How many years of working did it take to feel like you were 'getting ahead?'

[EarlyInJourney]

As my profile name would suggest, I got off to a late start. I'm 43 now, and I just started feeling like I was really getting ahead about a year or 2 ago.

My dad was great in many ways, but pretty unsophisticated with money. To his credit, he was very frugal and never carried CC debt, but he never made that much money, didn't trust/understand the stock market or investing, took his SS as soon as he could at 62, and thought he was leaving my mom well taken care of with his 100K life insurance policy. These are all things it took me years to unlearn. Plus I was young and stupid for longer than I was actually young...

It wasn't until I moved to a HCOL place 5 years ago, and got a job that paid 30% more than my old one in a MCOL spot that I really started to feel progress. Despite higher prices, I found that maintaining the same lifestyle, more or less, ended up with me having appreciably more money to pay down debt and start saving/investing. I also discovered MMM in late 2017, and it's been very inspiring and helpful in my journey towards FI.

I finally paid off the very last of my CC debt about 15 months ago, and freeing up that chunk of cash devoted to debt each month felt incredibly freeing. I maxed out my 457b in 2019 for the first time, and did it again this past year, plus opened a 401k and put 4K in it, and that feels like really concrete progress.

I think the next moment where I'll feel like I achieved something significant will be Jan. 2022 - I'll have put in my 120 qualifying payments and be eligible for PSLF, and barring anything wacky happening, my student loan debt will be wiped out. It's currently sitting at 52K, so that will be huge for me!

But to answer your question... I started working at 13, detasseling corn in rural Indiana. So I guess the answer is about 28 years. Well, that was a depressing thing to write... ;-)

[FLBiker]

For me, there are two answers.  Looking back, I WAS getting ahead pretty much from the moment I got my first real job (so, 22), but I didn't FEEL like I was getting ahead until much later.

When I was 22, out of college, I had no debt (my dad worked at the university so I went for free) and I taught English in Taiwan.  I earned about 25K per year and saved about 10K.  So I was doing well (in terms of savings rate and living well within my means) but I didn't feel like I was on a fast track to FIRE.  In my I stayed in Taiwan for 5 years, then went to grad school, then China (where I earned a lot less, but still saved ~50%).  In my 30s I got a traditional 9-5 job in the US, earning $40K, probably saving 5-10K.  Then my company went through a bunch of changes and I found myself making significantly more money (70-80K).  This is when I probably really started to FEEL like I was getting ahead, and that FIRE was attainable.  I was probably ~35.  My expenses grew a bit as I got married, bought a house and had a kid.  We recently moved to Canada, and I have a similar job, DW isn't really working (occasionally, PT).  We're basically at our FIRE number (I'm 44), but I want to see how our COL is up here (6 months in, though, it seems good).

Honestly, I still sometimes don't FEEL like I'm getting ahead, but that's because I have anxiety, especially around money.  Meditation has been very helpful with this.

[Beach_Stache]

I'm 40 now and I finally feel like we're getting ahead, even though our NW is over $1M in just investments.  Myself and DW always had decent jobs and lived below our means, really much more so when we started having kids.  3 boys later and they are all out of daycare.  When your daycare payments are > mortgage payments you never really feel like you are making progress.  That with the fact that for my mindset, I've always tried to leave our checking account low and invest the rest so I felt like we didn't have money.  I've always maxed out my 401k and Roth IRA when I could, and got DW on board as soon as we've been together, but she hasn't maxed until the last 5-10 years maybe.  But if I got a raise, that delta would go to the post-tax investment.

Even recently the checking account slowly started creeping up, so we added more monthly contributions to Emergency Savings and post-tax investment.  So really we've been getting ahead since we started working, even w/children, but w/the way we structure we try to keep a smaller "spending balance", so I only feel we've gotten ahead since our last son was out of daycare.  Our checking account is again slowly creeping up since we literally spend nothing now that we're locked in our house, so just food basically, so I feel like we're getting ahead mostly when DW starts talking about supplemental vacations outside of our normal yearly trip.

So for Myself at 40 now, I feel like maybe just in the last 2 years, but in reality if I looked back, we've been getting ahead since probably around 25 or so.

