.

As the crisis worsens, the government's reaction keeps changing. Lawmakers in both parties are starting to gripe that the bailout is turning out to be far different from what the Bush administration sold to Congress.

In buying equity stakes in banks, the Treasury has "deviated significantly from its original course," says Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. "We need to examine closely the reason for this change," said Shelby, who opposed the bailout.

The centerpiece of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act is the "troubled asset relief program," or TARP for short. Critics note that tarps are used to cover things up. The money was to be devoted to buying "toxic" mortgage-backed securities whose value has fallen in lockstep with home prices.

But once European governments said they were going into the banking business, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson followed suit and diverted $250 billion to buy stock in healthy banks to spur lending.

Bank executives hinted they might instead use it for acquisitions. Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee, said this development was "beyond troubling."

Sure enough, a day after Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, made the comment, the government confirmed that PNC Financial Services Group Inc. was approved to receive $7.7 billion in return for company stock. At the same time, PNC said it was acquiring National City Corp. for $5.58 billion.

"Although there will be some consolidation, that's not the driver behind this program," Paulson recently told PBS television talk show host Charlie Rose. "The driver is to have our healthy banks be well-capitalized so that they can play the role they need to play for our country right now."

Other planned uses of the bailout money have lawmakers protesting, although it is only fair to note there is nothing in the law that they just wrote to prevent those uses.

Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, questioned allowing banks that accept bailout bucks to continue paying dividends on their common stock.

"There are far better uses of taxpayer dollars than continuing dividend payments to shareholders," he said.

Schumer, whose constituents include Wall Street bankers, said he also fears that they might stuff the money "under the proverbial mattress" rather than make loans.

Neel Kashkari, head of the Treasury's financial stability program, told Dodd's committee this past week that there are few strings attached to the capital-infusion program because too many rules would discourage financial institutions from participating.

As the bank plan has become a priority, the effort to buy troubled assets has receded from the headlines. Potential conflicts of interest pose all kinds of problems in finding qualified companies to manage that program.

"Firms with the relevant financial expertise may also hold assets that become eligible for sale into the TARP or represent clients who hold troubled assets," Kashkari said.

The challenge was made plain when the Treasury hired the Bank of New York Mellon Corp. as "custodian" of the troubled assets purchase program. The bank will conduct "reverse auctions" to buy the toxic securities on behalf of the Treasury Department. The lower the price they set, the better chance sellers have of getting rid of the devalued securities.

On the same day it hired Mellon, the Treasury also picked the company to receive a $3 billion investment as part of the capital-infusion program. The same bank hired to help manage part of the economic rescue plan became a beneficiary of it.

With the Nov. 4 election nearing, lawmakers decided it was important to remind the government officials running the bailout program about parts of the law aimed at helping distressed homeowners by offering federal guarantees to mortgages renegotiated down to lower monthly payments.

"The key to our nation's economic recovery is the recovery of the housing market," Dodd said. "And the key to recovery of the housing market is reducing foreclosures."

Sheila Bair, who heads the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., responded that her agency is working "closely and creatively" with Treasury officials to "realize the potential benefits of this authority." - AP

Bush says economy will bounce back in the long run

WASHINGTON – President Bush on Saturday sought to reassure Americans about the cost and scope of the nation's financial bailout plan and said that in the long run "our economy will bounce back."

Bush, in his weekly radio address, acknowledged that people are concerned about their finances and, while he offered assurances about an eventual recovery, he did not say when that would happen.

Since Oct. 9, 2007, when the Dow topped 14,000, investors have lost $8.3 trillion from pension funds, college savings plans, 401(k)s and other investments.

"The federal government has responded to this crisis with systematic and aggressive measures to protect the financial security of the American people," Bush said. "These actions will take more time to have their full impact. But they are big enough and bold enough to work." Congress gave Bush a $700 billion plan to buy bad assets from banks and other institutions to shore up the financial industry.

Bush was to meet later Saturday at Camp David for talks on the economy with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Manual Barroso, who were to stop in the United States on their way home from a summit in Canada.

In the Democrats' weekly radio address, Rep. Rahm Emanuel used the occasion for campaign criticism against John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee.

"On weekends like this, maybe you're like me and my neighbors, working around the house, trying to save a few bucks," said Emanuel, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "My neighbors and yours are struggling in this economy. They're working as hard as they know how, but the economic policies that George Bush proposed and John McCain supports have left them working harder, paying more and making less."

White House press secretary Dana Perino said the Camp David meeting was not expected to produce any new policy decisions or the date or place for a planned meeting of leaders of major economic powers, the so-called G8. Instead, she said it would focus on efforts extending as far back as April on coordination for financial stability through measures such as bank disclosures, accounting rules at credit rating agencies, capital standards and asset valuation.

