I graduated with a mathematics degree and have recently concluded my first year as a professional. I have many thoughts but the main one is this
>How should an aspiring mathematician hedge his career?

By hedge, I mean that I have a goal and an anti-goal.
Goal: I want to be a well-paid mathematics professor
Anti-goal: I don't want to live below an upper-middle-class lifestyle

And while I really want to achieve my goal, I wouldn't kill myself if I didn't. On the flip side, I really want to avoid "achieving" my anti-goal as I'd probably kill myself if in 10 years I was not living an upper-middle-class life.

By the nature of these markets, working towards my goal brings in a lot of risks. Getting a Ph.D. in mathematics will make you overqualified for any normal job if you lack the experience to hit the ground running with some seniority (i.e. you don't want to be job hunting for entry-level positions with a Ph.D.) but there are definitely not enough well-paid professor positions to accommodate everyone who wants to go through this path. Most are stuck in shitty routes like post-docs and adjunct faculty positions.

Looking at this problem analytically my first move was to go into industry (currently in banking) as I figured that I could hedge my risk by first earning some seniority (working a normal job 2-5 years) which would mean that by the time I get my Ph.D. I would have a stronger resume than most. However recent developments have revealed an issue

>If all else fails, what if my normal career can't avoid my anti-goal?

I am currently making a low middle-class income (on my own and in my very early 20s so not bad). I have calculated that at the standard raise % with a couple of bigger raises in between for performance, I could achieve this upper-middle-class lifestyle in the 10-year timeline. However, this happened:

(cont.)