Do you find yourself caring less about salary as your net worth grows?

[retireatbirth]

I'm curious if those of you who are further along on the journey have found that you are more willing to take less pay for more enjoyable work or fewer hours. Your investments would be able to generate more passive income so your working salary would become less important in theory. I'm wondering if you actually feel this way and make job decisions this way.

[NorCal]

Not I.  As I see my net worth grow, I get more impatient for FI.  This makes me pay much closer attention to my income than I used to.

This will probably change once I have enough to be FI.  I may not entirely quit, but I would at least take something with fewer hours and demands.

[Jon Bon]

This totally happened to me.

I figured if I got promoted I would of course make more money but have to give more hours so effectively they same rate per hour.

I even tried to go the other way, get paid less money for less hours type deal. My employer said no so I just grit my teeth and fired a year later.

This probably also corresponded with parenthood. I found I had zero interest in being a vice president.

But yeah I'd say it's pretty common when you have FU money.

[MonkeyJenga]

I am more aware of my salary now, because when I started working I was a little oblivious to my potential. I thought temping was all I'd be doing unless I went back to school to finish undergrad. As I increased my salary, though, and saved up more money, I got more serious about negotiating and making sure I was being compensated fairly.

I am not willing to take on (or stay in) crappy jobs just for more money, though, which was always true. I need something that doesn't come home with me and doesn't force me into stressful situations.

[marty998]

Salary is still my primary method for increasing investments....

So I still care, partly because plans for FI would be derailed, but also because investment gains are not always guaranteed to follow a smooth 7% that is often quoted.

[pdxvandal]

I am less concerned with salary as my net worth has reached ~640k. I'm earning what I did 6 years ago, but I have access to many tax-advantaged accounts through my employer like HSAs, 457, 403b which I didn't have a year ago (different job). So I'm fully taking advantage of those. My net worth has grown 100k in the past year on this "average" salary.

As a previous poster said, I have no desire of being VP of anything, except of myself. Sure, it would help me reach FI faster, but not worth the stress and hours.

[Felicity]

Yes, to some extent.

For example, I was committed to leaving my job last September even if I had no job offers (it was just not a good fit at all). If we didn't have as much saved up, and if we couldn't survive on one salary, no way would I have made an ultimatum like that. I would have looked for work, yes, but I would not have been as picky and it definitely would have taken longer to leave my old job.

[Chaplin]

Yes, and I started my journal to document the process of trying to improve the quality of my life by taking a pay cut. Of course, if I find a way to do it without the pay cut, then I would do that.

In my case, the difference might add one year before FIRE. Or not. But the most important thing to me was that my kid is now seven and the next five years are my best chance to spend the most time with him.

[jim555]

No.  But I found I was less willing to tolerate BS the closer I got to FI.

[bacchi]

I care less about money but I am more jealous of my time. All else being equal, I'll choose the more flexible job even if the pay is below market.

[stlbrah]

Absolutely. Why would I want to bust my ass to gain more responsibility so I can't be out on my bike, in the gym, traveling, reading, writing, making music, etc.

It's the Mexican fisherman and American businessman parable in action

[SnackDog]

My gross salary is about 5% of net worth.  I care as much or more about salary as it brings retirement closer.   I know the salary and bonus for the next three pay grades above mine.  Just one promotion would be a 30% raise.  Two would be about 70%.  We would save all of the extra income, after giving the tax man his cut, so gross annual savings could nearly double.

[Spork]

Short answer: Yes, I did.

I hit a point where location was more important than salary.  My parents/in-laws were old and ... if I didn't move close to them soon, it wouldn't happen ever.

I ended up taking 3 years off, trying to find a job in a niche industry in a small town.  When I did find something, it was at about 60% of my original salary.

But net worth allowed that to happen.  Without it, I could not have floated for 3 years nor would I have been able to accept a lower paying job.  In the long run: it was worth it.  Now 3 of the 4 I wanted to spend time with have passed.  The 4th is slowly diminishing.  It was the right decision.

[iwasjustwondering]

Salary is still hugely important to me, mostly because I'm still saving for my kids' college.  My goal is to save $40K for college this year.  Once the kids are done, I could see caring a lot less about salary, but for now, I'm still chasing the dollars. 

[dandarc]

2015-16 is going to be my lowest-work-hours year since I started working full time.  Being paid hourly, this means less money - leaving 10-15% of my allowed time on the table means I'm forgoing around $15K in income this year.  Frankly, I am much happier working less, and I think this is what I'll aim for in the future.

Potentially delays FIRE, but being home and not completely exhausted means I can put more work hours in there - I think we'll fire the housekeeping service in the near future, for example.  So might not be as big of a delay as we thought, and my wife is still considering a career change that would delay us pretty substantially anyway.

