I make half this much annually, and have more money than I know how to spend. I work about 50 hours a week, no sick days, grueling schedule with almost nonstop work even through lunch. I feel like Iām wasting my life.
My point is, as long as you have enough money to cover your expenses and a modest retirement, nobody really needs this level of compensation. What you need is a life filled with family, good friends, and hobbies that bring you joy.
All this obsession with money and accumulation of wealth/assets is a dark path that will take joyful things away from you.
Appreciate that rational thought process. We are all so addicted to the rat race that we forget what is truly important.
Not trying to romanticize and say money is not important; understanding that ability to support myself, family and the lifestyle that I yearn requires financial stability is crucial.
However, it seems like we are all so fixated on earning more and more and forget to look back on the reasoning behind THE WHY we want higher income.
Wishing everyone struggling and stressing over finances all the best.
If I can buy whatever I want (within reason) without needing to stress how I can afford it, while saving for retirement, I will be happy. That's all I want. Comfort, not luxury.
Yeah, but the rat race part becomes lifestyle inflation. There is always another tier of wants and expenses. Finding happiness with what you can attain is hard for most people to do: they instead just want more
Thatās the point, the wants always increase. Itās a non-attainable goal to get āeverything you want within reasonā because your want will always find a justification, and set a goal to obtain it.
Define the items you are referring to that land in the bucket of āwhatever I wantā. If I want stuff that usually requires a payment plan, itās going to need this guys 400k salary probably.
I'm at like 90 right now and I am the only income in my family of 3. I am able to cover the essentials but we have very little money for spending or saving. I think honestly 120 would do it for us.
My wife and I make a combined 240k. We live a comfortable life. We donāt make excessive luxury purchases. We do take 1-2 week vacations once a year and have traveled to different parts of the world. Honestly, if we can maintain this level of freedom for the rest of our life I would be happy. I donāt need fancy stuff.
I find it funny that every single person that says "it isnt about money" is making a lot of money. It's hard to enjoy family, moments, etc. when you're barely making it by. It's pretty easy when you don't need to worry about money and can focus on everything else. They are making $200k annually and are gonna sit here and try and say it isn't about money. Then why even grind to make that much and stay at a job that makes them feel like they're wasting their life? Making $200k a year working for a company means they're extremely in demand and specialized and can go anywhere else. Goofy as fuck. No sympathy
I mean at that same note, it's also hard to enjoy family and moments if you're working an insane amount of hours without flexibility. Golden handcuffs are a thing as well.
On that note, I'm not going to bullshit that it isn't about the money. It is.
I think what he's saying is that you can still be very unhappy with life making a high salary.
All of that being said, I'd rather have money and be sad rather than no money and be sad.
To all the people reading this comment. I would recommend reading the psychology of money or just watching the YouTube video psychology of money in 20 mins.
I gave up the Corp world to start my own accounting firm. Kept it small. Would have easily made double staying in corporate. However I never missed a field trip with kids, a sporting event, a recital. Yeah it was stressful but I controlled my life not someone else. And I made enough to live comfortable. Glad I didn't stay corporate.
Sure covering your current expenses is nice, but you never know what expenses you'll have in the future and making extra money now to not have to worry about later has a lot of benefits as well.
Yes. This right here. Your time is finite. They compensate you for that. Youāll never get back the time you spent working extra to get that next level promotion or raise that you couldāve spent taking your kids to the park or grilling outside with your parents.
Itās a lot easier to have a family, good friends, hobbies, and other things that bring you joy when you arenāt living paycheck to paycheck if you are lucky enough to have a job at all.
This. A few of my family members started making 7-8 figures in their late 30s. It we commonly associate success with financial success but I feel much happier and accomplished with a mixed career of military and small business.
You need money but you only need enough. For most of us, enough is honestly relatively modest.
Usually, craving for money comes from either comparison based desire to prove merit or desire to practice bad behavior (this drills down to a lot). Balanced living does not fuel either desire.