The bailout plan runs counter to Bush's oft-stated commitment to free enterprise and the president said he knew many Americans have reservations about the government's approach, particularly the Treasury's planned injection of up to $250 billion in U.S. banks in return for partial ownership stakes, something that hasn't been done since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

"As a strong believer in free markets, I would oppose such measures under ordinary circumstances," the president said. "But these are no ordinary circumstances. Had the government not acted, the hole in our financial system would have grown larger, families and businesses would have had an even tougher time getting loans and ultimately the government would have been forced to respond with even more drastic and costly measures later on."

Bush said the government's involvement was limited in scope and Washington will not exercise control over any private firm and federal officials will not have a seat on bank boards. He also said he believed that the final cost to taxpayers would be significantly less than the initial investment as the housing market recovers. source

Analysts: al-Qaida has funds despite economic woes

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida, which gets its money from the drug trade in Afghanistan and sympathizers in the oil-rich Gulf states, is likely to escape the effects of the global financial crisis.
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One reason is that al-Qaida and other Islamic terrorists have been forced to avoid using banks, relying instead on less-efficient ways to move their cash around the world, analysts said.

Those methods include hand-carrying money and using informal transfer networks called hawalas.

While escaping official scrutiny, those networks also are slower and less efficient — and thus could hamper efforts to finance attacks.

"It would be inconceivable that large amounts of (terror-linked) money would transit through the formal financial system, because of all the controls," said Ibrahim Warde, an expert on terrorist financing at The Fletcher School at Tufts University.

The question of where al-Qaida and its sympathizers get their money has long been crucial to efforts to prevent terrorist attacks. A 2004 U.S. investigation found that banks in the United Arab Emirates had unwittingly handled most of the $400,000 spent on the Sept. 11 attacks.

After the attacks, the U.S. made an aggressive push to use law enforcement techniques to disrupt terrorist financing networks and worked with allies to improve their own financial and regulatory institutions.

Al-Qaida and the Taliban have benefited from the drug trade's growth in Afghanistan after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, and the booming business likely will not be affected by the global slowdown.

Opium cultivation has fallen slightly this year but is still about 20 times higher than in 2001, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Former U.S. drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who recently consulted with U.S. and NATO officials in Afghanistan, issued a report in July saying al-Qaida and the Taliban "are principally funded by what some estimate as $800 million a year derived from the huge $4 billion annual illegal production and export of opium/heroin and cannabis."

In addition, wealthy donors and Islamic charities in the oil-rich Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, continue to be "one of the most significant sources of illicit financing for terrorism," said Matthew Levitt, a former Treasury Department terrorism expert now with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The Saudis have long insisted they are doing all they can to rein in terror financing, and U.S. officials have praised their efforts.

But, under a system known as "zakat," wealthy Muslims are required to give a portion of their money to the poor. Much of that is given to Islamic charities, and U.S. officials say at least some of that money continues to be channeled to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries have benefited in the last two years from a surge in oil prices from about $60 per barrel at the beginning of 2007 to more than $145 per barrel in the middle of this year. Prices have fallen almost 50 percent in the last few months in response to the global financial crisis, but not before generating hundreds of billions of dollars to oil producers.

Levitt said the covert nature of terrorist financing makes it difficult to determine a direct correlation between rising oil revenues and the amount of cash al-Qaida has on hand.

But "it stands to reason that if there is more oil revenue, there will be more revenue for all kinds of things licit and illicit," he said.

Al-Qaida and other extremist groups have gloated in recent weeks about the West's financial woes, painting the crisis as either divine punishment for supposed wrongs or the last gasps of a dying empire.

An American al-Qaida member, Adam Gadahn, said in a video released this month that "the enemies of Islam are facing a crushing defeat, which is beginning to manifest itself in the expanding crisis their economy is experiencing."

Members of the militant Palestinian group Hamas and hard-liners in Iran also have cheered the economic turmoil.

Iran is thought to be the last major government supporter of terrorist groups. The majority Shiite country is not believed to finance al-Qaida, a Sunni group, but does support the militant Hezbollah faction in Lebanon, which engaged in war with Israel in 2006.

Iran denies the financial crisis is hurting its economy, but falling oil prices will cut into its crude sales, which make up 80 percent of the government budget. It is unclear how that will affect support to Hezbollah.

Despite the apparent glut in potential money for terrorist groups, Levitt believes anti-terrorism efforts have hampered their ability to transfer money where they want.

Levitt points to several messages from senior al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan intercepted by the U.S. or released by the terrorist group itself, asking Gulf supporters for more help because of funding shortfalls. The al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, appeared in a May 2007 video saying "the mujahedeen of the Taliban number in the thousands, but they lack funds."