[tooqk4u22]

I'm curious if those of you who are further along on the journey have found that you are more willing to take less pay for more enjoyable work or fewer hours. Your investments would be able to generate more passive income so your working salary would become less important in theory. I'm wondering if you actually feel this way and make job decisions this way.

The short answer is yes.  My timeline for caring about salary:

1. Starting out/Low net worth - absolutely cared every dollar earned magnified my savings (going from nothing to something).
2. Midstream/half the net worth I would like - very much as now I could taste it and feel it, and each dollar saved was pretty impactful especially as income grew.
3. Near or at FI/desired NW - not as much, higher income so take home is whacked by higher tax rates, a years worth of savings doesn't seem to have much impact on the NW given market swings, the size of the market swings almost makes additional savings seem pointless and it really starts to make you think about why you are doing it.


All that said, I still haven't pulled the trigger and care about have "A" salary (not so much the amount due to all the changes that happened along the way, fear, not sure what I want to do after the fact, the family front. etc. Its an evolving storyline. 

[HAPPYINAZ]

The closer I get to FIRE, the more I find I focus on % return, whether it's from investments or increasing savings or increasing salary by some percentage.  It's like the race is almost done and I want to hurry up and find ways to cross the finish line faster! 

[rocketpj]

Nope.  The link between the growth and the salary is all too clear for me.

[AZDude]

I wouldn't say I'm less interested in salary, but I am definitely less interested/not interested at all in promotions or climbing the ladder. A 10 year career plan is very different from a 25 year career plan.

[Threshkin]

Yes

As I approached FI salary became much less important than QOL.  Over the last 10 years or so I keep getting encouraged to move back to the Bay Area in CA to advance my career.  I considered it but, after comparing the QOL factors that matter most to me, mainly housing, commute, air quality, recreation, and neighborhood, I decided that I was better off staying right where I am for the remainder of my career.

[forummm]

I would only take a promotion at this point if it was for a job that I liked at least as much as my current job (or disliked only as much) unless the pay was dramatically different. Once you factor in taxes, etc, I just have a much higher salary differential requirement to put up with added BS. Sticking around in the current job for an extra month at the end of 2 years (say) isn't as bad as having the 2 years be too much worse.

And once you get closer to FIRE, investment returns have a much bigger impact on NW than salary increases (40% of which go to taxes). I've gained or lost 3 months salary in a day a few times.

[Threshkin]

And once you get closer to FIRE, investment returns have a much bigger impact on NW than salary increases (40% of which go to taxes). I've gained or lost 3 months salary in a day a few times.

I here you there!  I have lost over a year of living expenses in a single day before.  Since the downs are commonly sudden and the ups are typically more gradual it takes some fortitude and conviction that we made the right investment choices to avoid panic.  Over time it works out but patience can be hard.

[Davids]

Yes and no. It all depends on the work/life balance. I would not mind getting promoted to my boss's level but i am not so sure i would want to go further than that as the stress level for his boss is quite high.

[BFGirl]

I care less about money but I am more jealous of my time. All else being equal, I'll choose the more flexible job even if the pay is below market.

+1

[Northwestie]

Yea, not so much these days.  Got a $9k bonus so even if I didn't get a raise I'd be fine and I'm done moving upward at this point.  House is paid for, close to $2M net worth, working a few more years then tailing off.   Job is good but there's a lot of other things to do.  Frankly, if they gave my raise to my staff I'd be ok with this.

[seattlecyclone]

I care less about money but I am more jealous of my time. All else being equal, I'll choose the more flexible job even if the pay is below market.

+1

Yes, I've found this to be true as I get closer to FI. I recently negotiated to switch to a 60% time schedule at my current job, which seems like a good balance between full-time working and full FIRE.

[Lucky Girl]

As several others have said, increases in salary no longer make much difference in time to FIRE, so I don't pay much attention.  Sometimes I'll play with my projections and find out what saving an extra 10-20k per year does for the timeline, and it really makes no difference.  It would have to be a very big raise to realize much more than that post taxes, and those raises rarely come without lots of strings attached. 

[seattleite]

It's strange.

I actually care more about salary and I'm less impressed with small increases. People around me get excited about $1000 spot bonuses but my net worth swings more than that in one day. Not to say I don't like them, but I just don't get worked up about them anymore.

But then I'll get excited about a $10/month savings which comes out to much less in a year than that bonus. So, it's certainly not logical.