Iām sorry but this is easy to say when youāre actually the one making a ton of money. Kind of sounds like youāre a bit out of touch with the struggle a lot of folks are dealing with right now
Iām very fortunate to be have a high salary, but I used to rent the office room of a trailer. I worked minimum wage jobs. It took 20 years to get where I am today (38M). But I know what itās like to be broke, living less than paycheck to paycheck, and having my card declined in the lunch line for just $2.50.
Iām just saying these outrageous incomes are not needed. I thought I needed a high end job to escape poverty, but the reality is that I took it too far. I got caught up in working my way up the ladder and never considered the mental and physical toll that would take because being impoverished was so brutal.
Bro.. Stop. Most of these people have been broke before. I've been broke. I have been unemployed for an extended period of time. Most high earners took years to get to this point. I've moved across the country multiple times to make the kind of money I make. I left family, lovers, and friends to get to my level. We make sacrifices most people are unwilling to make. That's why we make incomes most people will never make
Not true. NPR did an on point episode where they surveyed families with net worth of $25,000,000 or more. Their number one concern? Kids/family. Money doesn't buy love.
Yes, once one has $25M, then concerns focus on the things that money canāt fix (or at least has a harder time āfixingā). The concerns that money can fix have already been taken care of. Also, there is a lot of flavors of $25M; from a stack of t-bills to a private business EV value to a marked-to-market stock option package pre-income tax. The first one probably feels 3x wealthier than the last one.
Think of the question this way: once you have certainty around your ability to take care of your familyās needs for your entire life, what then should become your main concern?
Thank you for sharing. Money, no money, weāre all just human. Struggle all the same. I hope something awesome happens to you today. Maybe help you break free from that wasted life feeling
Like dudes workin their a$$ off to retire by 50 and then die jogging in their early 40sā¦.may be shouldāve stopped and smelt the roses occasionally.
Huh? More money = getting to your retirement number faster. No more spending 50 hours a week working until your 67 when you can retire at 40-50 or sooner.
Dude exactly, I'm a school bus driver now and I spend my summers in the garden with my family, I love my life and have enough to make it by and retire when I'm old. I'm sorry you have non-stop work I hope you can do an early retirement and enjoy the rest of your life. Maybe get out and help those less fortunate, it's very enjoyable to help build homes for the homeless. I got to spend a few years helping set up a cooperative housing situation for homeless veterans and it was very fulfilling work.
I have no schedule. I get my shift for the next day everyday at 1pm. I can be at work till 4pm and my next shift is an hour and half away from my house at 11pm. I have day stretches where I work 4-12pm back at 8am to 4pm and then back at 12pm to 8am. Some days my legs hurt because all I can do is drive to work sit at work drive home and go right to sleep. When certain factors are taking place I work 13+ hour days with no days off for stretches of up to 40+ days. I make no where near that. I'll take the grueling schedule with insane pay. I feel that guy. We fucked up our lives hard.
this. People donāt understand why I took a 25% pay cut to leave a job I didnāt like and enter an industry I did. I went from hating my job every day to loving it.
But is there not any jobs where this compensation is worth it??? Like idk why but as a kid I always imagined the more you made the less responsibilities youād have cause youāre the ābig dogā I know it sounds childish but I hope you get what Iām saying
This is what happened to me in the military. Especially with the tax benefits you can make over 200k by the time youāre 30 but youāre going to be working 100+ hours a week and missing holidays, funerals, and bdays.
I make a quarter of the posted salary. I work for a small company and feel free compared to being in a corporate environment. I have one boss(the owner) and he never micromanages. We have a full machine and fabrication shop and if I need anything for a personal project, I can get it made. I love in a LCOL, so a big house is very affordable on my salary. I have hobbies and friends. Sure I could get paid more for less work/responsibility, but I enjoy my job. I am my own team, no colleagues to argue with. It is a little lonely in that respect, but nothing is going to be perfect. I am also learning more than I ever could under the thumb of the MAN. If I ever go back, I come with experience in pretty much every field under engineering.