[ChickenStash]

I'm about 40 and I'd have to say it took until I was about 35 before I started to feel any real progress. That's about when I started to settle into a decent paying career, my student loans were gone, and I got rid of some bad consumer debt. I had an easy mortgage but otherwise all my major "wants" were paid for. I had been saving a low percentage (by MMM standards) in 401ks all along and the total amount was now getting to be large enough that the returns were starting to really look like something good was happening. This is also about when my saving rate started going up significantly since I had a lot more unallocated money left over every month - more into the 401k, IRA and brokerage accounts.

It seemed things were more exciting back then from a financial perspective. Things were being paid off, debts disappearing, raising 401k contributions, figuring out where to invest with relatively new accounts, etc. Nowadays, it's pretty boring. I have my asset allocation figured out, investments are done with auto deposits, everything is pretty much on auto-pilot. I am working though a mortgage refi so that's something entertaining. I just have to wait it out now.

[HPstache]

I made some good decisions with my excess money right after getting my first post-university job.  I would say that thanks to these decisions (didn't really realize how good they were for me at the time), I felt like I was already getting ahead by age 24 or 25.

[shuffler]

This was my first year of properly working; I made 88k, my expenses are around 2k/month, pretty frugal.
How many years of working did your expenses begin to settle into place and you felt like you were getting ahead?

Here's what I wrote in a  thread from 2018.
It was addressing the question of when did it feel like your "investments started taking off" ... which is pretty similar to your question of "getting ahead".
I think it has less to do with years-of-work, and more to do with size-of-stash.  My napkin math suggests a stash of 5x your income should start feeling pretty good.

I think that "when our investments gains start outpacing our deposits" is a natural metric I would use, too.

Except most people's income and savings don't stay constant over the years, so I'd choose to state it in terms of present-day stash and present-day income.

If we assume:
  *  10% annual return on investments (note that this is intentionally not adjusted for inflation)
  *  50% savings rate (we're reasonably decent mustachians)
  *  Income of $x.
  *  Stash of $s.

... then every year we'll be depositing 0.5x.
... and every year our stash will grow by 0.1s.
... and "when our investments gains start outpacing our deposits" is when 0.1s = 0.5x ... or ... s = 5x

In other words:
    When our stash is 5 times our annual income.

Feel free to adjust the assumption percentages for your own savings and investment-return rates.

[YK-Phil]

I always earned very good money right from the start. But for me, it was not the number of years making good money that made a difference, but the realization I was spending like a clown and had to reign in my wants. This realization came very late in life, around 49-50 years old.

[Nangirl17]

I got my first "real" job at age 27 with pretty close to $0 NW

Got married at 28, and had a child at 33. This whole time (minus maternity leave) my work schedule was crazy, and between that and having a young human, I felt always behind, even though rationally I KNEW I was ahead. Working more than I wanted made me want out so badly that I felt like FIRE was unattainable even though I could look at the numbers and see that we were making progress every month, and always ahead of the 'curve'.

3 years ago, my work schedule changed to be drastically more balanced. Now I'm 41, our NW is in the 1.mid million range, and I'm *feeling* like I'm ahead. But I think that has more to do with the fact that I feel like life is manageable.

[Vashy]

When I left my £27k journalism job and became a financial editor on £44k, that was THE game-changer for me (total career at that point was 6-7 years in). I could buy all the things I wanted, and would easily have £500-800 left over at the end of the month, even though we'd just bought a house. I used the surplus to - unwisely - fund the start-up of a business. Plus a switchover from a job with normal hours (and no weekends) in a nice office with a lovely team after a super stressful, "I'm out of my depth" job in a ratty loud office with a really unpleasant culture and ZERO benefits. Felt like I'd hit the jackpot. Also was a shift from a job where they underpay you to a job where you're still the lowest-paid skilled professional, but you make 1.5-2x the money your skills would get you in, say, publishing.

I remember my boss pleading with me when I told him I'm leaving to become a financial services editor. He said: "But, but, you're such a talented journalist and if you keep going the way you're going and work hard, you can surely become an editor here and in 7-10 years make about £55k."

Well, pretty much exactly 10 years later, I'm making £67k, plus a £7-10k bonus.

