FrioAg 00 said:

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My favorites are the posters who post that they are at the top of their career incomes, but somehow their net worth exceeds 60X the high end of their savings rate today

We must have some magical Warren Buffet investors, or a hell of a lot of trust fund kids.

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Maybe inherited a lot of money and assets

That's what I said - their incomes sure didn't close to that - so it was either inherited or a big investment strike

Less than 1 year as an engineer in the aerospace industry - $70K-ish a year with zero comp or bonus and extremely non-competitive benefits.

I am a screaming example of 62strats earlier post about work/life happiness. I stepped away from a $150K job to go back to school. The pay situation now is not ideal and the future prospects of it are frankly abysmal compared to other similar industries/companies. BUT. I am happy still. I was just remarking yesterday to a family member that this is the first job I have ever had where I actually WANTED to go to work on a regular business. I like the people I work with a lot and the work we have is one I internalize and draw fulfillment from. I could walk out right now and step back onto my old job in a moments notice and double my pay and I can not think of much I would rather do less. I have **** all in terms of written benefits but the unwritten stuff like no micromanagement, free use of hybrid work, very forgiving schedule, etc goes a long way to compensate.

Does not mean I am not cognizant of the pay situation though. It's kind of a mess right now with my company. There are zero auto pay raises anywhere and each and every increase you have to fight for. I have been made aware that the process as of now is to make a case to your mid level management and team up to fight for it with HR and Finance on a case by case basis. And the lack of benefits is frankly a joke and was the one area I was sketchy on during the hiring process. Didn't even get a cent in relocation assistance even when pressed. My group of friends I graduated with all have starting salary and comp packages a minimum 15% higher than me even though I could offer a lot more previous work experience. All of them pocketed considerable money to move to their new jobs as an example. I accrued a CC debt for the first time in over a decade to move to mine. I have pretty much realized that I will have to pursue alternate personal revenue streams to be able to match my school peers in their basic salary and comp.

All of the above is not great but I said it to emphasize that point 62strat was making. I was not forced to sign the letter of acceptance. I was pretty aware of what I was stepping into and still made the choice. Do I wish I got paid more? Of course. I am mid 30s and am just now starting my career and am essentially at ground zero. I have a LOT of catch up to do. But I can also say that I am happy with the work I do and all the numbers aside, I value my team and our mission. And that means a lot to me. Enough to make up for the numbers.

Civil engineering. Worked as a design engineer for 5 years. 2 years ago got into a niche job that was more of a figurehead engineer. Make around 4-5x of my starting salary.

Own a bunch of rent houses. Scrape by on whatever Brazos CAD grants me permission to keep each year.

Their net profit on my houses is around $90k. I make less than they do.

I feel you. I walked away from a pretty cush corporate job with a quite high total comp. I was bored, had accomplished everything I felt I could, and was frankly just a blocker at that point for everyone beneath me.

So I left. Retired/consulted for a couple of years. Went back to work full-time in the fall making half of what I use to but I also have no HR department and none of the bureaucratic horse**** to deal with. Good tradeoff in my mind.

Not sharing my details here but a couple years ago I took a 15% base pay cut to go to another company at a step down in role to learn a different side of my industry but with the much larger upside potential (like +$100k) on backend commissions.

The upside hasn't worked out and I was recently part of a big layoff but the learnings and experience was invaluable and I think I'm much better setup for success moving forward. The risk was worth it.

Total comp has been ranging between $700K-1.2MM the last 3-4 years. $200K base and the rest is variable comp. Tough job in sales and trading. Late 30's, hope to keep this up for another 5 years.

Cyp0111 said:

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Total comp has been ranging between $700K-1.2MM the last 3-4 years. $200K base and the rest is variable comp. Tough job in sales and trading. Late 30's, hope to keep this up for another 5 years.

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Tough job to earn $1M, but someone has to do it.

no kidding...kid's probably aren't even eligible for scholarships/grants.

