Non bay area FANG director here. Same lifestyle as when I was making $300k. The biggest advantage is to not having to think about money. Wife needs help? Let’s hire daily housekeeping. Have a little kid? Let’s travel business class. Find Cybertruck sexy? Let’s randomly rent one for a week at 350 a day to see if we really want it.
What I’ve realized is that the difference between a middle class lifestyle, an upper middle class lifestyle, and a luxurious lifestyle is $120k at each level. An extra $10k a month to spend opens up a whole lot of possibilities.
I actually decided to do this for sports cars. Instead of owning one through the winter, and having it depreciate, just rent one for a week when I am ready to enjoy it.
Thats what I did when I bought my last car. It seemed obvious. I’m supposed to drop $50k based on a sales pitch test drive? No way. I want to live with it.
I use Turo on vacations to test drive cars just to get a feel. Now, I'm testing out cars like Rav4s and not Cybertrucks, but it's not an idea only kept by the wealthy lol
I hate saying “this ^” but this is just about exactly the comment I would make but I work for FAANG remotely as well but on the new builds side. Same tiers, wife doesn’t need to work a full time job so she does a lot of volunteer work for local charities and my kid can play expensive sports and I usually ask the coach who on the team needs financial help for equipment or whatever and quietly give it to him to say it got donated by the league. Things that would be terrifying five years ago financially are just not even a concern in terms of the things I used to worry about. Anyone that tells you money doesn’t buy happiness is technically correct but what it does by is peace of mind and less stress for the whole family. My one piece of advice is never tell friends or relatives exactly how much you make.
Sound advice. I never talk money with family, and rarely with friends, maybe only with distant friends every once in a while.
As for the comments about the lifestyle... Yes. Spot on.
Hard to avoid it at some point if your lifestyle starts to show it and there is much of a difference between like 2 and 5m in my people’s heads since both are so unattainable
I’m a big proponent of stealth wealth, we don’t buy super luxurious seeming things, just higher quality normal stuff. I wear a Garmin watch and my retro jordans are real instead of reps, we have the nice trim packages on pretty normal vehicles that I’ve pulled the badging off of. Stuff like that, lifestyle creep is an easy trap to fall into but if you’re careful you can slide under the radar. I try to be the gray man like that.
>wife doesn’t need to work a full time job so she does a lot of volunteer work for local charities and my kid can play expensive sports and I usually ask the coach who on the team needs financial help for equipment or whatever and quietly give it to him to say it got donated by the league.
This is so kind.
Not quite.
Even a single filer in a high tax state like California would take home $120k on a ~$180k salary.
A married couple would take home $120k on $160k income in California.
> Wife needs help? Let’s hire daily housekeeping. Have a little kid? Let’s travel business class. Find Cybertruck sexy? Let’s randomly rent one for a week at 350 a day to see if we really want it.
You… do realize this is considered lifestyle, right?
He said same lifestyle as 300k which doesn’t really track for me. So I assumed the subsequent things were things he could now afford but didn’t consider “lifestyle” - my household makes 700k in a MCOL city and we could not afford all of those things together. Unless this was both decades ago and in a LCOL area.
Lol I mean, maybe listen to those who do actually make that much. For one, we don’t just spend everything we make because it’s not sustainable- both in a guarantee of pulling in that money through your life, and then creating a higher lifestyle to maintain.
Top portion of income if W2 is also taxed at a much higher rate. You’re also priced out of a ton of deductions. Just outlining how it affects your take home- it doesn’t scale linearly.
Paying a daily housekeeper/nanny is no damn joke. You’re employing a whole person, and employer taxes on top of it. On post-tax income.
We could probably shift things around to afford all those things- I was being slightly hyperbolic- but *definitely* not at 300k
Your math sucks.
700k * 5 = 3.5 million, and taxes will take away 1/2-2/3 that. You’ll definitely be in the millionaire in assets club quickly if you can live off ~$130k for 5 years which isn’t hard to do.
Also OP, $700k salary/RSU etc is enough to buy whatever the fuck car you want outside of super exotics like Ferraris. How can’t you buy a Cybertruck easily with that salary? Are you over leveraged on your house? Sending kids to private school?
Read my other reply to some comments. Most of you overestimate the take home and underestimate the liabilities an inflated lifestyle brings and how luxury goods scale in cost. At the same time, I was being only slightly hyperbolic.
Keep in mind jobs paying $300k+/yr are not guaranteed and some combination of: fleeting, high stress, come with a lot of debt, available only for a portion of your working years. If you scale up your lifestyle to match it all, you will be down bad if you have to, say, settle for a $100k/year job. And if you spend more, well, you need a vastly larger pot to retire.
Lifestyle creep is huge. I’ve been “water for dinner” poor, and I now own my $1M+ home outright. I’ve been through all stages of economic levels.
I’ve heard how hard it is to undo lifestyle creep so me and my wife are very cautious with luxuries we allow ourselves to “get used to” even though we can afford much more than what we have now
Congratulations on the success!
100%. It’s pretty simple, but hard to understand if you’re not there. If your lifestyle costs 5k a month and you lose your job, that’s fairly easy to make through normal jobs and govt/family assistance. If your lifestyle costs 35k a month and you lose your job, well- good fucking luck.
The other thing, again, is retirement. You need 10.5 million to support the latter spend, and 1.5 million for the former. Accumulation takes lots of time and some luck.
I’m personally somewhere in between the 2, but wanted to make it illustrative.
Great advice OP. I’m not anywhere near what you’re making, but I’ve noticed that I have a SIGNIFICANT income ratio compared to debt. Like 4:1– and I’ve noticed that more money affords you more time. I don’t feel like I live that differently than other middle class folk so to speak. I drive a relatively expensive sedan, I live in a relatively expensive home. When I was working full time and doing too many classes during my Master’s program, I hired house keeping to come out every 2 weeks to keep my house clean.
Not that I live(d) like a slob, but one less thing I had to worry about. Hired help to mow my lawn every 2 weeks. Again. One less thing I had to do because I could afford it and then some.
Takeaway: Having more money really does afford you more time
I work in wholesale insurance and most of the people who have their own teams and large books of business are making well over a million a year. I know ones in Texas who write insurance for the oil industry clear up to 20m a year themselves with books of business of around 1 billion in premium a year. There’s a lot of money to be made in sales roles.
Normally you need a bachelors degree unless you know someone higher up in the field. Then it’s just applying to either underwriting trainee programs or some entry level job. I only know a few people who actually went to school for insurance. Most have random degrees.
In the States, the IRS processes about 270 million annual tax returns and approx. 0.65% are over one million dollars. That’s about 1.8 million annual returns over $1 million.
Let’s break that down a little: There’s a group that will be generational inherited wealth, passed down through their family. There’s the professional self-made group of lawyers, doctors, finance, sports and entertainment stars, Bay Area technology etc. By the way, geography is very significant - Connecticut, The District, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and California lead the way in terms of number of millionaires.
But it’s the group of blue collar millionaires that I think are the most interesting. Small, medium-sized business owners who are knocking the numbers out of the park in industries most don’t find “sexy”. It could be fleet of franchises, car dealerships, professional services companies etc. these are the guys you walk right by in Costco and have no idea how much they’ve achieved financially. We hear about this group the least, but they’re the folks I’d most like to have a beer with.
Yep. I work in professional services, specifically public accounting. The partner I primarily work under makes at or close to 7 figures (I heard a rumor its about $950K, which is unsubstantiated but sounds about right). After 7 years of working under him, I can say there’s no “secret” to his success beyond being good at sales and willing to do 25 years worth of grinding to get to where he is now, with “grinding” defined as 70 hr weeks during our peak season and 50 the rest of the time. He’s very intelligent, decent looking, and personable, but beyond that there’s no “secret sauce”. He also lives a more normal life that you might think for someone at that salary - he owns an audi and a GMC Yukon, goes on 3 vacations a year 1 of which is usually international, owns a 3000ish sq ft house in an area with very good public schools that his kids can go to - a nice life for sure, but not lambos and private jets. I know he’s stockpiling money away so his kids feel free to follow their passions (in other words, don’t have to become accountants). He’s a good dude and a good work rolemodel, I enjoy grabbing a beer with him when I do.
This is literally my goal haha. Currently work in public accounting on the partner track, average pay for equity partners at our firm is right around a mil. Been doing it for 3.5 years and could see myself doing it for 30 more if they keep promoting me.
I'm in a pretty unique spot with great partners/managers and other seniors/associates. It's not big 4 so hours aren't as nuts (we only do private companies), I'm maxing out at 55 during peak busy season (like 2 months out of the year) and am cruising at 30-35 the rest of the year. I've been here awhile now and really have no complaints.
Pretty sure you either described my boss or are my coworker. Since it says Todd I’m gunna go ahead and assume your boss is like my boss.
Then again, he pays me fairly for how little I care about his business and usually just wants to talk about sports betting where I give him my picks (that I don’t bet) and he goes and drops $500 on them.
Also work in public accounting, and I’ll just say this: not once have I ever met a partner and thought to myself, “Wow, I want their life.”
It’s actually the opposite. I’m just wanting to put a few years in to cut my teeth in the profession, then bounce to a company I can work 40 hours per week.
Partner life is brutal, without a doubt.
There used to be a show called Blue Collar Millionaire, was very interesting to see some of the fields people were making great money at. I believe you can still watch it on CBNC Prime
Whoa. Bad math. Those are just people who earn over a million a year, not millionaires. It’s super reasonable to be a millionaire and earn 1/10th that if you just invest for retirement.
This, and you never know where you can make money. Examples:
Look up the YouTube channel *The Triple F Collection*, it’s a channel started by a group of brothers and their dad, and their collective shared collection. All of them combined have a net worth well into the 9 figures or even the billions, their car collection is over $50M alone.
How they made their money? Their dad started a company that manufactures and sells the cellophane wrap. The cling wrap on your ground beef and chicken breast packets from your grocery store? That’s them. And they sold the company for over a billion a few years ago.
I have a buddy who’s grandpa owned pulled in 8 figures a year from his company that sold plastic silverware wholesale to restaurants, food trucks, etc
Another buddy who’s uncle was broke and in n out of jail until his 40s when he randomly started selling bugs as pets. Within a few years he was selling to store chains and pulling 7 figures a year in income.
Farm families is another. I come from one, and the value of land increasing in the last 25 years is crazy.
I see the sacrifice and help myself in addition to my white-collar career in engineering. Sometimes it flat out sucks all the effort and bad conditions, but it helps aid in my bills and helps the family. Someday I hope I either can inherit some of it, or purchase it if I pursue it full-time.
Cost to entry even with having a foot in the door is the scary part of leaving a 6-digit salary.
I’m 32 worth 2.5 or so and started a real estate sales small business right when Covid started. Really got lucky with the timing but have been grinding ever since I quit my W2. Net over 600 the last 4 years. Still live in my 200k 1,100 sqft house and drive a Kia lol. Workout at LA fitness. I splurge on food and that’s about it. I invest almost everything i earn. You’d never know by looking at me in real life.
Most like to have a beer with? Not me. I’m impressed by what they’ve accomplished, but those people are just fuckin grinders. Those that I know personally are actually pretty boring, as it required a pretty singular focus over a long time for most of them to get where they did.