Correct decision.

[StarBright]

Like others who have posted, I'm sort of terrified of poverty.

It took until my early 30s, which is when my husband got his long-term academic job to think I was maybe comfortable. A couple of years ago he got a tenure track job and our youngest finished daycare which is when I let out a sigh of relief and realized we would be fine.

That seems wild because I've been working since I was 13 - so basically more than twenty years :)

[APBioSpartan]

I still don't feel "ahead", unfortunately.  I actually feel behind. 

Married, 28/29, 320k NW.  No debt.  No house.   

I feel like I keep chasing milestones.  I.e., "I'll feel ahead after I pay off these student loans!"  or  "I'll feel ahead after I pay off these vehicles"  or "I'll feel ahead after I hit x net worth milestone!", but once I hit them, I set my sights on a new milestone and then instantly feel behind again. 

Maybe I'll feel ahead after I get a house or we have kids.  Who knows... but it's kind of annoying to be honest. 

[maisymouser]

I still don't feel "ahead", unfortunately.  I actually feel behind. 

Married, 28/29, 320k NW.  No debt.  No house.   

I feel like I keep chasing milestones.  I.e., "I'll feel ahead after I pay off these student loans!"  or  "I'll feel ahead after I pay off these vehicles"  or "I'll feel ahead after I hit x net worth milestone!", but once I hit them, I set my sights on a new milestone and then instantly feel behind again. 

Maybe I'll feel ahead after I get a house or we have kids.  Who knows... but it's kind of annoying to be honest.

My personal experience (provided above in this thread) was that I felt like I had made it when I had my first kid. Probably not the experience of most, but it was the epitome of my "I finally have enough" experience. I was very much of the chasing-milestones mentality, but now I know I've crossed off the most important item on my bucket list and I have faith that the rest will fall into place with time and consistent yet moderate effort.

[iluvzbeach]

I still don't feel "ahead", unfortunately.  I actually feel behind. 

Married, 28/29, 320k NW.  No debt.  No house.   

I feel like I keep chasing milestones.  I.e., "I'll feel ahead after I pay off these student loans!"  or  "I'll feel ahead after I pay off these vehicles"  or "I'll feel ahead after I hit x net worth milestone!", but once I hit them, I set my sights on a new milestone and then instantly feel behind again. 

Maybe I'll feel ahead after I get a house or we have kids.  Who knows... but it's kind of annoying to be honest.

Please be kind to yourself and celebrate your successes. It is a huge accomplishment to be your age and have not only a positive net worth, but a net worth of that magnitude. You are definitely getting ahead (actually ahead IMO) and have a lot to be proud of.

[alcon835]

I got a Full Time job right out of college and wasn't making nearly enough to "feel ahead". About a year after that, I started my own business which failed spectacularly after about 12 months (I made some revenue, but was only about 20% of where I needed to be, minimum, to keep the thing going). I then worked part time jobs for a year trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.

Finally, I got an internship paying ~$32,000/year. That was the most I'd made in a long time, so I was pretty happy with it, but as you point out, it wasn't enough to get ahead.

After a few years of doing the internship I was hired on full time and finally transferred to a better paying department. I would say this is the point I started feeling I was getting ahead. This is where I started meaningfully contributing to my 401K, my wife and I were able to live at a lifestyle level we both enjoyed, and I had a career path I was finally happy with and that I have worked in ever since. There have been ups and downs in between: big changes in income, some questionable actions by leadership that forced me to leave a company, buying a house, etc. But in the end, I have felt "ahead" ever since then.

I think the next big "I'm where I need to be" moments will be when my investments start to grow faster than my contributions. I think 2021 is likely to be the first year that happens and so I'm hoping when I do my investment review on Jan 1 2022 I'll be able to finally see the true value of compounding.

All that to say, I think there are "phases" to getting ahead. Am I ahead of where I was 10 years ago? Definitely. 100%. No doubt! I am living the life I dreamed of back then. Now I have new goals and new measures by which I'll know I'm ahead. I'm sure when I hit those I'll be happy for awhile and then eventually create other goals to strive after and there will be new tipping points for me to seek after.