$30,000 Millionaire said:

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Family income below 100K would be rough in a major city.

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Depends on the size of the family and how bad with money they are.

And which major city… San Antonio is quite different from San Francisco.

ThrowAwayAccount1973 said:

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Don't want to use my reg account b/c people will think I am making things up, bragging, get their feelings hurt.

Doc x 20 yrs in practice
Yr 1 -400K working 32 hrs/wk
Yr 15 - 600K working 32hrs/wk
Yr 18-20 - 1.5M working 18hrs/wk. I could make 2M if I wanted to work a 40 hr wk. If I stopped working completely would make 1M/yr. I own my practice with other docs working for me.

Rental net income past 5 yrs between 1-300K. But I typically put the $$$ back to improve the homes or buy new homes so doesn't contribute to cash flow. Other RE investment pulls in 100K/yr that I put back to expand this niche.

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Serious question: At this point, why even work anymore?

I never understand people who struggle with retiring even when they have plenty of $$$ to do so (not saying this is you). I have enough hobbies, interests, and various things I'm into outside of work. I don't get how people can get bored with retirement.

FrioAg 00 said:

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My favorites are the posters who post that they are at the top of their career incomes, but somehow their net worth exceeds 60X the high end of their savings rate today

We must have some magical Warren Buffet investors, or a hell of a lot of trust fund kids.

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gotta live frugally, the texags way. Everyone of these people is in a doublewide on BLM land paying no living expenses... gotta save up for that... who knows what they're gonna buy, probably nothing.

18 hours a week is nothing... and he owns his own practice.. It's probably a dermatology clinic or something like that with big time recurring revenue and patients that's relatively low risk...

Get some docs working below you, pay them handsomely, then you collect the check doing nothing.

I'm sure he gets to take ALL the vacation he wants and plays golf on Fridays. This is the life we all want... still making $1mm/year but working just enough to stay "in the game"... turning that down for <1000 hours of work a year is hard to beat. A little over $1k/hour.

How much net worth do you need to say "screw it" and stop working? (Assuming a person that doesn't find work interesting anymore)

ChoppinDs40 said:

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FrioAg 00 said:

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My favorites are the posters who post that they are at the top of their career incomes, but somehow their net worth exceeds 60X the high end of their savings rate today

We must have some magical Warren Buffet investors, or a hell of a lot of trust fund kids.

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gotta live frugally, the texags way. Everyone of these people is in a doublewide on BLM land paying no living expenses... gotta save up for that... who knows what they're gonna buy, probably nothing.

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There's no TexAgs humblebrag more common that "look how cheap I live"

My question might be that if someone is happy living that cheap, why not just retire when you have a few crumbs scraped together? You aren't spending it anyway.


I make a lot because I like to spend a lot, at least on certain things.

Demo_Slug said:

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How much net worth do you need to say "screw it" and stop working? (Assuming a person that doesn't find work interesting anymore)

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Good question, but if you made $1,000 an hour would it be hard to step away?

But to the question, I say around $6-8M after taxes

NoahAg said:

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ThrowAwayAccount1973 said:

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Don't want to use my reg account b/c people will think I am making things up, bragging, get their feelings hurt.

Doc x 20 yrs in practice
Yr 1 -400K working 32 hrs/wk
Yr 15 - 600K working 32hrs/wk
Yr 18-20 - 1.5M working 18hrs/wk. I could make 2M if I wanted to work a 40 hr wk. If I stopped working completely would make 1M/yr. I own my practice with other docs working for me.

Rental net income past 5 yrs between 1-300K. But I typically put the $$$ back to improve the homes or buy new homes so doesn't contribute to cash flow. Other RE investment pulls in 100K/yr that I put back to expand this niche.

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Serious question: At this point, why even work anymore?

I never understand people who struggle with retiring even when they have plenty of $$$ to do so (not saying this is you). I have enough hobbies, interests, and various things I'm into outside of work. I don't get how people can get bored with retirement.

