How Much How I Met Your Mother's Ted Mosby Would Make As An Architect

If you're anything like me, you can't watch a TV show without wondering how much money the main characters are making. This question is naturally followed by wondering how much their apartment costs, how much their parents must be funding their lifestyles, and whether any of this is realistic at all, especially with shows taking place in New York City or Los Angeles.

Of all the major sitcoms of the past 30 years, "How I Met Your Mother" might be one of the least realistic. At least "Friends" explained that Monica's luxurious apartment was rent-controlled and illegally sublet from her grandmother, but "HIMYM" never explains how Ted and Marshall (the latter of whom is still a student for the first two seasons) can afford that beautiful Upper West Side apartment. Combine this with the silliness of Barney's career (he makes "16 craploads" a year doing basically nothing) and Robin's teen popstar background, and it's clear "HIMYM" doesn't want us to think seriously about the characters' finances.

This "don't think about it" approach is most glaring with Lily's financial situation in season 2. For the first six episodes, she's a newly single person forced to find a new home in NYC with a kindergarten teacher's salary and tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt. This must've been stressful, but the show never seriously deals with what she's going through. The show jokes at one point that Marshall is the "settler" in his relationship with Lily, but Lily's marriage to him is the only thing saving her from total financial ruin. 

The only character whose financial situation is somewhat grounded is Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor). We can sort of understand why Ted can afford that apartment because he actually has a solid job as early as the pilot. Still, exactly how much income is Ted taking home each season as an architect, and does his lifestyle throughout the show truly check out?

In season 1, Ted is a graduate architect, and according to ZipRecruitor, that would likely have him earning somewhere from $42,000 (25th percentile) to $104,000 (75th percentile). My bet would be at least $80,000 in season 1 (adjusted for inflation), which is enough to enjoy getting drunk at a bar every night in mid-2000s NYC.

One thing that helps Ted out is that he comes from what seems like an upper-middle class family, one that likely helped with his student loan situation. Ted's party-heavy spending habits throughout the early seasons, not to mention him buying a new car, despite living in the least car-friendly area in the entire nation, sure implies that this is not a guy stressed about money. 

In season 2 Ted is promoted to a senior position at his architecture firm, a promotion that happens after his unique building design singlehandedly saves the firm from losing a major client. By this point, Ted is certainly approaching (or past) the six-figure salary mark. It's not Don Draper money or anything, but Ted's still doing well.

Seasons 3 and 4 are where things get tricky, because during this period, the show is uninterested in Ted's job or how it affects the rest of his life. "HIMYM" stops exploring Ted's role as a boss at his firm, and the next major architect storyline for Ted involves him getting screwed over on a project for Goliath National Bank. This leads to Ted quitting his job (well, getting fired) and spending the back half of season 4 trying to build his own firm from the ground up. 

Like with Lily in season 2, Ted's brief period of attempted self-employment should be making him wake up in the middle of the night with severe cold sweats, but a casual viewer can easily watch several late-season 4 episodes without noticing Ted's career is in shambles. By the end of season 4, Ted's career as an architect is seemingly over. Luckily, thanks to his ex-fiancé Stella leaving him at the altar to a guy with lucrative connections, Ted's career heads in an exciting new direction in season 5.

Season 5 sees Ted becoming an adjunct professor at Columbia University. Much like architects, a professor is one of those jobs that varies wildly in salary, so it's once again impossible to say with any certainty what Ted makes at this point. Based on the way Ted talks about his new job though, it seems like its main selling point is its stability rather than its salary. Ted is probably making $80K-$90K by this point; that's a fine salary of course, but not what season 2 Ted would've predicted for himself. 

In season 6, Ted gets his big break: He's hired to build a skyscraper for Goliath National Bank. Once again, it's not clear at all how much Ted was paid for this (as architects will tell you, it depends on a lot of factors the show never elaborates on), but it certainly wasn't nothing. It's a major, years-long project costing the company several hundreds of millions of dollars. By season 7, Ted is making at least six figures off his job on the GNB building alone, all while still teaching at Columbia.

What's especially impressive is that, at 33 years old at the time, Ted becomes the youngest-ever architect to design a major skyscraper in NYC. By season 7, Ted is rich (or at least, very comfortable) and still has an unprecedented, promising architecture career in front of him. In fact, everyone in the main "HIMYM" gang ends up with a career that's perhaps a little too good to be true — even Lily goes from schoolteacher to successful high-class art consultant in season 8 — but Ted's rise is the most impressive. His job may not be as flashy as Barney colluding with the feds or Robin becoming a major world-traveling TV journalist, but he's still done absurdly well. 

Fans may debate how happy the ending to Ted's love life was, but the story of Ted's career ended on a (*salute*) major high note.