Part of the appeal of Consulting apart from pay (even where pay is not too high) are:The kind of skills one would learn and the intensity at which one would learn them would set you apart from peers in the long run. It is one thing to take your offspring to the local football academy to learn football (ala graduate programmes of blue chips). It is a completely different ball game to send your offspring to the youth academy of Ajax, Barcelona, Man U, Arsenal etc (Ala top consulting firms). Hence the tendency to see ex-consultants being employed a bar or even 3 up when moving into industry.Secondly, the allowance. When I was in CapG, one gets a £15 breakfast allowance and a £30 dinner allowance when away from home (This was lower in Accenture then). That is £45 a day for usually 4 to 5 days a week (and possible £2.50 per day for tea/coffee if the client does not have any on site lol). One also get paid for mileage if going by car, which was pretty high to cover wear and tear.Lets imagine a consultant is billed 200 days in a year with the rest being weekends, holiday (personal and public) and time on the bench. The meal allowance on its own is £9000 per year. Remember, this excludes the good mileage payment for travelling by car if one does. I used to drive a not-so-expensive car that I did not mind it building mileage so it was not really depreciating that much. I also used to get all the juice and other edibles I needed for my week from Tescos and claim it on my dinner (it broke no rules, you can get anything you want from anywhere you want at any quantity as long as it was not over the limit).Then the consultancies normally give a corporate credit card to pay for hotel bills, but one can get a personal credit card with good rewards programme to use to pay for this. Lets go with the 200 billable days and lets say the hotel bills are £90 per day (consultancies normally organise discounts), that is about £18K a year that you can put on the card. Add the £6K meal allowance earlier discussed, and the fact that some hotel chains have some loyalty schemes that gives you free night (personally) if you keep using only them, you would get enough points to never have to pay for a holiday out of your pocket for a long while as you will get free flights and accommodation.The fact that one is away from home and have meal allowances also means one does not have to dish into his salary that much (e.g. London Underground pass and restaurants since you will be frequenting at company expense elsewhere) means that a consultant can save loads of money.To me, the above meant at least £5K, if not more, indirect extra payment apart from salary that I will never get in any other job in industry. The con is you are away from home, but if you are single, why not.So to summarise: consultancy provides one with the opportunity for being better skilled at best practice levels and a chance to save a large portion of your salary through free meals and holidays that you will pay for in an industry job.