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I have some real world experience with this. I was retired for about two years up until last year (late 40s). I did consult about 25% of that time I was "retired". In hindsight, I now call it a sabbatical since I did go back to work full-time.

Anyway, I enjoyed it a whole hell of a lot (the 75% of time I wasn't working) and there are days right now where I wish I had stayed in that scene. What brought me back was a job opportunity that I found interesting and with people I know and trust and the job opportunity was different enough from what I was doing my whole career that I wanted to see if I could pull it off. There is also massive upside but frankly that was secondary to me taking the job.

Having said all of that, I would be totally fine with re-retiring in 2-3 years and probably will barring an unexpected turn of events on the financial front. Or maybe I'll get fired because I kind of feel like my owner may do just that. Lol.

Demo_Slug said:

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How much net worth do you need to say "screw it" and stop working? (Assuming a person that doesn't find work interesting anymore)

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10 million if I didn't like the job

50 million if I do

FrioAg 00 said:

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ChoppinDs40 said:

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FrioAg 00 said:

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My favorites are the posters who post that they are at the top of their career incomes, but somehow their net worth exceeds 60X the high end of their savings rate today

We must have some magical Warren Buffet investors, or a hell of a lot of trust fund kids.

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gotta live frugally, the texags way. Everyone of these people is in a doublewide on BLM land paying no living expenses... gotta save up for that... who knows what they're gonna buy, probably nothing.

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There's no TexAgs humblebrag more common that "look how cheap I live"

My question might be that if someone is happy living that cheap, why not just retire when you have a few crumbs scraped together? You aren't spending it anyway.


I make a lot because I like to spend a lot, at least on certain things.

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Same but I've found myself feeling the need to cut back drastically and start stashing it away big time.

We make about 375-400k combined and I still feel poor some days.

We take nice vacations, drive newer cars, have an RV. Country club membership, nice new house, etc. That all being said, we're still stashing away 60-70k/year across multiple investment vehicles, but gdamn if I wasn't still so pissed every time I have to drop $300 at home depot or our tab at dinner is more than $100.

I miss the days of living in our 2100 sqft, $245k home that was decently remodeled on a 15 yr note. I drove a paid off vehicle and she drove a Honda accord.

Fast forward 4-5 years and we're making 2x+ collectively and it really shows that I hated growing up poor, lol.

NoahAg said:

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ThrowAwayAccount1973 said:

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Don't want to use my reg account b/c people will think I am making things up, bragging, get their feelings hurt.

Doc x 20 yrs in practice
Yr 1 -400K working 32 hrs/wk
Yr 15 - 600K working 32hrs/wk
Yr 18-20 - 1.5M working 18hrs/wk. I could make 2M if I wanted to work a 40 hr wk. If I stopped working completely would make 1M/yr. I own my practice with other docs working for me.

Rental net income past 5 yrs between 1-300K. But I typically put the $$$ back to improve the homes or buy new homes so doesn't contribute to cash flow. Other RE investment pulls in 100K/yr that I put back to expand this niche.

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Serious question: At this point, why even work anymore?

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I refer back to a previous comment on this thread related to this answer.

It's all relative.

A handful of million in income over a decade might seem like a buttload money to a lot of people, and if people fell into a few million quickly (lottery, etc) they would likely quit work.

But when your salary is high to begin with and increasing (although at a very fast rate), you little by little get used to that income, and you need that level of income to continue the lifestyle you've become accustomed to.

This guy (very likely) isn't making $1m 20 years into his career driving a honda accord living in a 2500sft house in the burbs.

Think of all those houses in the 'rich' part of town, of every town. Thousands of them. it's people like this. 20 years into their career, and making a high salary. They can't just stop working and afford that lifestyle.