But, to finally answer your question, it took me about 5 years and 3 jobs before I finally felt like, yes I was getting ahead. It all had to do with being able to confidently provide the lifestyle my family wanted through my income.

[jrhampt]

This was my first year of properly working; I made 88k, my expenses are around 2k/month, pretty frugal.
How many years of working did your expenses begin to settle into place and you felt like you were getting ahead?

Here's what I wrote in a  thread from 2018.
It was addressing the question of when did it feel like your "investments started taking off" ... which is pretty similar to your question of "getting ahead".
I think it has less to do with years-of-work, and more to do with size-of-stash.  My napkin math suggests a stash of 5x your income should start feeling pretty good.

I think that "when our investments gains start outpacing our deposits" is a natural metric I would use, too.

Except most people's income and savings don't stay constant over the years, so I'd choose to state it in terms of present-day stash and present-day income.

If we assume:
  *  10% annual return on investments (note that this is intentionally not adjusted for inflation)
  *  50% savings rate (we're reasonably decent mustachians)
  *  Income of $x.
  *  Stash of $s.

... then every year we'll be depositing 0.5x.
... and every year our stash will grow by 0.1s.
... and "when our investments gains start outpacing our deposits" is when 0.1s = 0.5x ... or ... s = 5x

In other words:
    When our stash is 5 times our annual income.

Feel free to adjust the assumption percentages for your own savings and investment-return rates.

Interesting...0.1s=0.5x is exactly where I am right now, and it feels like I've finally made it (almost 12 years after I got serious about saving/investing, paying off debt, and increasing income).  I've started feeling like it's not actually possible to spend everything I make and that even if I totally abandoned all pretense of frugality, I'd still be getting ahead. 

[waltworks]

Some of us are born ahead, not because we have a ton of money to inherit, but because we just don't give a crap about material possessions.

I remember being in grad school making $18k a year and wondering what on earth I was supposed to do with all that money. So I just stuck it in the bank and went for another bike ride. I've never worked more than 20 hours a week in my life, never commuted in a motor vehicle, didn't start a "real job" (which was still only 20 hours  a week) until age 30, never made anything approaching $100k a year, and ended up FI by 40 anyway.

Getting ahead might never happen if your dream is to own a yacht, on the other hand.

-W

[Alternatepriorities]

Some of us are born ahead, not because we have a ton of money to inherit, but because we just don't give a crap about material possessions.

I remember being in grad school making $18k a year and wondering what on earth I was supposed to do with all that money. So I just stuck it in the bank and went for another bike ride. I've never worked more than 20 hours a week in my life, never commuted in a motor vehicle, didn't start a "real job" (which was still only 20 hours  a week) until age 30, never made anything approaching $100k a year, and ended up FI by 40 anyway.

Getting ahead might never happen if your dream is to own a yacht, on the other hand.

-W

When I was in high school and deciding what I wanted in life, I concluded I either wanted a small simple cabin in the woods or to be a millionaire. It didn't occur to me a the time that it would actually be pretty straightforward to have both. In hind sight I could have gotten there quicker if I'd just worked the oil fields for a few years after graduating while living in that small cabin the rest of the time... If I'd been reading this forum then, I probably would have.

[Model96]

Some of us are born ahead, not because we have a ton of money to inherit, but because we just don't give a crap about material possessions.

I remember being in grad school making $18k a year and wondering what on earth I was supposed to do with all that money. So I just stuck it in the bank and went for another bike ride. I've never worked more than 20 hours a week in my life, never commuted in a motor vehicle, didn't start a "real job" (which was still only 20 hours  a week) until age 30, never made anything approaching $100k a year, and ended up FI by 40 anyway.

Getting ahead might never happen if your dream is to own a yacht, on the other hand.

-W

When I was in high school and deciding what I wanted in life, I concluded I either wanted a small simple cabin in the woods or to be a millionaire. It didn't occur to me a the time that it would actually be pretty straightforward to have both. In hind sight I could have gotten their quicker if I'd just worked the oil fields for a few years after graduating while living in that small cabin the rest of the time... If I'd been reading this forum then, I probably would have.

A great couple of posts which sort of summarise MMM......if you weren't born a mustachian thankfully this Forum exists to help you get the idea!