Being in the writing biz myself, I've always marveled at how Carrie Bradshaw pulled off such a fabulous lifestyle including that spacious, beautifully furnished, ideally located apartment on a newspaper columnist's salary. I know later in the television series she confronts some financial realities but for the most part, being a columnist looks especially lucrative on TV!

It's things like that (remember that huge, awesome apartment Rachel and Monica shared on Friends [1] even though Rachel was a waitress for a while?) that make this story on the salaries of TV characters [2] so fun.

CareerBuilder.com asks what I think a lot of us think every now and again, "Would our favorite characters' lavish lifestyles make it on the other side of the TV screen?" and comes to some pretty interesting conclusions:

• Samantha Newly, of Samantha Who? [3] is a vice president at a real estate firm whose real life salary would likely be $145,051. Dang! And she lives at home so pretty much anything she buys or wears is completely plausible.
• Head pie maker Ned of Pushing Daisies [4] would probably make about $21,241 in the real world, but they figure he's financially solvent due to the reward money he earns bringing murdered people back from the dead on the side.

Are there any TV characters whose lifestyles don't seem to match up with their jobs?

Source [5]