But Warde and other analysts are not convinced al-Qaida is really hurting.

"Anybody who is involved in fundraising of any sort is never going to say we have enough money, so I think it is a silly argument to say that because there is this intercept ... it is proof that everything we've done has succeeded brilliantly," said Warde. source

Arroyo wants summit to tackle economy

MANILA – President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is calling on Asian leaders meeting in Beijing next week to convene a special session to tackle the impact of the global economic crisis.

Arroyo said Monday she is asking developing and emerging economies to unite and come up with a coordinated approach to cushion the impact of the ongoing credit crunch.

Arroyo says leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and their partners from China, Japan and South Korea could meet on the sidelines of the Oct. 24-25 Asia-Europe Meeting in Beijing.

Arroyo is urging the world's industrialized nations to consider the interest of poorer countries in their plan to prevent a global economic meltdown. source

Economists see financial bailout as necessary

WASHINGTON - The economy could suffer a massive hangover from the government's efforts to rescue the financial system in the form of a soaring debt burden. But the alternatives look infinitely worse.
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The $700 billion the administration is seeking from Congress as the upper bounds of what it will need to take a mountain of bad loans off the books of financial firms is certainly an eye-popping figure.

To get the funds to buy up the bad mortgage loans that have threatened to bring the financial system to its knees, the government will have to borrow. And that borrowing will come at a time when the federal budget deficit is already soaring.

The deficit for this budget year, which ends on Sept. 30, is expected to rise to $407 billion, a figure that is more than double the $161.5 billion imbalance for 2007, reflecting what the economic slowdown and this year's $168 billion economic stimulus program are already doing to the government's books.

The Bush administration is estimating that the deficit for the budget year that begins Oct. 1, which will cover the new president's first year in office, will hit $482 billion, a record in dollar terms.

And that forecast doesn't include the $200 billion the administration committed to spending two weeks ago when it took over the nation's two biggest mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

And it doesn't have any of the $700 billion the administration is seeking to soak up the bad mortgage-backed securities that have been at the heart of the severe credit crisis the country has been struggling with since August 2007.

The legislation Congress passed this summer that gave the authority to rescue Fannie and Freddie boosted the limit on the national debt by $800 billion to $10.6 trillion.

The legislation the administration is now seeking to authorize the financial system bailout, according to a draft obtained by The Associated Press, would boost that debt limit to $11.3 trillion, up another $700 billion.

It is the rapidly rising debt that is cause for concern. The government is already spending more than $400 billion a year just to pay interest on the national debt. The higher that debt goes, the higher the government's borrowing costs and the less it has to spend on other programs.

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are both running for president, making campaign promises about what new programs they will implement once in office, promises that could be severely constrained by the costs of a financial bailout.

The escalating borrowing also means that the government is competing with the private sector for loans, driving up interest rates. And then there is the matter of the country's large trade imbalances which mean the United States has to borrow $2 billion a day from foreigners.

Will foreigners still want to lend as much to the United States if there are concerns that all the borrowing could weaken the dollar's value against other currencies.

But even with all these threats, economists said the government has to take decisive action because the alternative of letting the financial system slide into even deeper problems which could jeopardize the routine loans that businesses and consumers need was simply not an option.

"It was critical to arrest the downward slide in financial markets," said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at California State University, Channel Islands.

The dire situation was dramatically demonstrated this past week when the Federal Reserve, working with the central banks of other nations, poured billions of dollars into the financial system without any significant impact because of the fear keeping banks from lending.

The financial system has already been staggered with $500 billion in losses from the mortgage mess and the International Monetary Fund has estimated the ultimate price could be $1 trillion.

What the administration's plan would do is at least establish a price for the mortgage-backed securities, which at the moment no one wants to own.

Officials who have briefed Congress on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan have suggested that one approach would be for the government to buy the toxic debt through a reverse auction process in which companies wanting to unload their mortgage-backed securities would propose a price to the government — say 50 cents on the dollar — and those offering the lowest price would win the bid.

By establishing a price for assets no one currently wants to buy, it could allow a market to develop and allow financial firms to get on with the effort of taking their losses and getting the damaged assets off their books.

"This could go a long way toward solving these problems," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, who has written a book on the mortgage meltdown.

And the final cost to the government?

No one knows for sure, but Zandi said if the experience with cleaning up all the assets left over from the savings and loan mess is any guide, it should be less than the $700 billion that the administration is seeking.

In the S&L crisis, the government was able to recoup about two-thirds of its initial costs when it sold the assets it had obtained from the failed S&Ls.

"Obviously there is a big upfront cost to taxpayers," Zandi said, "but the ultimate cost may be measurably lower."

(This version CORRECTS SUBS graf 9 to correct to $700 billion, sted 1.3 trillion.)

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