At that point, it seems like it just comes down to how much you're willing to pay to be happy. If your lifestyle inflates to the point that you can't take a pay cut, then yeah, that's a shitty situation, but I know of some folks who would gladly trade $50,000 for a little more free time, and in the next year or so likely will.
I can relate to your friend more, honestly. $50-70/hr is not an elite high level professional salary, but it’s no joke, and much more than the $0/hr you'd otherwise make farting around on HN or watching Netflix.
When you’re young and able, life is merely a race to turn time into money fast enough to allow you to survive long after you can no longer turn time into money.
Every day I waste now may translate into a week of eating dog food after I can no longer work. Therefore, I generally want to maximize the dollar utility of my time, while I can. If I could guarantee that I’d drop dead as soon as I retired, maybe I’d stop and live a little now. But since I can’t (an don’t want to commit suicide when I run out of savings), well, an extra dollar is an extra dollar!
“Money isn’t everything” -says someone with a lot of it.
I'm one of those people who will happily take a pretty big pay cut for my sanity 9 times out of 10. I grew up in a low income household and have lived on very little at several points in my adult life, it comes naturally to me and I almost prefer it in some ways. My mental health is more likely to be threatened by over-stress or a lack of meaning than by having to stretch a shoestring budget.
The only time staying in a job I don't have many positive feelings about (or worse, only negative feelings) makes sense to me is if I have very specific plans for the extra money I'm making and very good odds of seeing the plan through.
Such a way of life isn't for everyone, but I strongly advise those who maybe lean less materialist than the norm and/or aren't afraid of more frugal living to consider it. Especially if you've been asking yourself more than once a week lately how much more of 'this great job you have' you can tolerate without a breakdown.
I'm at the point where I would sacrifice $$$ for a better work-life balance. Unfortunately my boss just gave me a raise (boo-hoo, right?) so that he could do less work and I could do more.
My goal this year is to fuck off and live in another country for 4-6 weeks, as vacation and/or as remote work. Then extend that to 2-3 months next year and ~6 months thereafter.
I'm pushing 50 and aware that I've only got so many "good" years left.
yup, my salary allowed my wife to recently switch careers and take a 50% salary cut. There is no way we could do the same for my career though unless we made drastic changes like selling the house and never retiring.
when I left Google to work in clean energy, I took a 50% pay cut. But, that's still more than enough money to live very happily on. IMO it's true what they say about there being no marginal improvement to happiness after ~80k.
Walking away from it all seems fairly easy when you're making $100m+ per year and you don't have to worry about making ends meet.
That work-life balance is sometimes a bit more of a razor's edge (depending on industry) -- tilt a bit too much towards the "life" side and you may suddenly find yourself with a bunch of unexpected free time to spend with family.
When evaluating a major lifestyle change for financial benefit with a job shift, I asked a coworker who'd been doing the job awhile. He gave me the best advice I've ever received when moving into a high-stress / high-paying job.
"It's good money. But make sure you set up your finances so that when you decide to stop, you can. Even when they say 'What if we paid you twice as much to keep doing the job?' Otherwise, you'll still be doing the job when you're 60."
The corollary is probably: don't take a job you don't want to do, unless the pay's good enough that you can reach the above point in a reasonable amount of time.
I listened, and it gave me the opportunity to quit a well paying consulting job to be with my mother while she was going through cancer surgery. (Thankfully, it and her recovery went well)
And ultimately, led me to finding a job that was a much happier fit.
I’m not suggesting that my specific scenario is everyone’s dream but that the bar for “I don’t have to work full time anymore” can be pretty low. If it’s not low for your specific wants, then that’s fine —- you’ve consciously made the choice that you want something different and your needs are higher.
I very rarely hear about FU money from people that don’t need millions of dollars to leave their job. It’s important (IMO) for people to know that that doesn’t necessarily _have_ to be the case.
> If you're a software developer in the first-world, you're making, what, $75k/year or more? If you spend wisely, you can live quite comfortably on $30k/year, at least before housing costs.
You've hit me on the head. That's very much what I make, and I actually live on less than $30k/year.
It's not even hard. No smart phone, no cable TV, cook my own meals, old car, ride bike to work, enjoy simple things like walking and frisbee (free). I've saved enough in 4 years I'm on the cusp of taking 4-5 years off to go adventuring.
> If that's what you want to do, that's fine---but don't pretend it would be impossible for you to cut back.