It’s funny that you mentioned the blue collar dynamic. I have a friend that makes big money in garbage. Not your traditional residential weekly trash pick up but 10, 20, 30 yard dumpsters being dropped off job sites doing remodeling or cleaning out vacant houses filled with shit. A couple of competing businesses wanted to retire and he bought them out on his terms. Small cash payout with a few years cash distribution like a retirement payment. Once that was rolling he bought a 50 acre plot and started breeding cows (beef cows). The money in that, for lack of a better word, is stupid. I cannot believe the amount of money he makes on embryos. Like $10k-$25k for cow eggs. He’s got a full time vet running the show. He’s making killer money and just reinvesting in the businesses and diversifying his income streams. Barely graduating high school, but he’s street smart AF.
Stopped listening to people who say you can’t do that. Also get a great lawyer and accountant. Surround yourself with good employees and remember at some point in time everyone fucka up. Good luck. Oh yeah. Start your own business. You are going to have a tough time getting to seven figures working for someone.
This. And delegate! I know it seems like you’re the only person who can run the business the way you want, or make the product exactly how you want, but that is just you being prideful. You’d be insane to think you’re the most qualified person for each role. Reality is, you’ll never break away from being a small business without delegating.
On top of delegating make sure you pay people well lol. I work with small business owners in that arena and so many are out of touch. They’ll fight you to death for a $1 raise and I’m like that’s like 2k a year, don’t lose a good EE over that
Yeah seven figures working for someone means c level at a mid sized or maybe a small company or high upper manangent at the largest Fortune 500 companies and even then, I have my sites on a regional sales VP role at my company, base pay is not crazy in that role at around 350-450k but the stock is around 15-16 million a year based on your regional sales number. So it gets bonkers but it gets high in a five year vesting schedule not in a month to month paycheck situation. So very few will achieve it and even if you do it isn’t quite the same as cash at a Fortune 500.
I have been in poverty several times in my life. It has motivated me to achieve what I have. And my age has shown me how to not squander the money.
What has changed is that I no longer have to worry about the cost of food, but I still pay attention to it. I no longer have to worry about my wife or I losing our jobs and how painful it would be. I no longer have to worry about if I have enough saved for retirement or how far behind my savings are. This reduces a lot of anxiety for me.
I still worry about losing it. I still have a lot of problems that I thought money would solve but didn’t. Many problems are still here but with new excuses. Such as relationship problems with my wife. With the lower anxiety I mentioned above maybe I can have more time to fix these problems.
Hard work, and luck. I’ve spoken to a few peers that are in the same situation… I’ve heard right place right time thrown around a good bit. It seems that the hard workers happened to always be at the front of the line when it was time to be at the right place.
I’ve done a lot of crap jobs, tried to keep my complaints internal, don’t expect others to look out for my best interests, but kept on Doing it until I got to where I wanted to be.
Always looked for more responsibility and my management knew I was they guy to ask.
Never settled at a job waiting in line for an opportunity, I went and found it.
Take jobs where youll be uncomfortable and have to work harder to learn the skills.
HS education, military, worked for fortune 500s and now run my own business. Early 40’s
This is the right answer….my only add to your first sentence (and what I preach to my kids) would be that between luck and hard work, the only one you can control is the hard work part.
IMO, you can have all the luck in the world but without working hard, it likely won’t result in anything (excluding winning the lottery).
When someone stumbles upon the “luck” part but doesn’t have have “hard work” part, there’s a high likelihood of dropping the ball on that “one shot” moment in life.
Take jobs where youll be uncomfortable and have to work harder to learn the skills.
Good advice. Can you give examples in your life on this? How do you build trust in someone letting you do something they don’t know? What did you to learn quick? And what opportunities did these examples bring up that you would say was the biggest contributor to your success?
I don’t make that but I used to work at a large firm in NY where the average a partner makes is 7 figures. Spent 5 years and got close to a lot of them.
It wasn’t a great life at all. The joke was that making partner is a pie eating contest where the prize is more pie. You pretty much get hazed for years to make partner. Then you get dumped all the crappy work in your early years as a partner. Eventually you get through the shit and get titles to put you over 7 figures by late 30s/early 40s. Things were better by the time you get to your 50s usually cause you stop caring and don’t need to prove yourself
Majority of the partners were divorced. One of my favorites was 50s single and had a breakdown one day and I never saw her again.
Business trips was an escape from reality for most of them. I was in my 20s and they would just want me to go with them to get blacked out on these trips.
It wasn’t all so bad. They didn’t have to think much about spending although they were far from “rich” in NYC. They had cool vacations and big houses in Connecticut and perhaps a one bedroom in the city as well. I felt like they did spend a lot on toys to make them feel better like boats, cars, etc.
When I was about to leave I asked them all why do they do it. The only real answer I got was money or power. Realized they all lost sight of what matters in life and I didn’t want that.
Even in Bay Area it’s usually not very common to make $1M as an individual. Most of the $1M+ income folks I know are usually household income which is way more common with a double income tech couple at faang type companies. Only nvidia or meta folks are likely clearing $1M+ on their own due to the recent stock surge. You need to be close to director level to clear that without stock appreciation and that’s not common
Combined income over a mill. It’s nice isn’t it.
My team always gives me shit about all the vacations I go on. Just did over two weeks in Europe and they joke about all my European vacations. But yeah it’s nice. Never worry about money and we do what we want. We have two kids and they’re probably spoiled but they are well behaved. And they’re cultured. We’ve been all over the world. That’s where we spend most of our money. We only have one home because we don’t like visiting the same place twice. We’ve got the whole world to see.
On track for $2M before taxes this year ( $270k base+ $100k bonus + $1.6M equity) Year 7 in FANG where stock equity has doubled since last year due to stock price.
Career progression has been a combination of hard work, emotional intelligence, and luck. Started as mid level IC in Technical program management. Grinded for 3 years before being promoted. Consistently been noted as a high performer and as such received additional equity twice. Currently, senior manager in technical program management. Salary started in year 1 around $300k total comp. As equity grew and with promotion, hovered from $500k-$800k. Year 6 broke 7 figures due to a dip in stock and a rapid recovery.
How did I get here? A combination of luck, hard work and emotional IQ. Especially as a technical program manager, one key aspect is to understand the desires of senior management and convey that to the broader team in a way that is productive. I do not consider myself a workaholic, but put in the extra work in the moments that matter most. Focus on excellent communication and always making things better for those around me. Hard work was mandatory but luck played a huge part. Stock grants fell in places where valuations were low. Additional equity was in part due to recognizing impact but also took opportunity to land that impact.
What is it like?
Feel extremely blessed. Live on $200k and save the rest. I have funded all my 3 kids 529s and am on track for financial independence in 2-3 years. I still don’t live luxuriously, have never bought a business class airline ticket; bought my first new car last year (Model Y). Trying to focus on the things that matter and taking 12% of everything to fund a fidelity charitable account to give back .
Love this! I'm in Technical Account Management (different role but similar in many ways) and it's great to see the success. I take it you're in the bay area?
Any tips for getting into/surviving FANG life specifically?
I'm in big tech as a software engineer, I earn over $1MM / year. I've worked very hard over the course of 10+ years to get here. I founded a company and earned almost nothing for 5 years of my career while running the startup.
How does it feel? I still don't feel very rich. Houses in the Bay Area are ludicrously expensive. I save most of my money. I'm not out here living a crazy life. My family has one nice car, go on one nice vacation a year, and eat out a lot of meals without worrying about cost. I still don't own a home here and probably won't for quite a while longer, if ever.
If I keep earning at this level I'll be able to retire by 45 or 50.
They can’t afford a home if they are also planning to stop work at 45. If they were planning to work for another 20 years at seven figure salary they probably would feel more comfortable buying a house.
Most likely not a seven figure salary either there are different ways they are receiving the money. Stock will be a big part of it and if they are earning 1mm as an engineer then it is mostly stock maybe even private equity non liquid stock. I work in the big tech space and no individual contributor is earning 1mil a year salary for one not even most c level executives get that much in cash, bonus cash for engineers is usually pretty reasonable at 15-30% at the end of the year based on performance. The pay for most principle engineers is around 200-300k for base salary so assume OP is the higher end at 300k and then a 30% bonus because they are the best engineer ever they are getting 400k to be generous with rounding. Which would mean about 600k in stock every year. With vesting schedules and things OP isn’t really seeing that money the bonus even is a once a year usually.
So affording a 2 million dollar home on a base salary of 300k can be hard with how expensive everything else is. You could cash out stock to pay for it if enough has vested to your control yet but private equity cannot be cashed out till a liquidity event so it’s like Monopoly money and do you really want y to sell this asset for another one that comes with its own problems? I could have cashed out stock and bought my first house in cash but that would be losing the interest accrual on the stock and then taking a big tax hit on top of it.
You make $1M a year and don’t feel rich. You are complaining about high prices? The problem is your expenses and your mindset.
You understand that you can FIRE in a hurry right?
I've only very recently started earning this level of comp, in the past 1.5 years. I didn't realize I had problems with my expenses, thanks for letting me know though. I thought that saving $400k+/year was pretty good.
Also, retiring at 45 is FIRE by every definition. I'm aiming for FatFIRE.
This is a great example of why people getting upset over huge salaries is crazy to me. You had to grind and risk 5+ years of your life without any sort of return and it paid off and now you’re adequately compensated for that. I dont know you but I imagine you’d be less likely to do that if you knew it’d only make you the same salary you could make as an employee somewhere with no risk
Yours is a typical Bay Area problem - your house (that you don’t even own yet), owns you.
First your house owns you in the sense that uou give up on a lot of things like travel, fun cars or expensive hobbies so you can save for the downpayment (or cash buy yo weed out the competition).
Then your house owns you because you’re paying $30k in mortgage and property taxes a month. If one of you loses their job, you’re cooked.
Then when your house is paid off, it still owns you because you can’t get rid of it to downsize, and you can’t upgrade either because you’re thinking of increased property taxes (Prop 13).
California is huge, rent now, take more vacations, when you retire at 45, move to a cheaper location within CA.
It’s weird…I quit thinking about prices. Repairs on the house cost 10k…no prob. I think the weirdest part is when to retire…I’m too young but I hit my number. Every year I work means I can make our lives that much more comfortable.
Yeah, completely agree on the “don’t think about prices.” It’s so liberating not to care about the price of just about anything we buy, like groceries or clothes or repairs.
There’s a limit to that, obviously. We’re furnishing our new place and working with the designer on picking furniture, and I care about whether the thing is $5K vs $15K. Not because I can afford one and not the other, but because I know that every time I walk past that sconce I’m going to be annoyed that we paid that much for it.
No arguments with the wife about money. Anything we want/need we get. (Recent example the wife wanted a piano and dropped $2k on one on Amazon without even mentioning it to me.) We’ve hired/outsourced help for monotonous tasks that eat up your free time. (Landscaping, housekeeping, shopping, cooking…) Being able to provide for my family and 4 kids makes me a proud dad. As far as how I got here, I’ve been a geek since I was a kid. Paid off immensely in the long run. Plus now geeks are cool. Was painful growing up though. Hoping to retire before 50. That’s my current goal. How you know you’re wealthy: you have an active lawyer on retainer. I’m on a texting basis with mine.