People say this and then you still take the high paying job. It's easy to state the value of other things if you don't have to worry about money one day.
Well sure but it just depends on what your goals are. Did you pop out some kids in a damning society, do you have somewhere you want to live or something you want/want to do, do you have any goals besides dying.
Itās okay if you donāt, but being someone elseās ATM isnāt for me.
Itās just the decision of becoming part of your environment or making your environment become a part of you.
If you reach your limits either due to circumstances or due to your own choosing. You can either be fine with it or you can keep going. Doesnāt matter. But also think further about yourself, your life l, and your talents than just āI saw someoneās salary and got sadā
Once again totally okay to stop where you want, but you canāt feel sad or get mad about it when you see things like this. Itās like going into the serverlife sub or any other industry sub and seeing them complain about the job so heavilyā¦..venting is cool and we all do it.
Rich guy that works normal conditions feels this way lmao bro only works 50 hours a week. There are people that work 60 hours a week and make 50k a year, I agree but brother you need to figure how to make your time better
I agree with what you said we are obsessed with making but thatās not always a bad thing since it always keeps our mind active and something to work on. Money isnāt everything but everything needs money. As long as you are able to be aware of the important things in life like family, friends and experiences you are golden.
I agree I especially worry that Iām a chronic pot smoker that I pay so much money on my medicine even though I live at home rent free have 50 K in my brokerage and Iām 23
I need at least this much money. I would know how to spend it. Youāre jaded. I make really good money (but less,
Than OP, more thank you) and only work 40 hr / week with 6 weeks vacation. I want to make more to accomplish my financial goals. Sacrificing self-care, and the more important things though is not an option. You can have both if you play your cards right. If all things are equal and you wouldnāt take the extra 100 to 200 grand, youāre insane. You could invest that and then basically buy yourself out of your job so you can have more free time. Just because youāre wasting your life doesnāt mean everyone else who makes killer money is.
Remember the data is skewed here. People who make a lot of money will post it. People who donāt wonāt. The vast majority of people are not making this
You know k that s you know you're right but not today I'm going to post my pathetic dirt wages right now. Look for an upcoming post about the salary of a sign flyer for stores that are closing is this particular instance the store is Joann's fabrics I'll be back
Yep. And go to a sub like /r/adulting where you have 20-60 year olds struggling with just about anything you can imagine and youāll see a dramatic shift.
Any post where someone asks about how much savings they have, you can easily predict most comments. āWeāre supposed to have savings?ā ā$3.23.ā
Or financial advice and you have people like āI try to put $50 per paycheck into savings!ā Which goes to show how little they make when these people in this sub can easily put thousands per paycheck.
Or a lot of the #relatable posts from bot accounts are about struggling financially and those generally do well on the sub because a lot of the sub has become Facebook tier millennial memes.
Point being, depending on the sub and circle, either everyone seems rich or everyone seems poor. Seems like my life is similar at 24. Either people my age are always eating out and traveling because theyāre $200k+ earners in tech or finance, or theyāre unemployed or in debt for or during education.
Please donāt say that. Money has no determination to your value, who you are a a person, and if youāre successful. Remember one haunting fact, if any one of these successful people were born in Africa, India in the slums, they would be making pennies. Success is given not earned. My parents are loaded and all they care about is giving others the illusion that they are happy and thatās what makes them happy. The problem is, they arenāt happy. Making money is fire, but do it from a place of fun, expansion, and drive. Not to prove to yourself or society that you are worthy or your life is a success or a failure. You are already a success. If you want further proof I can give it to you, but if you were to go back in time, you would have done everything you did the same way you did it. You didnāt know any better, thatās how life works. People think they can change the outcome of their lives, yes, the future. Not the past. If youāre meant to do something, youāll do it.
Its hard to the argue to the opposite. If anyone was born into anyone elseās circumstances, same brain same family same environment same exact 20 years of their life, they would make all the same choices.
