Career progression - compounding of your earning capacity

[ChpBstrd]

@ChpBstrd, that's why a 70-75%+ savings rate is the way to go :)

Especially for all of these wildly high earners.

This might be the cheat code that answers my question. But it replaces the paradox of:

     You have to work very hard for a long time in order to not have to work very hard for a long time.

..with the paradox of...

     You have to live like you're poor for a long time in order to be wealthy for a long time.

Either way, one has to counterintuitively embrace the thing they're trying to avoid - working hard or living in poverty. It is a headlong rush into discomfort either way.

I prefer to confront the second paradox because I'm not particularly status-conscious and because I value my evenings and weekends. Others may prefer to confront the first paradox. Either way is a path to FIRE, and perhaps the path one chooses probably relates to one's personality and ingrained beliefs. E.g. were your parents workaholics or status-indifferent slackers?

[2Birds1Stone]

I would hardly call spending a median US household income efficiently living in poverty ;)

If you actually subscribe to the mustachian ethos, you can live a VERY rich and luxurious life spending less than most normies. If you happen to have an above median income, or two of them, it's like playing this game with a cheat code.

[mistymoney]

If any of you were able to 8x your salaries without putting in more than 40h/week, getting advanced degrees, doing continuing education on the weekends, letting entrepreneurship take over your life, or spending enormous amounts of time/energy relocating for jobs every couple of years, I'd like to know how you did it.

Who cares about income multiplier? What matters is how fast you retire, if that's the point of FIRE.

Who's going to retire faster? Blue collar worker who starts part-time at Dairy Queen for 10k/year and moves up to 60k in his 20s by becoming a plumber?
Or Ivy League Diversity Consultant who starts at 100k/year, at 28, with 100k in debt.

Who's going to multiply their income faster or higher in their lifetimes and who's going to retire first? The blue collar worker. Without busting his ass very much either. Work earlier, for more money and spend less and compound interest will eclipse the late-blooming careerist who's destroying his entire life to gain that 5% salary increase yearly so he can retire 2 years faster ( but still 10 years later then the blue collar guy ).

well, in the general case of blue collar, there is a lot of bodily wear and tear that follows through life. In the specific case of plumbers....there's shit to deal with......

[MaybeBabyMustache]

I'd just add that (insert somewhat still unknown how pandemic/remote work will play out), many of the jobs with very high incomes involve living in a very HCOL area (real estate, income tax, property taxes, etc). Yes, you can still live a mustachian life for many other budget areas, but some of these are harder to work around than others.

[Metalcat]

I'd just add that (insert somewhat still unknown how pandemic/remote work will play out), many of the jobs with very high incomes involve living in a very HCOL area (real estate, income tax, property taxes, etc). Yes, you can still live a mustachian life for many other budget areas, but some of these are harder to work around than others.

There are enough exceptions to this that people can be strategic about it though. When I was researching careers, geographical flexibility was one of my number one top priorities. Then when I was researching careers again right before and during the pandemic I had the exact same tip priority.

The whole point of mustachianism is to find the non-average way to do things. Being intentional about priorities and finding creative ways to achieve them.

Life is a series of trade offs and the mustachian goal is to make the best series of trades possible for quality of life.

Sometimes making more money will be the most optimal trade, sometimes it won't. It all depends on the circumstances.

[MaybeBabyMustache]

I'd just add that (insert somewhat still unknown how pandemic/remote work will play out), many of the jobs with very high incomes involve living in a very HCOL area (real estate, income tax, property taxes, etc). Yes, you can still live a mustachian life for many other budget areas, but some of these are harder to work around than others.

There are enough exceptions to this that people can be strategic about it though. When I was researching careers, geographical flexibility was one of my number one top priorities. Then when I was researching careers again right before and during the pandemic I had the exact same tip priority.

The whole point of mustachianism is to find the non-average way to do things. Being intentional about priorities and finding creative ways to achieve them.

Life is a series of trade offs and the mustachian goal is to make the best series of trades possible for quality of life.

Sometimes making more money will be the most optimal trade, sometimes it won't. It all depends on the circumstances.

Yes, I agree with that. My larger point is that I sometimes see folks here comparing jobs with high incomes in HCOL to lesser paid jobs elsewhere. You need to look at the entire picture to understand if you are actually financially better off with the higher paid job. It's not just your income that matters.

And, FWIW, I work in a highly paid tech job, but if you choose a LCO option (some roles this is allowed for), they will adjust your salary to better match the market you work/live in/pay taxes in. It's more unusual to get the same salary, regardless of where you live.

[Metalcat]

I'd just add that (insert somewhat still unknown how pandemic/remote work will play out), many of the jobs with very high incomes involve living in a very HCOL area (real estate, income tax, property taxes, etc). Yes, you can still live a mustachian life for many other budget areas, but some of these are harder to work around than others.

There are enough exceptions to this that people can be strategic about it though. When I was researching careers, geographical flexibility was one of my number one top priorities. Then when I was researching careers again right before and during the pandemic I had the exact same tip priority.

The whole point of mustachianism is to find the non-average way to do things. Being intentional about priorities and finding creative ways to achieve them.

Life is a series of trade offs and the mustachian goal is to make the best series of trades possible for quality of life.

Sometimes making more money will be the most optimal trade, sometimes it won't. It all depends on the circumstances.

Yes, I agree with that. My larger point is that I sometimes see folks here comparing jobs with high incomes in HCOL to lesser paid jobs elsewhere. You need to look at the entire picture to understand if you are actually financially better off with the higher paid job. It's not just your income that matters.

And, FWIW, I work in a highly paid tech job, but if you choose a LCO option (some roles this is allowed for), they will adjust your salary to better match the market you work/live in/pay taxes in. It's more unusual to get the same salary, regardless of where you live.

Oh, I completely agree, there are common themes that shouldn't be ignored. On average, LCOL = lower income. No question.

However, my point was that we are a population that occupies the exceptions to the rules. If someone wanted to strategically build a career that has a high income in LCOL areas, that may not be the norm, but it's also not an unreasonable thing to achieve.

So yes, I agree that you have to look at the entire picture. But the entire picture is much bigger than just looking at averages and norms.

[vand]

I've engineered another career hop to bag a 11% raise in base pay.  There's the promise of paid overtime, as well as better pension/bonus too, so total compensation increase for the year should be closer to 20-25%.

Career numbers are now a 7x overall increase over 25years at 8% annualised rate of growth

My feeling is that employers are lowballing on pay increases this year for stayers.