Salary
Average Salary: $41,500
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $1,732,542
You'd think with a career as fundamentally important as grief counselor you'd be raking in the cash, but you'd be wrong (don't worry—there won't be a test on this stuff). The average mental health professional makes around $42,000, and while the exact number for grief counselors isn't widely available, the number is likely not far off (source).
There are a few ways to increase your income—and no, blackmailing your patients isn't one of them. As with most health careers, having a "Dr." in front of your name is going to improve all aspects of your job hunt, from starting salary and benefits to how many open opportunities are available. So will other letters after your name, like MA, M.Ed., and CGC.
Opening your own practice will certainly help open more wallets, but you'll need a great reputation or a boatload of cash to start if you're going to branch out on your own.
Another way to increase your bottom line while lifting others up is to specialize your skills. Grief counseling is a broad and diverse portion of an even broader and more diverse mental health field.
Veterans, active military personnel, and their families experience losses that are different from the general population. The same goes for patients with certain diseases (and their families too) or victims of specific types of crimes. Now obviously, the fact that you're able to help a specific subsection of the population is the important thing, but no one's going to hold it against you if you end up making more money than you would otherwise.
At the end of the day, you're probably going to end up being comfortable financially, but still living on a budget. If you're going to do this, you're doing this because you want to make a difference in the lives of strangers. That's actually pretty awesome, because not everyone has what it takes to do that. Kudos to you—though kudos are not tradable for cash, sorry.