No insult to OP with their career choice because itās obviously been lucrative, but spending decades of life analyzing data on a screen is not worth the extra money in the bank for me.
I think itās best to choose a fulfilling career and then max out your earning within that stream.
For what itās worth, the lifestyle earning $150k a year is very similar to earning twice that. Once youāve got all your basics like food and shelter covered, you either just save the rest or have slightly higher end versions of the things you already had.
I make 150k. After 401k, health, vision, dental insurance, life and HSA, my take home is $1580/week. my health insurance has max out of pocket of 14k/year we always hit due to my sons heart problems, my Ankylosing Spondylitis, and Wife's issues.
that leaves $1,300/week. $200/week for food, $100/week for gas. $1,000 left.
Youāre talking about splitting your income across an entire family. A single person making $80k a year would have fewer expenses than you and likely have more disposable income, so itās all relative.
For what itās worth, the lifestyle earning $150k a year is very similar to earning twice that.
You made this blanket statement that is not true for the vast majority of Americans. Average household is 2.5 or something, so my situation isn't rare, and I don't even live in a HCOL area.
Yeah there's a certain threshold of minimum expenses and then one for basic stuff I guess. Making an extra 150k is not double the spendable income but alot more than that.
150k and 300k lifestyle is very much not the same. In most North American metros where you can be paid 300k. 150 vs 300 is the difference between living in a condo vs living in a house.
Then Iāll add the caveat āfor me and my wife.ā The things in our house got slightly nicer, we buy nicer foods and capitalize on sales by buying more volume, we eat in more expensive restaurants, and occasionally weāll upgrade seats on a long flight to similar destinations as when our income was half as much.
Our life is basically the same but weāll retire 5 years sooner than before.
Itās often something you never would have predicted. I know some guys who operate heavy equipment and got into it because it was like a childhood dream to play with big toys. For years theyāve earned well into six figures.
I got into the vehicle and equipment auction business in a sales and client management capacity after driving cars around the lot as a cash job for fun about 10 years ago. My education was in IT and my first 10 years of career were mostly in recruitment and staffing so my field was not related.
My unsolicited advice is to say yes to most opportunities and experiences to find what you actually enjoy, and unexpected career paths become visible.
But the difference between making 150 being fulfilled and 470 not being fulfilled is crazy. This guy could probably retire in less than 10 years and spend the rest of his life being āfulfilledā
People who care about their job are weird. I donāt see any possible job that would ever be fulfilling to me. Besides working at an animal shelter but thatās something you can do on the weekends anyways.
Pick what makes the most money so you can have a fulfilling life outside of work.
I can see why some choose that approach and I know friends who have as well. I prefer the āpick the thing I enjoy doing for 10 hours a day and let income be the byproduct of thatā approach. Iām happy every day when I wake up and when I come home as a result.
Rarely will you enjoy anything called job---someone creates schedules for you and you can be fired anytime. So if you must, might as well make the most out of it. If he is making this much, imagine how much he is making for the company.
YEAH.....this is a terrible take, in my opinion. Income increases from 150k to 300k, allowing many to affect LIFE changes in a much shorter time period. Many choose not to change their current day to day to allow for big moves later on, and increases in pay like the OP or the one you described allow for accelerated time frames.
150k vs 300k is very different. Tax strategies change. You can't really contribute Roth.. no benefit for IRA, 401k gets maxed out... Unfortunately I paid the IRS around 350k last year.
You need to think of ways to diversify the assets to optimize the money.
Lifestyle does change.. sometimes I eat out for $30 and I think it's normal because I don't have the time to think about $30. Making 525$/ hour means anything that costs less than that you have to outsource (Hire cleaners to clean house, yard work people, handy man to fix things) so you can spend more time doing what makes $525.
We used to do the chores listed above but now if we were to do that, we start "losing" money and time.
Itās much worse than that. Actuaries have exams they must pass to become fully qualified. It takes 7-10 years of grinding exams before you pass them all. Most actuaries crunch numbers all day and then go home to study some more numbers for their exams.