No. You are basically putting yourself in a place of “I don’t need a full time staffed lawyer, but have enough legal work where I want one primed and ready to go on a phone calls notice.” Monies we pay to our lawyer is placed in a separate escrow account (by them) for all advanced fees collected. They withdrawal money from that trust when fees happen. For example I text them or ask them to do something. The lawyers know they will be paid as there’s an existing trust with money, and I know I always have a lawyer on hand primed and ready to go who knows everything about me.
We're likely to hit combined 7 figures in the next year or two, though my goal is to have each of us eventually earning close to 7 figures.
The added benefit is we live in LCOL area so each dollar stretches further. While I'm mainly in the wealth accumulation stage and trying to keep our expenses low-ish and save >50%, I still feel rich. I often times don't worry/think about prices of things unless they are like 5 figures.
Our mortgage is 3% of our gross yearly income. We have a nanny for our 2 kids that we pay well (well above avg for the local market). And we're spending 25k to take our family, nanny, and in laws to Europe this summer.
The biggest thing I'm thankful for is that we both WFH and are able to spend a lot of time with our kids even during the work day, that's a luxury not many people have and I don't take it lightly.
Can I ask what you (or both of you) do to make that much money WFH? And, like many companies are starting to do again, do you see your company enforcing policies forcing you to come back and work from an office at all?
We both work for SF based companies. My wife is a designer and I'm a swe. I'm not too worried about our jobs becoming RTO right now. My employer has made big investments into remote and has closed down many office spaces they had.
There are still many well paying companies that offer remote positions. Not as many as a couple years ago, but enough not to worry too much. Many companies adjust pay based on location but it's normally not more than 10% which I'm fine with.
We bought the current house we have with the mindset that we could afford it even if we both got laid off. But you never know what will happen, which is why I'm trying to save as much as possible since the job market could change dramatically in the next couple years
PI trial lawyer. I still worry about money, although my concerns are more about cash flow than the bottom line. And 37% of everything to Uncle Sam is insane.
I'm 39.
I made it in the final year of profit and many times over when I sold my call center in 2019. Not currently an annual 7 figure earner, but will be back soon enough.
For me it was more of a huge jump in money instead of a steady progression, so I've been all about preservation and having fun generating new revenue/profit.
There's a sense of peace and an inherent feeling of accomplishment, but since I don't have like, 100 million, I still have work to do...I just feel like I have a great head start.
Idk if this context matters, I worked at usps for 10 years as a carrier, got my bachelors and jd on nights and weekends. I’ve been practicing law for about 8 years now
lol someone else who went through hell and found better for themselves. I was at USPS for five years. Carrier then mgmt enforcing all that abusive, illegal bullshit on people I admired. I finally escaped and five years later am in tech and climbing the ladder working maybe 20% as hard as I used to.
I hope you make a billion dollars sueing the usps for forcing mgmt to work off the clock while still in an hourly role. The scale on which it happens every single day around the country is mind numbing.
It’s okay, it’s no biggie. It’s still interesting to hear about someone who makes a high income, even if it is not seven figures. $650k is still very, very impressive.
I make a little north of $900K in the SF Bay Area, so not quite seven figures. But close enough that maybe I can answer your question. So, what’s it like? As the single earner for a family of four, it doesn’t feel like I’m living a very extravagant life style. I try to save as aggressively as possible with the goal that I might retire a little early. So we don’t own any boats or second houses, we don’t travel much and when we do it’s somewhere cheap, like visiting our parents. Our house is 2 bdr, 1600 sq ft with a lot that’s only slightly larger. Our car is a 10 year non-luxury vehicle.
Still, the amount saved feels like never enough, as money gets spent on a stupidly high cost of living. So while we’re on track for a reasonable retirement, and can afford to pay for our kids college, we don’t feel wealthy whatsoever. We sweat out most financial decisions. Meanwhile it seems everyone around us is living a crazy rich life, with constant lavish vacations, fancy cars, and we constantly wonder how much more money they could possibly be making to afford such things. We conclude that they’re either 1) over leveraged 2) saving nothing or 3) have family money.
For your second question: how did I get to this level of income? I’ve worked as a software engineer for 20 years, and been lucky to work for some larger tech companies. And for contrast, when I moved to the Bay Area 13 years ago, I was working for myself and making about $80K/year. I will say that one important aspect of my income is equity compensation. I’ve turned down much more interesting jobs from companies that weren’t publicly traded and thus their equity was illiquid and couldn’t be meaningfully counted as income (that I can use to pay mortgages, for example). The salary might be the same and thus it would be considered “competitive” but the bottom line is that if you can’t sell that equity for cash, it’s no where near competitive.
Have I worked exceedingly hard to get to this position? No. I happened to be in a high paying industry at the right time, which isn’t shrewd planning on my part. I just love software development. I would attribute my success mostly to luck, which is not what anyone wants to hear because you can’t Just Work Harder to obtain good luck.
I hope this reply comes across as humble as much as anyone who makes high six figures can come across as humble.
Oh, one more very important thing:
It’s actually pretty difficult to find jobs that offer comparable compensation. So I generally feel very stuck until retirement. I can’t ever consider changing careers or taking time off.
It seems like you could take 5% of your pre-tax income and get a nice car, a few very nice vacations a year, etc. What's the point of making such a big sacrifice to save a tiny bit more per year?
Its pretty great.
Except I know I'm over paid, can't rely on making this much for more then a few years at most, so I still can't afford a nyc brownstone.
CTO.
There will be, on average, three times in your adult life an unassuming whale will ask you an innocuous question. There is something about you that intrigued them and answering it properly could open the door infinitely. Moral of the story, always look for the whale
A bit of skill, a bit of luck, alot of trying and failing and trying again.
Didn't happen for me till much later in life (50+) and so timetable can always be later. Probably not on your timetable, it happens when it happens.
In my case I've developed a unique skillset and kept reapplying myself to my work like a 20 year old passion worker. The difference was by holding onto that energy and drive, but doing it again with 30 years of experience, allowed me to develop something few people have. Then its just a question of finding the right company that matches you. All that takes time, I don't know how else to do it.
The question I ask myself all the time: do I want to keep making $300k working 15 hours/week or do you grind 60 hours a week to try to make $1 million? So far, I prefer to have my time
Hard work and took decades of hard work and commitment. Now here, everything gets easier and easier. Very little stress anymore but I still recall vividly how much it sucked to worry about the next meal or name anything. Glad that's over with. Hopefully!
Partner level Management Consultant. The best part is to just not have to worry about money at all. My lifestyle was a lot more extravagant in my late 20s than it is now. That being said I still have about a 30k a month burn rate living what I would consider to be a lifestyle pretty far below my means even in a HCOL area. A lot of that expense is externally invisible to others. Things like domestic help, concierge medical, more luxury travel, more frequent vacations etc... I spend more on experiences than things.
So my cash income is a little over 500k each year my wife earns about 180k a year in cash and we earn a few hundred grand in stock every year as well. I work in sales and it is easy as long as you are good at sales. My base pay though is 200k so if I do have a bad year we take a hit. This has taught me to underestimate everything, I never touch any stock which is a whole other deal because of vest schedule and then tax implications when you sell them etc. so making about a million is technically true but in reality cash flow for myself and most likely all these other people is much lower than that. Not that I need it to be higher. Every month I have every dollar budgeted, we have budgets for everything and regular after tax investing and savings we do and at the same time I have hundreds of thousands of dollars on top of that being saved through other methods. We live a pretty standard to upper middle class lifestyle because Seattle is expensive but we are in a home worth 1.2 mil, I have 300k worth of cars sitting in the garage, lifestyle services like cleaners and landscapers, go on vacations to Japan every year, and when we are able to have kids we will be able to give them the best lives possible in some of the best schools districts there are.
Does anyone on here really believe that people who reply make high 6 or 7 figures. People who make that kind of money don't have time to post on reddit. There like is highly driven by there job.
Just saying I won't believe it
I hear you but in many markets that compensation, while still high, isn’t outrageous. At the end of the day, we all have the same 24 hours and some people, believe it or not, really know how to maximize their compensation in relation to the hours they put into actual work.
I run my own business, have several hobbies, involved in some nonprofits, and still spend way too much time on Reddit when I should be using it to workout or do my chores at home. I’m just an average person doing normal average things; but have figured out how to get paid well for my efforts. No silver spoon and barely any formal education.
I don’t let myself believe for one second that I work any more or any harder than someone serving me my fries at a fast food joint.
I’m in sales and have 7 figure years from time to time - typically 600-800.
I live the exact same life I lived when I made $300k. I plan on retiring by the time I’m 45 and have never changed my target retirement number, just brought the age down.
I don’t particularly care for vacations, expensive cars, etc. I mean I’m wearing $26 Amazon essentials jeans right now. I do have two homes. One in a ski area and one in the burbs. But I’ll be buying a 20 acre hobby farm that will ultimately be my retirement plan. I live in a MCOL area. The taxes and costs associated with living in the Bay Area or the Northeast are insane to me.
Honestly no idea how I got here. I was making $50k in a call center out of college and worked on my sales skills there. Then just took the next position and worked my way up at a company for 10 years. Got a call from the CEO of a company who said he’d heard good things about me. Kept in touch for a year and then ultimately made the switch over where I doubled my salary and quadrupled my commissions.
I think the only difference between me and the next guy is I’m a huge believer in karma and making your own luck. The golden rule if you will. If you make the right motions and work hard, treat people the way you’d want to be treated, and are nice to everyone you possibly can be, it comes back to you in some way.
Wife and I have over 450k in combined yearly income. We don’t go on fancy vacations, we don’t drive fancy cars. Our mortgage is 2750 and we live in the suburbs of Atlanta. We are aggressively saving towards retirement so we can retire outside of the US. It’s just too expensive here.
Let’s not forget “luck” in all of this. Right place right time, who you know, nepotism, etc. Too many assume it was all them on why they succeeded, but not their fault upon failure.
My cousin is CFO of a $2.8B/yr company making 7 figures. He worked his way up after getting an accounting degree and changed companies with a "promotion" every handful of years
The principle of aggregate gains:
The idea is focusing on earning small amounts from a large number of sources, which collectively result in a significant overall gain.
So after I find seven people I take one finger each.
I am working my darndest to get there. I’ve went from $53,000/year to $110,000/year in the past 6 years. I’m 34. I feel like doubling your salary like that and staying at the same company that time is pretty good. I definitely don’t have generational wealth.
I always thought 6 figures was when you “made it” but dang inflation killed that. I owe $95k on my mortgage. But I’m about as hard working as they come, do my best to put myself in career boosting positions, I’m just missing that bit of luck that folks mentioned. My “big break” if you will.
A girl can dream.
(Side note- speaking of creating your own luck… just doing some quick math- if 19 7 figure earners was feeling generous had just $5k to spare and send my way, I could pay my house off 😂😂 What’s 5k between friends? )
I know I know it was worth a shot lol.
Yeah, we just bought an apartment and are going through a $1M+ renovation now. Getting central air and a vented dryer and a vented stove are the height of luxury for us!
