Here’s how much an associate professor makes in Boston

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Below, see how much this associate professor makes in Boston.

Responses have been lightly edited for grammar and clarity.

Job: Associate professor and program director at Northeastern (retired as of June 30) 

Income: $172,000

Lives in: Northborough

Works in: Boston

Name: Jay S.

Age: 76

Do you work remote, hybrid, or in-person? 

Hybrid. When I first started the job, I was four days in and one day working from home. But over the last year or so, it has varied based on what was going on. If there was stuff I had to be on campus for, I was there. If not, I worked from home. By the time it ended on June 30, I was doing two days on campus and three at home.

What drew you to this career/field? 

I was recruited to teach part time, then the leadership role opened and it was offered to me. I was only in higher education for the last 12 years of my career.

The program, which I directed, was a master’s degree program, so I primarily taught graduate students, but I did have one course of undergraduates that I taught once a year.

What’s your biggest monthly expense? 

We don’t have a mortgage anymore and our cars are fully paid for. The only big expense that I still have is that, with three kids that we sent to college — plus my wife’s doctoral studies, plus my doctoral studies — we’ve got a pretty huge student loan thing that we’re paying off. That’s our biggest regular expense right now, and I’m working on getting rid of that. It’s a little over $500,000 total. I pay $4,200 per month in loan payments.

Is your salary enough for you to live on? What trade-offs are you making to live or work here? What would need to change for Boston to feel sustainable? 

It’s not, but we don’t just live on my salary. My wife retired as a public school administrator and she has a pretty healthy pension.

I’m not worried about retirement. I waited until I knew I could cover it from what I was going to get in income from my retirement funds. And I’m still going to teach part time at Northeastern. I’m going to teach two courses a year. I’ve got a younger brother who teaches part time at a college in Chicago, and I just got hired by them to teach for them remotely part time as well. So I’m gonna have some extra income coming in.

Because of the load of our program [at Northeastern], I’ve been working 50 to 60 hours a week. And I was really apprehensive of what I was going to do with my time in retirement at first. I was hoping that it didn’t leave me in a position where I was so bored that I ended up spending my time consuming Maker’s Mark rather than doing anything.

For the two courses I’m going to teach for Northeastern, that’s about $9,200 a course. So that’s an extra $18,000 a year. I don’t know what it’s going to be like for the other college. It’s a lot less. They need people to be on dissertation committees, and they want me to do that as well. Depending on whether I do it as a committee member or a committee chair, committee members get $750, and committee chairs get $1,500.

There’s enough income for me to cover our normal living expenses, including the big college loan. So everything that I get from my teaching is going into special accounts to cover trips and other things that we want to do now that we’re both retired.

What was your last splurge? 

A trip to Chicago for my nephew’s wedding.

I wouldn’t say I’m frugal, but we don’t do things that are going to cut into what we’ve got. Given the fact that I’m on a relatively fixed income now, and I’m not going to be getting raises or anything special other than what I’m doing for my part-time teaching stuff, we’re being pretty careful. 

This [Chicago trip] was a splurge, but we did it because it was a big family thing.

Annie Jonas is a Community writer at Boston.com. She was previously a local editor at Patch and a freelancer at the Financial Times.