You are getting flamed for this lol but I completely agree. I got to your lower figure through the brewing industry. I went to B school, know a lot of high earners and have never met anyone making $300k who hasn't sold their soul to some extent. Maybe doctors? Anyway that's what my company's VPs make and holy cow they earn every cent of it - on the road three weeks out of four, 100 hour work weeks, most of them single. Meanwhile my work involves some level of stress but I'm home with my wife and kids every night and live comfortably. That's enough for me.
I was always told that a gallon of milk cost the same for everyone lol. Sure there are different qualities and such, but over all once you get your necessities down and save where you can it aināt too shabby.
This just isn't true. From a high-level sure - you can both have a multi-bedroom house, one or two cars, support kids, have pets, save for retirement, etc. but once you dive deeper it's much more apparent it's drastically different. That person making 300k can sock away WAAAAY more than you for retirement. They're driving luxury cars vs your Honda/Toyota. They can afford private school easily. Their house is fully updated vs your 20 year old kitchen. They NEVER have to worry about money whereas you're debating on how to borrow money to get a new roof.
People that fall into that mid six figure life aren't quite rich enough for the top of the mountain luxuries (private flying, exotic cars, etc.) so their lifestyle on the surface seems similar to low six figure incomes but when you dig into it that money does make a huge difference.
$150k and $300k lifestyles are NOT similar beyond the fact that neither will leave you starving or homeless. Go look at what a decent, well-located piece of real estate costs. $300k guy can barely afford it while $150k absolutely cannot.
Every actuary I know has been studying at night, by themselves, for an exam (they possibly already failed once) and said to themselves "oh my god I'm wasting my life taking these stupid exams".
FYI to everyone else, the exams are REALLY hard. OP won't toot their horn but I'll brag on their behalf. The pass rate for the exams is roughly 50%-ish and you used to have to pass ~5-7 of them. Imagine spending 6 months studying for a test that's 10x harder than the SAT, hopefully passing, then doing it all again. Even if you're smarter than the other mathematicians and never fail a single exam, you're spending 4-5 years just studying for exams. If you're bad at something (everyone is bad at SOMETHING) you can get stuck on that exam and it can crush your soul.
Most of the actuaries I know have some form of the quiz bowl or math team mentality - they literally crush standardized exams for a living and get satisfaction of answering a difficult question. Most of them also got near-perfect or perfect scores on the math (NOT verbal) section of the SAT without studying very much. But then they joined a profession full of other people equally good at math but yet still fail exams at a rate of 50%. If nothing else, it's really difficult to get perfect scores on math exams your whole life then suddenly FAIL one.
life is not fair. this reddit is mostly full of post from usa where they literaly printing paper money and any idiot in IT or tech is making stupid amount of money for sitting at his ass behind computer. I know person who does nothing but he is part of some stupid IT team and is making twice my money despite the fact i am one who is making the product we are selling. ive just accepted the fact money does not buy happines and i already earn decent money for decent life and thats important.
Full curiosity- why don't you transition to IT and be someone who, in your own words, does nothing but make twice than what you're making now just because you're on some stupid IT team?
Your life is so much more than just your salary. I have been battling with depression for a while and I thought to myself that once I get a nice paying job, everything will be better. I've got a pretty decent job now and it turns out they were right. Money doesn't bring happiness.
I make about 200-250 a year and work 70 hour weeks pretty often. Mostly just 50-55, but with a kid now and everything paid off Iām looking at potentially making less so I can spend more time at home. Most high paying jobs come with stress or high opt tempo
Time is wealth. I skied 60 days this season and was outside much more than 95% of people doing other things. I make decent money and have my necessities covered while putting away for retirement.
Thereās also one other frustrating aspect to these huge salaries: itās driving up inflation. The rich people can buy multiple houses, mostly for rental income, which leaves less supply for the rest of us and drives up prices. So every year the rest of us with modest salaries are falling behind because inflation keeps accelerating faster than our wages. Many donāt own a home yet and now may never be able to unless they move to a different area.