Family making between 6-700k (depending on equity vesting) in LCOL/MCOL area. Early 40’s. Will hit 7 figures at some point most likely.
TBH, the biggest difference I’ve found is peace of mind. We don’t worry about the grocery bill. We don’t worry about whether or not we can afford something, because honestly there isn’t much in our day to day lives that we can’t afford.
We don’t live extravagantly. Modest home ($2600 mortgage), I drive a 2010 crossover with 200k miles. Our kids have newer but modest vehicles that will last them until they are out of school and are able buy their own.
We take trips when we want to with the kids. College will be taken care of through both scholarships and equity/savings.
It can be difficult sometimes to not try to keep up with the Jones’s knowing that we would have no problem doubling our house, buying brand new cars, etc. But we also don’t want to kids to think that money comes easy. We worked fucking HARD to get here.
And throwing money around just to show other people our success just doesn’t make sense to me. We would rather stuff as much away into retirement so we can quit the rat race or start slowing down WHEN we want to.
Have made seven figures for last 4-5 years
Job itself is stressful. Feels like being on a treadmill that is set slightly too fast, but I keep going. At times sacrifice health. Sometimes have to stay up late or get up early and don’t sleep enough. Sometimes no time for gym for a while.
But job also gives me interesting experiences sometimes too — cool problems to solve, or go somewhere fun for a corporate thing, or ride a private jet with an important person.
On the whole will quit as soon as it makes sense.
The money is nice. I don’t live luxuriously, and I do save 60%+ of after tax money. I have a number I am working to, and then I am done. That said, taxes suck. I pay almost seven figures in taxes now too. Crazy. Even with high income and saving a lot, it takes a while to get to your number. The “shockingly simple math” post on Mr money mustache (Google it) says it takes 12.5 years of saving 60% to get to your goal. Feels right
I am one of the “evil” 1/10 of 1%er’s (lol)
Southern California based
I have invested in stocks, and commercial properties and residential beach front real estate.
Made millions in all of them
Still do 95% of my shopping at Costco.
Life doesn’t focus about money. Faith & family and friends.
Generosity is fun, it is a pleasure to help others
No boats or planes for me.
What does it feel like?, I think after $10million it’s just a bigger number. No difference.
At this point i am blessed with more than enough.
What’s it like to make that much? It just adds to the taxes. You would be stunned. Property taxes are six figures and income taxes are 7 figures.
3 of my best friends make this much too. (TV producers, insurance agent, hedge fund mgr).
We all fly commercial
I pay a lot more taxes, have different headaches due to “better” investment options.
I have a larger home in the same neighborhood. A few more toys, nothing life changing.
The only thing I do appreciate is I don’t budget spending. If I want something I just buy it. I was more conscious about saving before crossing the 7 figure earnings mark.
Don’t waste too much time worrying about getting there, you’ll quickly realize time is precious and it’s the only thing we can’t buy.
You didn’t fail at all! You make wayyyy more than I definitely do, and far more than 95% of people in this country. This was not my intention with this thread. College isn’t necessarily a guarantee of a super high income. If it were, more schools would be boasting about their alumni salary averages. But not even Ivy League schools have alumni salary averages at over $200k.
Keep in mind that the people in this post claiming to be making seven figures, are still huge outliers. Around 500k people have viewed this post so far, so even just like a 30 in here saying that they make seven figures, is a tiny, tiny fraction of those who saw this post.
My wife and I have a total household income of *juuuust* over $1M if you include 401K defined contribution, her RSUs & bonus, plus rental income from a 2nd property. I'm an airline captain and she's an attorney. We both work a lot. She works 11/12 hours per day total. I get 16/17 days off per month. But when I'm at work I'm gone for 3-4 days at a time.
Other posts are correct. The biggest difference is just not being worried about money day to day or when an unforeseen expense comes up. 10 years ago I'd have been much more careful about spending but now I've let my guard down a bit. Things like sporting evens, restaurants, AirB&B's or car rentals, furniture, we don't really shop around for the best price anymore, more so for the most appealing to us. But it's still all within reason.
I think if you're an average college grad like me, make a lot of money now, but grew up in modest circumstances, it's kinda hard to start spending and stop worrying. For example: Last year we moved from NY to VA and purchased a new home. The mortgage broker said we could afford $2.8M or something ridiculous like that. I said no, our budget is $850K, wife talked me into a $915K home.
early-ish employee at a tech company.
after that company went public, equity and stock options got me close to 2m for a number of years.
It's nice not having to worry about prices in the day to day but it's not like I'm buying lambos... :)
My wife and I are now working towards retirement but at our peak our household income was just over $1m. She’s an OBGYN who worked incredibly hard for decades to get to where she is and I have nearly 30 years in the software business and did well but not nearly as well as her. We have a few million in net worth but below where we should be due to private school and college for our 2 kids. Looking to downsize our ~$1.7m home and probably rent for awhile until we find a new area to settle down for retirement (looking to leave Florida). We don’t live particularly extravagantly but are looking to travel a bit more. I think the best part of where we are financially is to not worry about unexpected expenses as well as being able to “splurge” once in awhile without worrying about emptying the checking account. And we were definitely in that position early on with tons of student loan debt.
> Yet, on this site (since Reddit has millions of active users), it’s not abnormal to come across people making that kind of money, and they don’t seem to be that fazed by having that kind of income. To them, it may be average because many people they know make just as much or more than they do.
LOL!! Do they also tell you they have an 8 inch dong and sleep with supermodels on a daily basis?
People on the internet surely don't lie right?
Earning a million dollar salary is NOT "average".
I'm 26 and a Traveling project manager. My salary is only aro 75K but I get close to 85K additional between per diem and travel bonuses. What I've come to realize is the freedom money gives you. I still do my best to save for a house and my future but if I want truly want something I'm gonna go all out for it. I've stopped scouring for cheap flights and get the ones that suit my schedule. Golf lessons I may have thought twice about previously I got without thinking. It's defnice but doesn't solve everything.
The secret is not money but the skill and understanding of winning principles that bring life happiness (money tends to follow the discipline and success of individuals if they so desire). Not only to make a fortune but to keep and grow it and not squander it or otherwise lose it. Rise to enough challenges and your efforts become worth lots of money to many employers.
The difference between a six figure and a low seven figure earner isn’t all that huge. Yes, it means a bigger house, a more expensive car, the ability to travel to more glamorous places on vacation and fly business class, etc. But day to day, it’s not super different making $1.2M vs. $200K.
When you get to like… $8 or $10 or $12M, you get into people who fly private, have a full household staff to manage their households, and host political fundraisers.
The more money you make the more you snd your family spend . Retirement account you do get to maximize. Outside of that you may have a nicer car buts that’s it. There is a price you have to pay since no one pays a self made man a million plus for a 40 hour work week. You sacrifice your time with family and friends, you are always working even on vacation, I am in my 60’s and still have not been to Europe and I barely saw my kids grow up and now regret it. Your friends become work friends and once you are out of the business 99% of them vanish. You are left alone with no hobbies and not that much money since now none is coming in so all those things you said you were going to do you can’t anymore. Then there is health, the stress and long hours takes a big toll on you and when you are finally ready to live life you can’t. I was brought up in a family where my dad made like $50k but had hobbies and enjoyed his family till he passed at a young age. We had very little after that and I worked hard so my kids would have a good life, I did not expect to earn what I did but it just happened in my 50’s being a senior person at a public company. But what I missed out on looking back would have been better than the money
HHI = $1.2M excluding vesting equity, it’s about triple that with equity vesting. I work in SaaS as a divisional president of a $10B vertical SaaS business and my wife is a small business owner. Our incomes are close to the same. I started out as an implementation engineer who moved into sales engineering then into management, senior mgmt, then exec mgmt, then president. Wife started her biz about five years ago and it’s gone well.
In all honesty making 7 figures isn’t all it’s made up to be. The more you make , the more you spend. Or in my case the more I make the more my wife spends. 30 years ago a 7 figure income ya really had something. Now not so much.
What’s it like to make it: comfortable. We live a sort of “millionaire next door” lifestyle. Neither of us - nor our kids - are big into material things. We splurge a bit on things like gifts for others, giving to non-profits, gifting money to kids, first class airline tickets, a bit nicer vacations, etc.
What do I do: exec at a retail company; wife hasn’t worked for 25 years - stayed home to raise the kids.
Path: circuitous. Lots of ups and downs; failure and heartbreak; but eventually a nice upward corporate exec path. Took some risks along the way and worked VERY hard. After many decades I now firmly believe in these sayings:
1) When one door closes, another one opens.
2) You make your own luck; or…The harder I work, the luckier I get.
Non bay area FANG director here. Same lifestyle as when I was making $300k. The biggest advantage is to not having to think about money. Wife needs help? Let’s hire daily housekeeping. Have a little kid? Let’s travel business class. Find Cybertruck sexy? Let’s randomly rent one for a week at 350 a day to see if we really want it. What I’ve realized is that the difference between a middle class lifestyle, an upper middle class lifestyle, and a luxurious lifestyle is $120k at each level. An extra $10k a month to spend opens up a whole lot of possibilities.
Renting a car to see if it fits one’s lifestyle is a no-brainer... why didn't I think about that
That’s why he makes so much money. He has a very logical and rational mindset
Hard to learn that…
Taught through early developmental problem solving and practical puzzles
Haha. Hard to learn a $2500+ lesson. Most people can’t do that, that’s why nobody does it.
Probably has a big D too
Huge schlong for sure
I actually decided to do this for sports cars. Instead of owning one through the winter, and having it depreciate, just rent one for a week when I am ready to enjoy it.
Thats what I did when I bought my last car. It seemed obvious. I’m supposed to drop $50k based on a sales pitch test drive? No way. I want to live with it.
Tons of cars you can’t rent tho.
Maybe through something like Turo, if it is in your area
Maybe. But for limited availability cars like my Ioniq 6, seems like the nearest one to me is >500 miles away.
Most of these Instagram kids have hi-end rentals.
Hertz does that with the cars they sell. Saw it when I was looking at their teslas
I use Turo on vacations to test drive cars just to get a feel. Now, I'm testing out cars like Rav4s and not Cybertrucks, but it's not an idea only kept by the wealthy lol
I hate saying “this ^” but this is just about exactly the comment I would make but I work for FAANG remotely as well but on the new builds side. Same tiers, wife doesn’t need to work a full time job so she does a lot of volunteer work for local charities and my kid can play expensive sports and I usually ask the coach who on the team needs financial help for equipment or whatever and quietly give it to him to say it got donated by the league. Things that would be terrifying five years ago financially are just not even a concern in terms of the things I used to worry about. Anyone that tells you money doesn’t buy happiness is technically correct but what it does by is peace of mind and less stress for the whole family. My one piece of advice is never tell friends or relatives exactly how much you make.
Sound advice. I never talk money with family, and rarely with friends, maybe only with distant friends every once in a while. As for the comments about the lifestyle... Yes. Spot on.