I feel this resistance from people all the time. They will very quickly tell you they need their iPhone, cable TV, latte and new clothes weekly.
Our society has it's wants and needs mixed up. Once you fix that, it's easy.
"I have taken big cuts in salary three or four times in my career. I’m talking 10-20 thousand dollars a year." - HOW can you do that? How does one justify that kind of long-term damage to ever being in a position that you don't have to work?
I understand the idea of it; to move into a technology or business with more room for growth, but if you don't have the time in your career to benefit from that growth, how can you do it?
If you're in your late 40's, early 50's, with a mortgage and/or children, or that point where you can choose not to have to work anymore is dangerously close. One badly-timed layoff, one forced pay cut and you're stuck.
Especially if you're in that age range; the last generation that ever had some hope for long-term employment with an employer, the generation that saw pension plans converted to 401Ks and didn't understand just how much you personally needed to take over funding your retirement yourself. You're dangerously close to having one badly timed layoff or large pay cut snatch the choice of not having to work away from you.
In one case, Spotify is paying me a locally-relevant market wage and I quit Spotify when I find working there mentally exhausting, easily matching my income from my choice of other local employers. Because that market wage is lower than SF, I experience lesser lifestyle inflation and still FIRE in 10 years or I choose to have a more luxe retirement and retire in 16 years.
In the other case, Spotify is dumping cash on me by the bucketload, we drive new cars, live in an amazing house, I regularly take amazing vacations with my family, kids go to private schools, and I still plan to FIRE in 10 years and be able to maintain that lifestyle. 3 years in, I realize that I'm miserable and the thought of grinding out 7 more years of this is difficult to bear, but I can't bear asking my family to curtail their standard of living to accommodate my unwillingness to keep bearing the burden of the daily grind.
Am I as a person happier in scenario 1 or scenario 2? There's no question that you're richer in scenario 2, but life isn't all about money.
I would rather be kind of poor but having a good time (like other people paying for having a good time) than have a very good salary and have miserable days. Maybe accept some temporary misery if this means some personal development that I like.
But I can fully understand a decision not to change to a much less paying alternative as it decreases the quality of life for an other part of every day. Considering the frightening fact that when you move away there is probably a chance that you cannot come back that easily. This may present a fear of trying out the alternatives.
No, because I couldn't afford to meet my family's basic monthly expenses after that much of a pay cut. If the pay cut and insurance were not an issue, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
For a while in 2000 I went to six hours a day, paid purely hourly, for some audio driver and desktop application development, for a company that made audio interfaces. It was great, actually. I'd show up fully energized to work, put in a _focused_ six hours, get a lot done, and leave. I was single and didn't need to earn that much to meet my needs. It was not sustainable long-term because of the lack of health insurance, but everything else about it was great.
I am on the other side of this equation - if I went from my current big tech role to an equivalent seniority level in the public sector, I'd be looking at a 50+% pay cut. I am not ready to make the leap yet because I fear the jealousy eating away at me - but at the same time I know it is more rational to aim for happiness now than push for an early retirement I might not get to see at all, or might not enjoy when I do get there.
I'm going through something similar - work at a FAANG company, have 250k+ in savings, contemplating quitting for a few months because things at work seem soul-sucking.
I went through the same trade-offs you mentioned. In the end I've decided to just take the plunge. When I'm 50, I don't wanna look back and think it'd have been extremely easy to take a few months off and see what that turned into.
PS: I'd love to get in touch and share our common insecurities if you're up for it. I live in the Bay Area and am reachable @ wantToQuit@impish.33mail.com
Adjusting your quality of life to the pay scale of the ideal job may be worth it.
At least it could throw a smile on your face. My friend is a Engineer (controlling trains and jazz) who quit after 40 years to work in a greenhouse for 1/10th the pay. He doesn't live as well, and driving a used beater but he smiles now and enjoys facing the day. Took him a few years to slowly dial down his costs and ingrained habits though.
Agreed. Getting paid $65k and higher right out of college (where one is likely making zero) from a stable job is hard to give up. It can be helpful in the short term to pay off college loans and the like, but some people fall into the "one more year of my giant paycheck and then I'll do something I enjoy" trap. Before they realize it, many years have gone by...
Really varies on the company and where you live. Where I am, unless you’re at a select few companies, you’ll barely make ends meet or have to choose to live a particularly subpar lifestyle for a professional.
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