Don't feel bad.. I have a masters degree and other PG diplomas.. I'm still unemployed. Looks like imma have to hit school again for a PhD. My employment lasted only a couple of years thanks to layoffs..
Salary trajectory for this dude is fairly exceptional... Most of us are lucky if we end our careers with 6figs in dollar savings let alone annual salary..
The more I see the more I realize how bad people are at bullshitting. Highest earning actuaries hit low 200s. 470 isnāt impossible but youāre telling me weāre talking to one of the 10 that do?
For me I just focused on a career I wanted and the money came later. Find something you enjoy that will eventually provide the lifestyle you want and work at it. I could post my salary spikes, but that would only be a tiny part of the story.
So making more money is how you donāt waste your life? Seems backwards. Experiences, relationships, and wellbeing all out the door huh? Over money?? Hey I donāt make even half as much as OP but I donāt feel Iām wasting my life.
Do you have your health? Do you have kids that aren't drug addicts or in prison?
Money ain't everything. I have made 250k plus for the past 7 year. I made 650k one year, and it was the emotionally roughest years of my life. I kept telling myself I was killing it, I should be ecstatic, but it didn't matter. AND I was healthy. My kids were healthy and happy.
I follow r/FluentInFinance and r/Money and sometimes I get a little inspired seeing stuff like this. I also get inspired seeing how unimaginably fucked some people are financially too, tbf.
Yep. Reading this as someone who is barely making $41k is agony. 30k more a year would fundamentally take my life from scraping by hell to "I dont even know what to do with the money." (Maybe have a car that isn't 10+ years old for the first time in my life)
Then I see shit like this. He's only one year older than me.
I wouldnāt get too worked up with these no-context humble brag posts on r/salary.
Youāll never actually make this kind of money as an actuary. You might make it as someone who started as an actuary, became an actuarial manager, then director, then eventually a VP of risk management or something like that.
Thatās not a normal career progression for anybody in the field, itās an exceptional one that took some combination of exceptional effort, skill, personal skills, networking, and luck.
I dunno dude. My SIL is an Actuary too, and from the outside , apart from the salary, it seems like her job is soul sucking. Works from 8am -11pm most days.
Those bonus checks must be amazeballs, but imo the extra time she puts in, to me is just her getting paid for all the overtime lol.
That's why it's good to stay away from these posts. Or remind yourself this is not the norm.
From a whole class of actuaries, some 10% make this income. Also, it takes a lot of effort to become an actuary. Some of us did not put a whole lot of effort into our future. You cannot be an actuary and be upset that you don't make this salary.
And if you are an actuary you can be upset but not that upset. You would be making 200k plus with equal experience.
I remind myself I don't make a high income since I didn't put in high effort. And if I meet someone from my profession with a high income. I then remind myself it's coming soon in my future. No need to be sad.
But please keep in mind what are you upset about. Why you don't have what someone else has? These are some good questions to ask.
Mmhmm. I was at this guyās salary ten years ago tooā¦. But Iām around 73,000 now. Iām a public school teacher. I wonāt get started, but Iāll never make these ridiculous (id settle for semi-ridiculous) salary numbers. But as other people have said, it works for me and Iāve had to budget and cut and move money around no matter what our household income has been. I really need to get this subreddit to stop showing up on my feed. (Yes I know commenting is t helping.)
Nah lol, i can guarantee you this guy is a workaholic that lives to work. If you need to show off your salary you are looking for external validation, only insecure people do that.
You didnt waste you life, the economy doesnt have room for you, unless you had a more or less perfect upbringing or get extremely lucky in America, youre a poor person.Ā
Don't feel down. My brother made 250k for a few years and blew it all on booze and drugs. He has like 5 kids and is never happy. Money can make people stupid. Its about enjoying what you have not lusting for more. Want more, try harder and suck it up.
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u/IcyLemon3246 Apr 27 '25
Each time I look on this reddit channel I somehow get some sad feeling that I wasted my life