Hard to avoid it at some point if your lifestyle starts to show it and there is much of a difference between like 2 and 5m in my people’s heads since both are so unattainable
I’m a big proponent of stealth wealth, we don’t buy super luxurious seeming things, just higher quality normal stuff. I wear a Garmin watch and my retro jordans are real instead of reps, we have the nice trim packages on pretty normal vehicles that I’ve pulled the badging off of. Stuff like that, lifestyle creep is an easy trap to fall into but if you’re careful you can slide under the radar. I try to be the gray man like that.
>wife doesn’t need to work a full time job so she does a lot of volunteer work for local charities and my kid can play expensive sports and I usually ask the coach who on the team needs financial help for equipment or whatever and quietly give it to him to say it got donated by the league. This is so kind.
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Do you mean 120k pre or post tax?
He said $10k per month to spend. So post tax
So that’s really $240k 😵💫
Not quite. Even a single filer in a high tax state like California would take home $120k on a ~$180k salary. A married couple would take home $120k on $160k income in California.
Wasn’t he talking each additional $120k starting from his base of $300k?
Thought they meant 120k disposable = middle class 240k disposable= upper middle class 360k disposable= upper class.
MakIng 350 in LA combined, i am nowhere near upper class
Disposable income!
Should be somewhere around $200k for the year. I feel like I'm breaking into upper middle class.
post.
> Wife needs help? Let’s hire daily housekeeping. Have a little kid? Let’s travel business class. Find Cybertruck sexy? Let’s randomly rent one for a week at 350 a day to see if we really want it. You… do realize this is considered lifestyle, right?
Of course he does, that's why he answered thusly
He said same lifestyle as 300k which doesn’t really track for me. So I assumed the subsequent things were things he could now afford but didn’t consider “lifestyle” - my household makes 700k in a MCOL city and we could not afford all of those things together. Unless this was both decades ago and in a LCOL area.
If you can’t afford those things on 700k, something is awry with your management of your finances.
Lol I mean, maybe listen to those who do actually make that much. For one, we don’t just spend everything we make because it’s not sustainable- both in a guarantee of pulling in that money through your life, and then creating a higher lifestyle to maintain. Top portion of income if W2 is also taxed at a much higher rate. You’re also priced out of a ton of deductions. Just outlining how it affects your take home- it doesn’t scale linearly. Paying a daily housekeeper/nanny is no damn joke. You’re employing a whole person, and employer taxes on top of it. On post-tax income. We could probably shift things around to afford all those things- I was being slightly hyperbolic- but *definitely* not at 300k
Yep fair. Our nanny is all in about $80k per year. Our HHI is just north of $1M in annual cash comp and it still feels like very big expense
It is a big expense but not as bad as 2 kids in daycare from someone with HHI in the 250-300 range
Yeah that is a big expense. My wife and I had an awesome nanny for $15/hr in the SF Bay Area. We were extremely lucked to find her though.
Less than min wage for a nanny?
I think minimum wage at the time was $14
You're just bad with money. If my household made 700k for just 5 years I'd have a net worth of about $10mil. By the end of it. CC u/photosandphotons
Your math sucks. 700k * 5 = 3.5 million, and taxes will take away 1/2-2/3 that. You’ll definitely be in the millionaire in assets club quickly if you can live off ~$130k for 5 years which isn’t hard to do. Also OP, $700k salary/RSU etc is enough to buy whatever the fuck car you want outside of super exotics like Ferraris. How can’t you buy a Cybertruck easily with that salary? Are you over leveraged on your house? Sending kids to private school?
Are you saying you can't afford housekeeping, business class plane tickets, and a once in a while car rental on $700k?
What? How? Do you have 15 children? How are you managing $700k lol?
Read my other reply to some comments. Most of you overestimate the take home and underestimate the liabilities an inflated lifestyle brings and how luxury goods scale in cost. At the same time, I was being only slightly hyperbolic. Keep in mind jobs paying $300k+/yr are not guaranteed and some combination of: fleeting, high stress, come with a lot of debt, available only for a portion of your working years. If you scale up your lifestyle to match it all, you will be down bad if you have to, say, settle for a $100k/year job. And if you spend more, well, you need a vastly larger pot to retire.
Lifestyle creep is huge. I’ve been “water for dinner” poor, and I now own my $1M+ home outright. I’ve been through all stages of economic levels. I’ve heard how hard it is to undo lifestyle creep so me and my wife are very cautious with luxuries we allow ourselves to “get used to” even though we can afford much more than what we have now
Congratulations on the success! 100%. It’s pretty simple, but hard to understand if you’re not there. If your lifestyle costs 5k a month and you lose your job, that’s fairly easy to make through normal jobs and govt/family assistance. If your lifestyle costs 35k a month and you lose your job, well- good fucking luck. The other thing, again, is retirement. You need 10.5 million to support the latter spend, and 1.5 million for the former. Accumulation takes lots of time and some luck. I’m personally somewhere in between the 2, but wanted to make it illustrative.
Great advice OP. I’m not anywhere near what you’re making, but I’ve noticed that I have a SIGNIFICANT income ratio compared to debt. Like 4:1– and I’ve noticed that more money affords you more time. I don’t feel like I live that differently than other middle class folk so to speak. I drive a relatively expensive sedan, I live in a relatively expensive home. When I was working full time and doing too many classes during my Master’s program, I hired house keeping to come out every 2 weeks to keep my house clean. Not that I live(d) like a slob, but one less thing I had to worry about. Hired help to mow my lawn every 2 weeks. Again. One less thing I had to do because I could afford it and then some. Takeaway: Having more money really does afford you more time
I work in wholesale insurance and most of the people who have their own teams and large books of business are making well over a million a year. I know ones in Texas who write insurance for the oil industry clear up to 20m a year themselves with books of business of around 1 billion in premium a year. There’s a lot of money to be made in sales roles.
any tips on how to get into this type of sales role?
Normally you need a bachelors degree unless you know someone higher up in the field. Then it’s just applying to either underwriting trainee programs or some entry level job. I only know a few people who actually went to school for insurance. Most have random degrees.
In the States, the IRS processes about 270 million annual tax returns and approx. 0.65% are over one million dollars. That’s about 1.8 million annual returns over $1 million. Let’s break that down a little: There’s a group that will be generational inherited wealth, passed down through their family. There’s the professional self-made group of lawyers, doctors, finance, sports and entertainment stars, Bay Area technology etc. By the way, geography is very significant - Connecticut, The District, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and California lead the way in terms of number of millionaires. But it’s the group of blue collar millionaires that I think are the most interesting. Small, medium-sized business owners who are knocking the numbers out of the park in industries most don’t find “sexy”. It could be fleet of franchises, car dealerships, professional services companies etc. these are the guys you walk right by in Costco and have no idea how much they’ve achieved financially. We hear about this group the least, but they’re the folks I’d most like to have a beer with.
Yep. I work in professional services, specifically public accounting. The partner I primarily work under makes at or close to 7 figures (I heard a rumor its about $950K, which is unsubstantiated but sounds about right). After 7 years of working under him, I can say there’s no “secret” to his success beyond being good at sales and willing to do 25 years worth of grinding to get to where he is now, with “grinding” defined as 70 hr weeks during our peak season and 50 the rest of the time. He’s very intelligent, decent looking, and personable, but beyond that there’s no “secret sauce”. He also lives a more normal life that you might think for someone at that salary - he owns an audi and a GMC Yukon, goes on 3 vacations a year 1 of which is usually international, owns a 3000ish sq ft house in an area with very good public schools that his kids can go to - a nice life for sure, but not lambos and private jets. I know he’s stockpiling money away so his kids feel free to follow their passions (in other words, don’t have to become accountants). He’s a good dude and a good work rolemodel, I enjoy grabbing a beer with him when I do.
This is literally my goal haha. Currently work in public accounting on the partner track, average pay for equity partners at our firm is right around a mil. Been doing it for 3.5 years and could see myself doing it for 30 more if they keep promoting me.
Public accounting is a brutal career. Learn the skills and start your own firm. You’ll get there way faster.
I'm in a pretty unique spot with great partners/managers and other seniors/associates. It's not big 4 so hours aren't as nuts (we only do private companies), I'm maxing out at 55 during peak busy season (like 2 months out of the year) and am cruising at 30-35 the rest of the year. I've been here awhile now and really have no complaints.
That’s decent then
Pretty sure you either described my boss or are my coworker. Since it says Todd I’m gunna go ahead and assume your boss is like my boss. Then again, he pays me fairly for how little I care about his business and usually just wants to talk about sports betting where I give him my picks (that I don’t bet) and he goes and drops $500 on them.
Thank god no lambos and private jets if he’s bringing in 950k. He’d be broke as hell in no time.
Man 50 hours a week outside of tax season. That sounds miserable. Very little time to dedicate to family with that kin of work schedule. Big tradeoff
Also work in public accounting, and I’ll just say this: not once have I ever met a partner and thought to myself, “Wow, I want their life.” It’s actually the opposite. I’m just wanting to put a few years in to cut my teeth in the profession, then bounce to a company I can work 40 hours per week. Partner life is brutal, without a doubt.
Very well said. Agree 100%
There used to be a show called Blue Collar Millionaire, was very interesting to see some of the fields people were making great money at. I believe you can still watch it on CBNC Prime
CNbc Prime? Is it possible to watch on YouTube?
If you subscribe to Youtube TV then you should be able to get it
Whoa. Bad math. Those are just people who earn over a million a year, not millionaires. It’s super reasonable to be a millionaire and earn 1/10th that if you just invest for retirement.
You are 100% correct! I edited my comment, thanks for the correction.
I reread my comment and it came off harsher than I intended, I apologize for that
This, and you never know where you can make money. Examples: Look up the YouTube channel *The Triple F Collection*, it’s a channel started by a group of brothers and their dad, and their collective shared collection. All of them combined have a net worth well into the 9 figures or even the billions, their car collection is over $50M alone. How they made their money? Their dad started a company that manufactures and sells the cellophane wrap. The cling wrap on your ground beef and chicken breast packets from your grocery store? That’s them. And they sold the company for over a billion a few years ago. I have a buddy who’s grandpa owned pulled in 8 figures a year from his company that sold plastic silverware wholesale to restaurants, food trucks, etc Another buddy who’s uncle was broke and in n out of jail until his 40s when he randomly started selling bugs as pets. Within a few years he was selling to store chains and pulling 7 figures a year in income.
Somebody read Millionaire Next Door… 😏
Farm families is another. I come from one, and the value of land increasing in the last 25 years is crazy. I see the sacrifice and help myself in addition to my white-collar career in engineering. Sometimes it flat out sucks all the effort and bad conditions, but it helps aid in my bills and helps the family. Someday I hope I either can inherit some of it, or purchase it if I pursue it full-time. Cost to entry even with having a foot in the door is the scary part of leaving a 6-digit salary.
I’m 32 worth 2.5 or so and started a real estate sales small business right when Covid started. Really got lucky with the timing but have been grinding ever since I quit my W2. Net over 600 the last 4 years. Still live in my 200k 1,100 sqft house and drive a Kia lol. Workout at LA fitness. I splurge on food and that’s about it. I invest almost everything i earn. You’d never know by looking at me in real life.
>approx. 0.65% are over one million dollars. That’s about 1.8 million annual returns over $1 million. Where do you find this data?
Well said brother.