[humbleMouse]

I couldn't really give shit about salary once it is over 70k.  That's plenty of money for biking/eating/saving/living.  I am a programmer and I wish the computer industry offered more flexible work schedules.  There seems to be an idea in the industry that one has to work 40 hours/week or else they cannot be a productive member of a team.  I would totally take a substantial cut in pay to be able to work full remote or work less hours per week.

 Life honestly seems like a slow suffering right now and I wish I didn't have to work so much.  I don't care about the money I just want to have more time for drinking lattes, biking, and reading books.  I don't want to be poor though.  It seems like these days there are no in the middle jobs.  It's either be poor or work all the time at a 9-5. 

[Candace]

I care less about money but I am more jealous of my time. All else being equal, I'll choose the more flexible job even if the pay is below market.

+1

Yes, I've found this to be true as I get closer to FI. I recently negotiated to switch to a 60% time schedule at my current job, which seems like a good balance between full-time working and full FIRE.

I recently started working four days a week instead of five. I had to give up some compensation to do so, but that's okay with me. I'm only a couple years from FI, so as others have said, market performance makes a much bigger difference in my timeline than savings from salary. That being said, I still try to maximize my savings rate to make the most of what's coming in.

[sol]

As my FI point approaches, I find myself not only caring less about salary, but caring less about work stress in general.  You want me to take on that big volunteer project that will cut into my regular work hours?  No thanks.  You want me to sit on your board, or committee?  Why would I do that?

So I work on things that I think are important.  They aren't going to promote me or fire me for making these decisions one way or the other.  There is no reward for 80 hour work weeks just like there is no consequence to doing the bare minimum.  Now that I have that FU money, my finances are effectively decoupled from my job performance and I can instead focus on the tasks that I think are worthy, not the ones my management team wants to prioritize because they will get brownie points from HQ if I tow their line.

I can't tell you how many times I was asked to drop everything to deal with some imaginary management crisis just so that somebody with a higher pay grade than me could make a good impression on a bigwig with zero understanding of what we actually do.  But no longer. I work for me now.

[rantk81]

I find myself caring a lot less about my salary, and caring a lot less about my job too as I get closer and closer to FIRE.

[Fastfwd]

I care about salary more as a fairness and value measure than for the actual salary.

Sure I still need to add savings to my fund yearly but at this point time and the snowball effect are my best allies. I still bargain hard and make sure I am paid market value. It's actually easier now because I can easily say no to an offer even if it means being out of work for a few more days or weeks.

[ender]

My wife and I were talking about this yesterday - one huge advantage of saving early is that you have the potential to take careers/jobs/etc where the primary motivating factor is not money.

Maybe you want to live in a rural area and know jobs there pay less than the city you live in. With $500k in investments that's a lot easier to do so. We were talking about if we are in that situation with a paid off house, we could fairy trivially move to our "dream location" and buy an acreage and need maybe 50% the income we have now, etc.

[sleepyguy]

I definitely takes a back seat imho... to something like work-life balance or flex work (remote work).

I personally would take a 20% pay decrease if I could NEVER step a foot in the office again.

[Trudie]

I still care, but at this point I'm more appreciative of a steady, reliable source of income... that's what my husband and I both have (at least, for now).

I'm focused on "harvesting" as much as I can -- staying the course, continuing to lockdown spending, DCA investments.  "Slow and steady" wins the race, as they say.

But we are both late career, so I guess the thing I mostly think about is if something would disrupt our reliable incomes at this point.  While I would not say it's a huge probability it is in the realm of possibility.  So, we just save and also have started to plunk more into our unqualified accounts as well.  We'd like to NOT have a hair on fire emergency.

[forummm]

As my FI point approaches, I find myself not only caring less about salary, but caring less about work stress in general.  You want me to take on that big volunteer project that will cut into my regular work hours?  No thanks.  You want me to sit on your board, or committee?  Why would I do that?

So I work on things that I think are important.  They aren't going to promote me or fire me for making these decisions one way or the other.  There is no reward for 80 hour work weeks just like there is no consequence to doing the bare minimum.  Now that I have that FU money, my finances are effectively decoupled from my job performance and I can instead focus on the tasks that I think are worthy, not the ones my management team wants to prioritize because they will get brownie points from HQ if I tow their line.

I can't tell you how many times I was asked to drop everything to deal with some imaginary management crisis just so that somebody with a higher pay grade than me could make a good impression on a bigwig with zero understanding of what we actually do.  But no longer. I work for me now.

How do you avoid those useless projects when your boss tells you or asks you to do them? I have been able to avoid some of them by indicating disinterest. But I also am not close enough to FI where I feel like I can just piss everyone off if needed. I still need a paycheck for awhile.