Demo_Slug said:

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How much net worth do you need to say "screw it" and stop working? (Assuming a person that doesn't find work interesting anymore)

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A windfall of $1MM cash and I would peace out of my job by Friday. Buy a used truck, trailer, mower, and cut grass for a "living" when I want to.

I have owned an IT company focused on implementing and building SAP solutions for Oil and Gas Companies.

What I make varies greatly, but my best year is when we had 15 contractors on a large scale implementation for a large integrated oil and gas company.

Similar to OP.

$xxxk base (expecting 5-10% bump in a couple months), 10% bonus center-point (range 0-20%), RSUs currently at about $xxk/yr based on current value & vesting schedule. Stock is about 60% of previous ATH fwiw.

Problem is after maxing 401k, HSA, ESPP + insurance, taxes, etc., I'm only living off of roughly 50% of my base as I am yet to sell any RSU or ESPP shares. Wife stays home, 4 kids. No debt outside mortgage. Mortgage is only $220k @ 3%. Yet I still feel like I'm always poor and cash flow is becoming more of a struggle w kids activities & inflation eating my lunch. First world problems but that's my story.

Gordon McKernan said:

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Similar to OP.

$160k base (expecting 5-10% bump in a couple months), 10% bonus center-point (range 0-20%), RSUs currently at about $50k/yr based on current value & vesting schedule. Stock is about 60% of previous ATH fwiw.

Problem is after maxing 401k, HSA, ESPP + insurance, taxes, etc., I'm only living off of roughly 50% of my base as I am yet to sell any RSU or ESPP shares. Wife stays home, 4 kids. No debt outside mortgage. Mortgage is only $220k @ 3%. Yet I still feel like I'm always poor and cash flow is becoming more of a struggle w kids activities & inflation eating my lunch. First world problems but that's my story.

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This is my same issue. Would love to be able to hold the ESPP shares, but end up having to cash them pretty much immediately for cash flow.

Private school is my main cash suck, but it's been well worth it. Just makes things tighter than I would like.

Gordon McKernan said:

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Similar to OP.

$160k base (expecting 5-10% bump in a couple months), 10% bonus center-point (range 0-20%), RSUs currently at about $50k/yr based on current value & vesting schedule. Stock is about 60% of previous ATH fwiw.

Problem is after maxing 401k, HSA, ESPP + insurance, taxes, etc., I'm only living off of roughly 50% of my base as I am yet to sell any RSU or ESPP shares. Wife stays home, 4 kids. No debt outside mortgage. Mortgage is only $220k @ 3%. Yet I still feel like I'm always poor and cash flow is becoming more of a struggle w kids activities & inflation eating my lunch. First world problems but that's my story.

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You don't have to save every penny for a future that may not exist, live a little now

Your kids are only young once. Take some vacations, do fun things that will give them memories. You can save heavily again when the kids are out of the house.
That's my suggestion.

Gordon McKernan said:

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Similar to OP.

$160k base (expecting 5-10% bump in a couple months), 10% bonus center-point (range 0-20%), RSUs currently at about $50k/yr based on current value & vesting schedule. Stock is about 60% of previous ATH fwiw.

Problem is after maxing 401k, HSA, ESPP + insurance, taxes, etc., I'm only living off of roughly 50% of my base as I am yet to sell any RSU or ESPP shares. Wife stays home, 4 kids. No debt outside mortgage. Mortgage is only $220k @ 3%. Yet I still feel like I'm always poor and cash flow is becoming more of a struggle w kids activities & inflation eating my lunch. First world problems but that's my story.

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yep I'm within ballpark of this situation comp-wise except huge diff being single - it may sound like a lot but the take-home amount I'm sure would be barely comfortable with a full family, and even myself with relatively affordable rent for a beach city still don't feel anywhere close to upper class or being able to live that lifestyle (fancy dinners, designer clothing, extravagant vacations etc - I won't even step into a Starbucks), though I'm able to invest more taxable but I feel that to be a necessity otherwise I'll have to grind away in corporate my whole life