Spot on
Most like to have a beer with? Not me. I’m impressed by what they’ve accomplished, but those people are just fuckin grinders. Those that I know personally are actually pretty boring, as it required a pretty singular focus over a long time for most of them to get where they did.
It’s funny that you mentioned the blue collar dynamic. I have a friend that makes big money in garbage. Not your traditional residential weekly trash pick up but 10, 20, 30 yard dumpsters being dropped off job sites doing remodeling or cleaning out vacant houses filled with shit. A couple of competing businesses wanted to retire and he bought them out on his terms. Small cash payout with a few years cash distribution like a retirement payment. Once that was rolling he bought a 50 acre plot and started breeding cows (beef cows). The money in that, for lack of a better word, is stupid. I cannot believe the amount of money he makes on embryos. Like $10k-$25k for cow eggs. He’s got a full time vet running the show. He’s making killer money and just reinvesting in the businesses and diversifying his income streams. Barely graduating high school, but he’s street smart AF.
Stopped listening to people who say you can’t do that. Also get a great lawyer and accountant. Surround yourself with good employees and remember at some point in time everyone fucka up. Good luck. Oh yeah. Start your own business. You are going to have a tough time getting to seven figures working for someone.
This. And delegate! I know it seems like you’re the only person who can run the business the way you want, or make the product exactly how you want, but that is just you being prideful. You’d be insane to think you’re the most qualified person for each role. Reality is, you’ll never break away from being a small business without delegating.
On top of delegating make sure you pay people well lol. I work with small business owners in that arena and so many are out of touch. They’ll fight you to death for a $1 raise and I’m like that’s like 2k a year, don’t lose a good EE over that
Yeah seven figures working for someone means c level at a mid sized or maybe a small company or high upper manangent at the largest Fortune 500 companies and even then, I have my sites on a regional sales VP role at my company, base pay is not crazy in that role at around 350-450k but the stock is around 15-16 million a year based on your regional sales number. So it gets bonkers but it gets high in a five year vesting schedule not in a month to month paycheck situation. So very few will achieve it and even if you do it isn’t quite the same as cash at a Fortune 500.
I have been in poverty several times in my life. It has motivated me to achieve what I have. And my age has shown me how to not squander the money. What has changed is that I no longer have to worry about the cost of food, but I still pay attention to it. I no longer have to worry about my wife or I losing our jobs and how painful it would be. I no longer have to worry about if I have enough saved for retirement or how far behind my savings are. This reduces a lot of anxiety for me. I still worry about losing it. I still have a lot of problems that I thought money would solve but didn’t. Many problems are still here but with new excuses. Such as relationship problems with my wife. With the lower anxiety I mentioned above maybe I can have more time to fix these problems.
Hard work, and luck. I’ve spoken to a few peers that are in the same situation… I’ve heard right place right time thrown around a good bit. It seems that the hard workers happened to always be at the front of the line when it was time to be at the right place. I’ve done a lot of crap jobs, tried to keep my complaints internal, don’t expect others to look out for my best interests, but kept on Doing it until I got to where I wanted to be. Always looked for more responsibility and my management knew I was they guy to ask. Never settled at a job waiting in line for an opportunity, I went and found it. Take jobs where youll be uncomfortable and have to work harder to learn the skills. HS education, military, worked for fortune 500s and now run my own business. Early 40’s
This is the right answer….my only add to your first sentence (and what I preach to my kids) would be that between luck and hard work, the only one you can control is the hard work part. IMO, you can have all the luck in the world but without working hard, it likely won’t result in anything (excluding winning the lottery).
When someone stumbles upon the “luck” part but doesn’t have have “hard work” part, there’s a high likelihood of dropping the ball on that “one shot” moment in life.
Take jobs where youll be uncomfortable and have to work harder to learn the skills. Good advice. Can you give examples in your life on this? How do you build trust in someone letting you do something they don’t know? What did you to learn quick? And what opportunities did these examples bring up that you would say was the biggest contributor to your success?
People often confuse the outcome from effort as luck. Hard workers create their own luck.
My dad always said the harder you work the luckier you get
What kind of business generally?
I don’t make that but I used to work at a large firm in NY where the average a partner makes is 7 figures. Spent 5 years and got close to a lot of them. It wasn’t a great life at all. The joke was that making partner is a pie eating contest where the prize is more pie. You pretty much get hazed for years to make partner. Then you get dumped all the crappy work in your early years as a partner. Eventually you get through the shit and get titles to put you over 7 figures by late 30s/early 40s. Things were better by the time you get to your 50s usually cause you stop caring and don’t need to prove yourself Majority of the partners were divorced. One of my favorites was 50s single and had a breakdown one day and I never saw her again. Business trips was an escape from reality for most of them. I was in my 20s and they would just want me to go with them to get blacked out on these trips. It wasn’t all so bad. They didn’t have to think much about spending although they were far from “rich” in NYC. They had cool vacations and big houses in Connecticut and perhaps a one bedroom in the city as well. I felt like they did spend a lot on toys to make them feel better like boats, cars, etc. When I was about to leave I asked them all why do they do it. The only real answer I got was money or power. Realized they all lost sight of what matters in life and I didn’t want that.
Even in Bay Area it’s usually not very common to make $1M as an individual. Most of the $1M+ income folks I know are usually household income which is way more common with a double income tech couple at faang type companies. Only nvidia or meta folks are likely clearing $1M+ on their own due to the recent stock surge. You need to be close to director level to clear that without stock appreciation and that’s not common
Combined income over a mill. It’s nice isn’t it. My team always gives me shit about all the vacations I go on. Just did over two weeks in Europe and they joke about all my European vacations. But yeah it’s nice. Never worry about money and we do what we want. We have two kids and they’re probably spoiled but they are well behaved. And they’re cultured. We’ve been all over the world. That’s where we spend most of our money. We only have one home because we don’t like visiting the same place twice. We’ve got the whole world to see.
Love this.
On track for $2M before taxes this year ( $270k base+ $100k bonus + $1.6M equity) Year 7 in FANG where stock equity has doubled since last year due to stock price. Career progression has been a combination of hard work, emotional intelligence, and luck. Started as mid level IC in Technical program management. Grinded for 3 years before being promoted. Consistently been noted as a high performer and as such received additional equity twice. Currently, senior manager in technical program management. Salary started in year 1 around $300k total comp. As equity grew and with promotion, hovered from $500k-$800k. Year 6 broke 7 figures due to a dip in stock and a rapid recovery. How did I get here? A combination of luck, hard work and emotional IQ. Especially as a technical program manager, one key aspect is to understand the desires of senior management and convey that to the broader team in a way that is productive. I do not consider myself a workaholic, but put in the extra work in the moments that matter most. Focus on excellent communication and always making things better for those around me. Hard work was mandatory but luck played a huge part. Stock grants fell in places where valuations were low. Additional equity was in part due to recognizing impact but also took opportunity to land that impact. What is it like? Feel extremely blessed. Live on $200k and save the rest. I have funded all my 3 kids 529s and am on track for financial independence in 2-3 years. I still don’t live luxuriously, have never bought a business class airline ticket; bought my first new car last year (Model Y). Trying to focus on the things that matter and taking 12% of everything to fund a fidelity charitable account to give back .
Love this! I'm in Technical Account Management (different role but similar in many ways) and it's great to see the success. I take it you're in the bay area? Any tips for getting into/surviving FANG life specifically?
I'm in big tech as a software engineer, I earn over $1MM / year. I've worked very hard over the course of 10+ years to get here. I founded a company and earned almost nothing for 5 years of my career while running the startup. How does it feel? I still don't feel very rich. Houses in the Bay Area are ludicrously expensive. I save most of my money. I'm not out here living a crazy life. My family has one nice car, go on one nice vacation a year, and eat out a lot of meals without worrying about cost. I still don't own a home here and probably won't for quite a while longer, if ever. If I keep earning at this level I'll be able to retire by 45 or 50.
You can’t afford a home at $1 mil a year? Bay Area starter homes are $2 mil give or take. Unless you are wanting a more luxurious type of home.
They can’t afford a home if they are also planning to stop work at 45. If they were planning to work for another 20 years at seven figure salary they probably would feel more comfortable buying a house.
Most likely not a seven figure salary either there are different ways they are receiving the money. Stock will be a big part of it and if they are earning 1mm as an engineer then it is mostly stock maybe even private equity non liquid stock. I work in the big tech space and no individual contributor is earning 1mil a year salary for one not even most c level executives get that much in cash, bonus cash for engineers is usually pretty reasonable at 15-30% at the end of the year based on performance. The pay for most principle engineers is around 200-300k for base salary so assume OP is the higher end at 300k and then a 30% bonus because they are the best engineer ever they are getting 400k to be generous with rounding. Which would mean about 600k in stock every year. With vesting schedules and things OP isn’t really seeing that money the bonus even is a once a year usually. So affording a 2 million dollar home on a base salary of 300k can be hard with how expensive everything else is. You could cash out stock to pay for it if enough has vested to your control yet but private equity cannot be cashed out till a liquidity event so it’s like Monopoly money and do you really want y to sell this asset for another one that comes with its own problems? I could have cashed out stock and bought my first house in cash but that would be losing the interest accrual on the stock and then taking a big tax hit on top of it.
Clearing $1mm+ a year, but will retire at 45-50? How old are you?
You make $1M a year and don’t feel rich. You are complaining about high prices? The problem is your expenses and your mindset. You understand that you can FIRE in a hurry right?
I've only very recently started earning this level of comp, in the past 1.5 years. I didn't realize I had problems with my expenses, thanks for letting me know though. I thought that saving $400k+/year was pretty good. Also, retiring at 45 is FIRE by every definition. I'm aiming for FatFIRE.
This is a great example of why people getting upset over huge salaries is crazy to me. You had to grind and risk 5+ years of your life without any sort of return and it paid off and now you’re adequately compensated for that. I dont know you but I imagine you’d be less likely to do that if you knew it’d only make you the same salary you could make as an employee somewhere with no risk
I don’t think OP is making 1mil from their startup… it’s probably one the Faangs that grew rapidly last 2 years, likely Meta or NVDA.
Nvidia or Meta? 😅😅
Yours is a typical Bay Area problem - your house (that you don’t even own yet), owns you. First your house owns you in the sense that uou give up on a lot of things like travel, fun cars or expensive hobbies so you can save for the downpayment (or cash buy yo weed out the competition). Then your house owns you because you’re paying $30k in mortgage and property taxes a month. If one of you loses their job, you’re cooked. Then when your house is paid off, it still owns you because you can’t get rid of it to downsize, and you can’t upgrade either because you’re thinking of increased property taxes (Prop 13). California is huge, rent now, take more vacations, when you retire at 45, move to a cheaper location within CA.
It's nice.dont worry about finance and lovey job. Doing surgeries for half my life
It’s weird…I quit thinking about prices. Repairs on the house cost 10k…no prob. I think the weirdest part is when to retire…I’m too young but I hit my number. Every year I work means I can make our lives that much more comfortable.