[rob in cal]

   In my case I find myself less concerned if I have a slow night delivery driving and don't make as much as I'd normally like. I figure work creates about half of my total income (even less if I count the imputed income of home ownership) so its less and less important.

[MrsPete]

Nope. 

[rubybeth]

I'm curious if those of you who are further along on the journey have found that you are more willing to take less pay for more enjoyable work or fewer hours. Your investments would be able to generate more passive income so your working salary would become less important in theory. I'm wondering if you actually feel this way and make job decisions this way.

For me, that's always been true; I have very deliberately not tried to be promoted within my organization because the higher salaries come with higher responsibilities, and are salaried positions vs. hourly. I never work more than 40 hours per week, and really flexible paid time off so I usually leave early on Fridays. It doesn't really have anything to do with my net worth, but probably helps that my income is more than adequate.

I've felt this way for a long time, within about 6 months of getting my current job. Before getting this job, I used to say I wanted to move up to the director level, but now I really see myself as doing my best work in my current position, and it also gives me a lot of positive personal benefits (flexible schedule so I'm out of the office by 4:00 every day, no evening/weekend work required, and reasonable goal expectations).

[BFGirl]

Definitely yes for me.  If push comes to shove, I can quit right now and probably be just fine in the long run (but I would stress about money more).  I find myself wanting more challenging jobs, but really don't want to lose the flexibility and PTO that I have at my current job, even if the more challenging jobs would pay more.  I'd rather have freedom than money.

[EnjoyIt]

No.  But I found I was less willing to tolerate BS the closer I got to FI.

Absolutely.

I care about salary more as a fairness and value measure than for the actual salary.

Sure I still need to add savings to my fund yearly but at this point time and the snowball effect are my best allies. I still bargain hard and make sure I am paid market value. It's actually easier now because I can easily say no to an offer even if it means being out of work for a few more days or weeks.

Completely agree.  Believe in being paid a fair wage for the work performed. 

The closer I am getting to FIRE, the more interested I am in semi retirement for a better work life balance.

[boarder42]

yeah i dont really care anymore.  i'm about half way to FIRE and saving an extra 20-30k a year doesnt accelerate it that much ...

[RedmondStash]

About 4 years ago, I switched from a higher-paying career to a lower-paying one that was more fun. I ended up in a freelance gig where, because I had FU money, I successfully negotiated for part-time hours at a higher hourly rate than the extremely under-market rate they were offering for full-time work, since they cited their budget as the reason they couldn't go higher. Then, when they offered me a permanent position, I argued for a substantial raise to get my rate back up to what it had been previously (based on my high productivity), and also to keep my part-time hours. And they agreed.

Now I'm in a position I like, doing work I enjoy, in a rewarding industry that pays less than the one I'd been in, but I'm making decent money and working part-time hours. So yes, I care less about salary, but because I had FU-money-based confidence, I ended up making an hourly rate close to what I'd made before, plus benefits.

Caring less about salary is great. Caring less about risking your job is also great, since it can lead to a stronger bargaining position.

[Schaefer Light]

I wouldn't say I'm less interested in salary, but I am definitely less interested/not interested at all in promotions or climbing the ladder. A 10 year career plan is very different from a 25 year career plan.

Same here.  I have a really hard time answering questions like "where do you see yourself in X years from now?" or "what are your long term career goals?".

I see myself retired, and my goal is to get there as soon as possible.  Probably not the right thing to say to the boss in a performance review session, though.

[Guesl982374]

Yes, I still (and will) care about salary. If I am going to sell my time, I want market or above market rates whether its to build wealth getting to FI or to donate.

[Schaefer Light]

I definitely takes a back seat imho... to something like work-life balance or flex work (remote work).

I personally would take a 20% pay decrease if I could NEVER step a foot in the office again.

I feel the same way, but they'd still expect me to do 100% of my current workload so it really doesn't seem fair.

[Fishindude]

I'm going to take about a 60% pay cut at year end and go to part time, biggest concern is health insurance and still being able to participate in the 401K program.   

[stoaX]

Yes, and I'm at the point that I don't want a promotion due to the added responsibilities.  Nor do I want to look for a job elsewhere just for a higher salay. My current situation is working well so I am content to stay the course.  I'm not sure why, but I still care about doing a good job.

[Threshkin]

I definitely takes a back seat imho... to something like work-life balance or flex work (remote work).

I personally would take a 20% pay decrease if I could NEVER step a foot in the office again.

I feel the same way, but they'd still expect me to do 100% of my current workload so it really doesn't seem fair.

This is exactly why I do not want to move to PT where I work.  The work load would not decrease, I would just have less time to do it.  I have talked to several people who went to PT.  They all said that same thing.  If I need to do 100% of the work I want 100% of the pay.