What are some jobs that surprisingly pay over $1,000,000 a year?) ) Michael Cheng), Worked several years at a small VC and an investment bank. Originally Answered: )What are achievable jobs that pay a million a year?) In the world of real estate, lots of people in various roles make a million dollars a year. Almost no one has a job that pays a million a year, given what real estate professionals know about available favorable tax treatments in real estate. Loan officers or brokers, real estate brokers, contractors, flippers, appraisers, and even property inspectors can make a million bucks or more each year, all through handling some aspect of real estate. Some of the roles require licenses, but many do not. Many just have a college degree and some may not have even graduated high school, just vocational school, especially for the contracting trades. For example, my elevator guy bills at $392 an hour and he rounds up to the nearest hour, so he often bills at a higher rate than my fancy lawyers from Harvard. My commercial property inspector charges $8–10K for a two hour inspection and he averages an inspection a day. No license required. Many of these roles don't require much formal education, just a willingness to work hard. The work itself isn't particularly challenging and you don't need a specialized talent or be able to put a ball in the right spot fifty feet away. Indeed, one of my loan officers clears $1.5M a year in commissions, and he admits he doesn't do much more than punch in a few numbers to pull up current mortgage rates and send out a few emails a day with pre-approvals. He is on the phone a lot, discussing rates and terms. But, the bulk of the actual grunt work in completing and closing the loan is handled by his assistants, who only get paid a couple of pennies by the bank compared to his rate. It can be a tedious grind, but for the money, it's not so bad. For anyone willing to work, it's a very achievable result. Getting started is often as simple as pulling up the licensing requirements on the appropriate state board website, fulfilling the course requirements, and getting the license in a few months. Of course, most people looking for a million dollars a year won't even do that, so there remains plenty of roles which keep paying out that well.