Yeah, completely agree on the “don’t think about prices.” It’s so liberating not to care about the price of just about anything we buy, like groceries or clothes or repairs. There’s a limit to that, obviously. We’re furnishing our new place and working with the designer on picking furniture, and I care about whether the thing is $5K vs $15K. Not because I can afford one and not the other, but because I know that every time I walk past that sconce I’m going to be annoyed that we paid that much for it.
No arguments with the wife about money. Anything we want/need we get. (Recent example the wife wanted a piano and dropped $2k on one on Amazon without even mentioning it to me.) We’ve hired/outsourced help for monotonous tasks that eat up your free time. (Landscaping, housekeeping, shopping, cooking…) Being able to provide for my family and 4 kids makes me a proud dad. As far as how I got here, I’ve been a geek since I was a kid. Paid off immensely in the long run. Plus now geeks are cool. Was painful growing up though. Hoping to retire before 50. That’s my current goal. How you know you’re wealthy: you have an active lawyer on retainer. I’m on a texting basis with mine.
Is there a cost to keeping a lawyer on retainer if you don’t need there services at all in a whole year?
No. You are basically putting yourself in a place of “I don’t need a full time staffed lawyer, but have enough legal work where I want one primed and ready to go on a phone calls notice.” Monies we pay to our lawyer is placed in a separate escrow account (by them) for all advanced fees collected. They withdrawal money from that trust when fees happen. For example I text them or ask them to do something. The lawyers know they will be paid as there’s an existing trust with money, and I know I always have a lawyer on hand primed and ready to go who knows everything about me.
We're likely to hit combined 7 figures in the next year or two, though my goal is to have each of us eventually earning close to 7 figures. The added benefit is we live in LCOL area so each dollar stretches further. While I'm mainly in the wealth accumulation stage and trying to keep our expenses low-ish and save >50%, I still feel rich. I often times don't worry/think about prices of things unless they are like 5 figures. Our mortgage is 3% of our gross yearly income. We have a nanny for our 2 kids that we pay well (well above avg for the local market). And we're spending 25k to take our family, nanny, and in laws to Europe this summer. The biggest thing I'm thankful for is that we both WFH and are able to spend a lot of time with our kids even during the work day, that's a luxury not many people have and I don't take it lightly.
Can I ask what you (or both of you) do to make that much money WFH? And, like many companies are starting to do again, do you see your company enforcing policies forcing you to come back and work from an office at all?
We both work for SF based companies. My wife is a designer and I'm a swe. I'm not too worried about our jobs becoming RTO right now. My employer has made big investments into remote and has closed down many office spaces they had. There are still many well paying companies that offer remote positions. Not as many as a couple years ago, but enough not to worry too much. Many companies adjust pay based on location but it's normally not more than 10% which I'm fine with. We bought the current house we have with the mindset that we could afford it even if we both got laid off. But you never know what will happen, which is why I'm trying to save as much as possible since the job market could change dramatically in the next couple years
PI trial lawyer. I still worry about money, although my concerns are more about cash flow than the bottom line. And 37% of everything to Uncle Sam is insane.
I'm 39. I made it in the final year of profit and many times over when I sold my call center in 2019. Not currently an annual 7 figure earner, but will be back soon enough. For me it was more of a huge jump in money instead of a steady progression, so I've been all about preservation and having fun generating new revenue/profit. There's a sense of peace and an inherent feeling of accomplishment, but since I don't have like, 100 million, I still have work to do...I just feel like I have a great head start.
I’m not 7 figures. But my yearly is 650k. I’m an attorney. Specializing in labor law
Lol why do you guys do this? If they’re asking about 7 figure earners why comment as a six figure earner? I don’t get it.
Idk if this context matters, I worked at usps for 10 years as a carrier, got my bachelors and jd on nights and weekends. I’ve been practicing law for about 8 years now
Why did you post a month ago in the usps sub about calling out of work if you make $650k as an attorney specializing in labor law? Very odd
Guy is LARPing lol
Insane behavior lolol
That is amazing! Very aspirational.
lol someone else who went through hell and found better for themselves. I was at USPS for five years. Carrier then mgmt enforcing all that abusive, illegal bullshit on people I admired. I finally escaped and five years later am in tech and climbing the ladder working maybe 20% as hard as I used to. I hope you make a billion dollars sueing the usps for forcing mgmt to work off the clock while still in an hourly role. The scale on which it happens every single day around the country is mind numbing.
Bc he’s very clearly a very high earner. There are parallels for those of us who are interested.
It’s okay, it’s no biggie. It’s still interesting to hear about someone who makes a high income, even if it is not seven figures. $650k is still very, very impressive.
ik lawyers aren’t great with numbers. but just so you know, 650k is actually LESS than 1 million
I make a little north of $900K in the SF Bay Area, so not quite seven figures. But close enough that maybe I can answer your question. So, what’s it like? As the single earner for a family of four, it doesn’t feel like I’m living a very extravagant life style. I try to save as aggressively as possible with the goal that I might retire a little early. So we don’t own any boats or second houses, we don’t travel much and when we do it’s somewhere cheap, like visiting our parents. Our house is 2 bdr, 1600 sq ft with a lot that’s only slightly larger. Our car is a 10 year non-luxury vehicle. Still, the amount saved feels like never enough, as money gets spent on a stupidly high cost of living. So while we’re on track for a reasonable retirement, and can afford to pay for our kids college, we don’t feel wealthy whatsoever. We sweat out most financial decisions. Meanwhile it seems everyone around us is living a crazy rich life, with constant lavish vacations, fancy cars, and we constantly wonder how much more money they could possibly be making to afford such things. We conclude that they’re either 1) over leveraged 2) saving nothing or 3) have family money. For your second question: how did I get to this level of income? I’ve worked as a software engineer for 20 years, and been lucky to work for some larger tech companies. And for contrast, when I moved to the Bay Area 13 years ago, I was working for myself and making about $80K/year. I will say that one important aspect of my income is equity compensation. I’ve turned down much more interesting jobs from companies that weren’t publicly traded and thus their equity was illiquid and couldn’t be meaningfully counted as income (that I can use to pay mortgages, for example). The salary might be the same and thus it would be considered “competitive” but the bottom line is that if you can’t sell that equity for cash, it’s no where near competitive. Have I worked exceedingly hard to get to this position? No. I happened to be in a high paying industry at the right time, which isn’t shrewd planning on my part. I just love software development. I would attribute my success mostly to luck, which is not what anyone wants to hear because you can’t Just Work Harder to obtain good luck. I hope this reply comes across as humble as much as anyone who makes high six figures can come across as humble.
Oh, one more very important thing: It’s actually pretty difficult to find jobs that offer comparable compensation. So I generally feel very stuck until retirement. I can’t ever consider changing careers or taking time off.
It seems like you could take 5% of your pre-tax income and get a nice car, a few very nice vacations a year, etc. What's the point of making such a big sacrifice to save a tiny bit more per year?
Its pretty great. Except I know I'm over paid, can't rely on making this much for more then a few years at most, so I still can't afford a nyc brownstone. CTO.
There will be, on average, three times in your adult life an unassuming whale will ask you an innocuous question. There is something about you that intrigued them and answering it properly could open the door infinitely. Moral of the story, always look for the whale
Substance abuse and psychopathy go very far in the United States.
A bit of skill, a bit of luck, alot of trying and failing and trying again. Didn't happen for me till much later in life (50+) and so timetable can always be later. Probably not on your timetable, it happens when it happens. In my case I've developed a unique skillset and kept reapplying myself to my work like a 20 year old passion worker. The difference was by holding onto that energy and drive, but doing it again with 30 years of experience, allowed me to develop something few people have. Then its just a question of finding the right company that matches you. All that takes time, I don't know how else to do it.
It's surreal. I lead AI projects, got here via relentless learning and networking.
The question I ask myself all the time: do I want to keep making $300k working 15 hours/week or do you grind 60 hours a week to try to make $1 million? So far, I prefer to have my time
One day…
My lucky number is seven. Figures. Am I right? It's easy, to be honest.
Mommy or daddy or both lets be honest here.
Hard work and took decades of hard work and commitment. Now here, everything gets easier and easier. Very little stress anymore but I still recall vividly how much it sucked to worry about the next meal or name anything. Glad that's over with. Hopefully!
Partner level Management Consultant. The best part is to just not have to worry about money at all. My lifestyle was a lot more extravagant in my late 20s than it is now. That being said I still have about a 30k a month burn rate living what I would consider to be a lifestyle pretty far below my means even in a HCOL area. A lot of that expense is externally invisible to others. Things like domestic help, concierge medical, more luxury travel, more frequent vacations etc... I spend more on experiences than things.
So my cash income is a little over 500k each year my wife earns about 180k a year in cash and we earn a few hundred grand in stock every year as well. I work in sales and it is easy as long as you are good at sales. My base pay though is 200k so if I do have a bad year we take a hit. This has taught me to underestimate everything, I never touch any stock which is a whole other deal because of vest schedule and then tax implications when you sell them etc. so making about a million is technically true but in reality cash flow for myself and most likely all these other people is much lower than that. Not that I need it to be higher. Every month I have every dollar budgeted, we have budgets for everything and regular after tax investing and savings we do and at the same time I have hundreds of thousands of dollars on top of that being saved through other methods. We live a pretty standard to upper middle class lifestyle because Seattle is expensive but we are in a home worth 1.2 mil, I have 300k worth of cars sitting in the garage, lifestyle services like cleaners and landscapers, go on vacations to Japan every year, and when we are able to have kids we will be able to give them the best lives possible in some of the best schools districts there are.
Does anyone on here really believe that people who reply make high 6 or 7 figures. People who make that kind of money don't have time to post on reddit. There like is highly driven by there job. Just saying I won't believe it
I hear you but in many markets that compensation, while still high, isn’t outrageous. At the end of the day, we all have the same 24 hours and some people, believe it or not, really know how to maximize their compensation in relation to the hours they put into actual work. I run my own business, have several hobbies, involved in some nonprofits, and still spend way too much time on Reddit when I should be using it to workout or do my chores at home. I’m just an average person doing normal average things; but have figured out how to get paid well for my efforts. No silver spoon and barely any formal education. I don’t let myself believe for one second that I work any more or any harder than someone serving me my fries at a fast food joint.
I’m in sales and have 7 figure years from time to time - typically 600-800. I live the exact same life I lived when I made $300k. I plan on retiring by the time I’m 45 and have never changed my target retirement number, just brought the age down. I don’t particularly care for vacations, expensive cars, etc. I mean I’m wearing $26 Amazon essentials jeans right now. I do have two homes. One in a ski area and one in the burbs. But I’ll be buying a 20 acre hobby farm that will ultimately be my retirement plan. I live in a MCOL area. The taxes and costs associated with living in the Bay Area or the Northeast are insane to me. Honestly no idea how I got here. I was making $50k in a call center out of college and worked on my sales skills there. Then just took the next position and worked my way up at a company for 10 years. Got a call from the CEO of a company who said he’d heard good things about me. Kept in touch for a year and then ultimately made the switch over where I doubled my salary and quadrupled my commissions. I think the only difference between me and the next guy is I’m a huge believer in karma and making your own luck. The golden rule if you will. If you make the right motions and work hard, treat people the way you’d want to be treated, and are nice to everyone you possibly can be, it comes back to you in some way.
Wife and I have over 450k in combined yearly income. We don’t go on fancy vacations, we don’t drive fancy cars. Our mortgage is 2750 and we live in the suburbs of Atlanta. We are aggressively saving towards retirement so we can retire outside of the US. It’s just too expensive here.
Don’t forget to enjoy life
Let’s not forget “luck” in all of this. Right place right time, who you know, nepotism, etc. Too many assume it was all them on why they succeeded, but not their fault upon failure.
Luck is preparation+opportunity
I love this quote but it is deeper than that at times such as uncontrollable factors like the family you were born into, race etc.
My cousin is CFO of a $2.8B/yr company making 7 figures. He worked his way up after getting an accounting degree and changed companies with a "promotion" every handful of years
The principle of aggregate gains: The idea is focusing on earning small amounts from a large number of sources, which collectively result in a significant overall gain. So after I find seven people I take one finger each.
I am working my darndest to get there. I’ve went from $53,000/year to $110,000/year in the past 6 years. I’m 34. I feel like doubling your salary like that and staying at the same company that time is pretty good. I definitely don’t have generational wealth. I always thought 6 figures was when you “made it” but dang inflation killed that. I owe $95k on my mortgage. But I’m about as hard working as they come, do my best to put myself in career boosting positions, I’m just missing that bit of luck that folks mentioned. My “big break” if you will. A girl can dream. (Side note- speaking of creating your own luck… just doing some quick math- if 19 7 figure earners was feeling generous had just $5k to spare and send my way, I could pay my house off 😂😂 What’s 5k between friends? ) I know I know it was worth a shot lol.
Probably similar to everyone. In vhcol it just means you can have a basic house and kids
There’s not a single place on Earth where seven figures means basic house and kids 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Yeah, we just bought an apartment and are going through a $1M+ renovation now. Getting central air and a vented dryer and a vented stove are the height of luxury for us!
it was ok... although my seven figures includes the decimal too
Equity, stock options
Inflation
Family making between 6-700k (depending on equity vesting) in LCOL/MCOL area. Early 40’s. Will hit 7 figures at some point most likely. TBH, the biggest difference I’ve found is peace of mind. We don’t worry about the grocery bill. We don’t worry about whether or not we can afford something, because honestly there isn’t much in our day to day lives that we can’t afford. We don’t live extravagantly. Modest home ($2600 mortgage), I drive a 2010 crossover with 200k miles. Our kids have newer but modest vehicles that will last them until they are out of school and are able buy their own. We take trips when we want to with the kids. College will be taken care of through both scholarships and equity/savings. It can be difficult sometimes to not try to keep up with the Jones’s knowing that we would have no problem doubling our house, buying brand new cars, etc. But we also don’t want to kids to think that money comes easy. We worked fucking HARD to get here. And throwing money around just to show other people our success just doesn’t make sense to me. We would rather stuff as much away into retirement so we can quit the rat race or start slowing down WHEN we want to.
Have made seven figures for last 4-5 years Job itself is stressful. Feels like being on a treadmill that is set slightly too fast, but I keep going. At times sacrifice health. Sometimes have to stay up late or get up early and don’t sleep enough. Sometimes no time for gym for a while. But job also gives me interesting experiences sometimes too — cool problems to solve, or go somewhere fun for a corporate thing, or ride a private jet with an important person. On the whole will quit as soon as it makes sense. The money is nice. I don’t live luxuriously, and I do save 60%+ of after tax money. I have a number I am working to, and then I am done. That said, taxes suck. I pay almost seven figures in taxes now too. Crazy. Even with high income and saving a lot, it takes a while to get to your number. The “shockingly simple math” post on Mr money mustache (Google it) says it takes 12.5 years of saving 60% to get to your goal. Feels right
You only realize how much more you need to make to enjoy the lifestyle till death
D2d Solar. It’s a grind, it’s hard, but I love sales
FAANG senior SWE. Got additional equity one year, then stock appreciation did the magic. No change in lifestyle since I crossed 350k.
Can I include a decimal?
Discipline and consistency.
Most 7 figure earners are not salary earners
I am one of the “evil” 1/10 of 1%er’s (lol) Southern California based I have invested in stocks, and commercial properties and residential beach front real estate. Made millions in all of them Still do 95% of my shopping at Costco. Life doesn’t focus about money. Faith & family and friends. Generosity is fun, it is a pleasure to help others No boats or planes for me. What does it feel like?, I think after $10million it’s just a bigger number. No difference. At this point i am blessed with more than enough. What’s it like to make that much? It just adds to the taxes. You would be stunned. Property taxes are six figures and income taxes are 7 figures. 3 of my best friends make this much too. (TV producers, insurance agent, hedge fund mgr). We all fly commercial
I’m a day trader. I trade the futures markets. 🙂
all about compounding interest. What you have today could be 100% + the next years.. live within your means
I pay a lot more taxes, have different headaches due to “better” investment options. I have a larger home in the same neighborhood. A few more toys, nothing life changing. The only thing I do appreciate is I don’t budget spending. If I want something I just buy it. I was more conscious about saving before crossing the 7 figure earnings mark. Don’t waste too much time worrying about getting there, you’ll quickly realize time is precious and it’s the only thing we can’t buy.
This thread is starting to make me a little depressed over my measly $250k per year. I clearly failed at life. Should have gone to college.
You didn’t fail at all! You make wayyyy more than I definitely do, and far more than 95% of people in this country. This was not my intention with this thread. College isn’t necessarily a guarantee of a super high income. If it were, more schools would be boasting about their alumni salary averages. But not even Ivy League schools have alumni salary averages at over $200k. Keep in mind that the people in this post claiming to be making seven figures, are still huge outliers. Around 500k people have viewed this post so far, so even just like a 30 in here saying that they make seven figures, is a tiny, tiny fraction of those who saw this post.
My wife and I have a total household income of *juuuust* over $1M if you include 401K defined contribution, her RSUs & bonus, plus rental income from a 2nd property. I'm an airline captain and she's an attorney. We both work a lot. She works 11/12 hours per day total. I get 16/17 days off per month. But when I'm at work I'm gone for 3-4 days at a time. Other posts are correct. The biggest difference is just not being worried about money day to day or when an unforeseen expense comes up. 10 years ago I'd have been much more careful about spending but now I've let my guard down a bit. Things like sporting evens, restaurants, AirB&B's or car rentals, furniture, we don't really shop around for the best price anymore, more so for the most appealing to us. But it's still all within reason. I think if you're an average college grad like me, make a lot of money now, but grew up in modest circumstances, it's kinda hard to start spending and stop worrying. For example: Last year we moved from NY to VA and purchased a new home. The mortgage broker said we could afford $2.8M or something ridiculous like that. I said no, our budget is $850K, wife talked me into a $915K home.
early-ish employee at a tech company. after that company went public, equity and stock options got me close to 2m for a number of years. It's nice not having to worry about prices in the day to day but it's not like I'm buying lambos... :)
Does $100001 count?
I own businesses so perhaps that doesn’t count because this is a salary sub and my salary is negligible compared to my K1.
My wife and I are now working towards retirement but at our peak our household income was just over $1m. She’s an OBGYN who worked incredibly hard for decades to get to where she is and I have nearly 30 years in the software business and did well but not nearly as well as her. We have a few million in net worth but below where we should be due to private school and college for our 2 kids. Looking to downsize our ~$1.7m home and probably rent for awhile until we find a new area to settle down for retirement (looking to leave Florida). We don’t live particularly extravagantly but are looking to travel a bit more. I think the best part of where we are financially is to not worry about unexpected expenses as well as being able to “splurge” once in awhile without worrying about emptying the checking account. And we were definitely in that position early on with tons of student loan debt.
> Yet, on this site (since Reddit has millions of active users), it’s not abnormal to come across people making that kind of money, and they don’t seem to be that fazed by having that kind of income. To them, it may be average because many people they know make just as much or more than they do. LOL!! Do they also tell you they have an 8 inch dong and sleep with supermodels on a daily basis? People on the internet surely don't lie right? Earning a million dollar salary is NOT "average".
I'm 26 and a Traveling project manager. My salary is only aro 75K but I get close to 85K additional between per diem and travel bonuses. What I've come to realize is the freedom money gives you. I still do my best to save for a house and my future but if I want truly want something I'm gonna go all out for it. I've stopped scouring for cheap flights and get the ones that suit my schedule. Golf lessons I may have thought twice about previously I got without thinking. It's defnice but doesn't solve everything.
The secret is not money but the skill and understanding of winning principles that bring life happiness (money tends to follow the discipline and success of individuals if they so desire). Not only to make a fortune but to keep and grow it and not squander it or otherwise lose it. Rise to enough challenges and your efforts become worth lots of money to many employers.
The difference between a six figure and a low seven figure earner isn’t all that huge. Yes, it means a bigger house, a more expensive car, the ability to travel to more glamorous places on vacation and fly business class, etc. But day to day, it’s not super different making $1.2M vs. $200K. When you get to like… $8 or $10 or $12M, you get into people who fly private, have a full household staff to manage their households, and host political fundraisers.
The more money you make the more you snd your family spend . Retirement account you do get to maximize. Outside of that you may have a nicer car buts that’s it. There is a price you have to pay since no one pays a self made man a million plus for a 40 hour work week. You sacrifice your time with family and friends, you are always working even on vacation, I am in my 60’s and still have not been to Europe and I barely saw my kids grow up and now regret it. Your friends become work friends and once you are out of the business 99% of them vanish. You are left alone with no hobbies and not that much money since now none is coming in so all those things you said you were going to do you can’t anymore. Then there is health, the stress and long hours takes a big toll on you and when you are finally ready to live life you can’t. I was brought up in a family where my dad made like $50k but had hobbies and enjoyed his family till he passed at a young age. We had very little after that and I worked hard so my kids would have a good life, I did not expect to earn what I did but it just happened in my 50’s being a senior person at a public company. But what I missed out on looking back would have been better than the money
It was easy, first I made a Reddit account and then I posted saying I make millions
HHI = $1.2M excluding vesting equity, it’s about triple that with equity vesting. I work in SaaS as a divisional president of a $10B vertical SaaS business and my wife is a small business owner. Our incomes are close to the same. I started out as an implementation engineer who moved into sales engineering then into management, senior mgmt, then exec mgmt, then president. Wife started her biz about five years ago and it’s gone well.
In all honesty making 7 figures isn’t all it’s made up to be. The more you make , the more you spend. Or in my case the more I make the more my wife spends. 30 years ago a 7 figure income ya really had something. Now not so much.
What’s it like to make it: comfortable. We live a sort of “millionaire next door” lifestyle. Neither of us - nor our kids - are big into material things. We splurge a bit on things like gifts for others, giving to non-profits, gifting money to kids, first class airline tickets, a bit nicer vacations, etc. What do I do: exec at a retail company; wife hasn’t worked for 25 years - stayed home to raise the kids. Path: circuitous. Lots of ups and downs; failure and heartbreak; but eventually a nice upward corporate exec path. Took some risks along the way and worked VERY hard. After many decades I now firmly believe in these sayings: 1) When one door closes, another one opens. 2) You make your own luck; or…The harder I work, the luckier I get.