Once your basic needs are met, the equation becomes: Salary = Expenses + Savings. So, the questions becomes, how much savings makes you happy?
If you are happy to work in your job until “retirement age”, a small savings rate will do, in theory; that is if the salary is adjusted for cost-of-living and tax.
Are you happy working this job for the rest of your life? Full time (whatever that means in your work culture)?
Yes, I’m lucky enough to have a good salary, but I can tell people there is no top limit. Once you have your needs met then you’re exactly right, it’s about retirement planning and savings, and there could always be more. The fact is that the only true money amount that will make someone happy is the amount that allows them not to work anymore
For me, other factors are much more important than the salary.
A tedious job with unpleasant colleagues would never make me happy, no matter how high the salary. On the other hand, if I had a job that was fun and had nice colleagues, I would be happy with a salary that only covered the essentials.
Also, I would rather have a salary that only covers the essentials for 30 hours a week than a salary twice as high for 60 hours a week. What good is money if I can never spend it?
There are more factors that are more important to me than the salary. How much physical labor is involved in the job? Do I have to work at night? Do I work shifts or do I have flexible working hours? Does the employer offer a pension plan? Are there any other benefits? Where would I have to work, close to friends and family or far away? …
Yeah, there really isn’t just one threshold value that would make me happy. More is better of course, but there are too many other factors.
Though it’s probably worth mentioning that I don’t have any children and don’t plan on having any.
Words can convey negative connotations. Why perpetuate negative colloquialisms that serve to preserve hierarchies of world order? “Third World “ is a constructed designation meant to oppress. Stuff matters, even if it doesn’t to you.
I never said it didn’t, this just isn’t the right place and in this context it does not matter. It’s a term we all know the meaning of and that’s what’s important.
I wouldn’t say I’m sorry for making you think about the context behind the meaning of words, but because you have had to spend so much energy on this, I apologize.
Money alone isn’t going to make me happy. Yeah, it removes a lot of one type of stress. But it can also be a trap. Like, I’m doing solidly okay in my job, but it’s enough that I can’t easily quit and start over in a different career, even though I stopped caring about this one a decade ago. And a high-paying job can come with a lot of other stressors, things that keep you working harder and longer hours than you otherwise would.
$100k would probably seem pretty good for a long time, given where I currently live. If I had to live in NYC, I’d probably say more like $500k.
I make 120k in a medium sized city where the median income is about 75k. I’m pretty content, tbh. I also don’t buy shit i don’t need. Most of my expenses are my hobbies. I do have a lot of hobbies. But I still make enough every two weeks where I’m able to stash it away in a savings account.
Now if I only knew how to and had the balls to invest beyond retirement accounts.
Investing tip #1: don’t take advise from strangers on the Internet
Investing tip #2: get a zero commission trading app, like Fidelity or TD Ameritrade, and just squirrel away a bit of each paycheck/monthly/whatever into a low expense ratio, broad market ETF, like VOO (etfdb.com/etf/VOO/#etf-ticker-profile)
Start slow, but contribute regularly. Keep enough cash in the bank for emergencies, and don’t bother even thinking about trying to “time the market” - just set it and forget it.
Criteria for that one: low expense ratio, so you aren’t losing (much) money to the fund manager, large market cap, so you are less succeptible to shock, and the ETF probably isn’t going anywhere, and as a S&P 500 ETF, it holds stocks from all 500 businesses in the S&P 500 (weighted by the respective market cap of said businesses), so it’s not tied to any single sector, making it more resilient for long-term investment.
A question like this could be an intro to a shady MLM pitch. Break the ice, get the conversation going and gain a sense of the range of numbers to make up for earnings examples.
If I live in 90% of the US, something like $150k would buy me a very comfortable life. If I was in the major cities, I would say $300k would be enough for me to not worry about finances.
It’s not like rural areas are back in a pre-currency feudal era. You still have costs. 150k is very comfortable but you can easily spend it living out in the country, especially if you want to bootstrap a homestead, hobby farm, or just generally make good use of land.
Oh I travel a lot, we get 30 days of paid leave. I’ve also changed countries for work 9 times over the last 22 years already, so you could say traveling is part of my work, in a sense. Travel doesn’t really make a noticeable dent in my savings though.
I’ve always tried to be more of a generalist than a specialist and wanted an international career. So I started with a vocational training as a banker, thinking that finance works pretty much the same all over the world. In Germany where I’m from originally you learn banking as a trade, not at university, so you basically work full time in a bank and attend classes at a vocational school for about 2.5 years and then graduate with a diploma in banking.
I’ve then started a bachelor’s in business administration (again very generalist on purpose) in evening & weekend classes while continuing to work in the bank, and then by chance the university I attended opened a campus in Luxembourg. Since that’s full of banks I just thought I’ll try my luck and was eventually hired by a wealth management office there and could continue my degree more or less seamlessly (had to take one semester break for the local students to catch up).
In the job I did all kinds of stuff from back office, trade support, some customer facing roles, a bit of compliance and KYC, and eventually they asked me to support with a major IT implementation project since I had working knowledge of 2/3 of the inhouse departments, so that was my first stint into project work. Took about 2 years and was big fun.
By the time I was about to graduate I was however fed up with all the rich people and decided to try my luck at the opposite end of the spectrum, reached out to a ton of NGO’s, development agencies etc., and eventually got a job as a project consultant for a microfinance holding operating local microfinance banks in Africa and Central Asia. They basically brought me on as domestic staff in the respective countries (Liberia, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar and Georgia) to implement projects locally. I’d take on operational roles during this period (head of finance, deputy COO, head of IT security…) to have the required local authority, and would after project implementation phase myself out and hand the project over to daily operations there. Typically I’d be 6 months - 2 years in country, depending on the complexity. At that time I also started to work on a part-time MBA, since in many countries it’s getting harder and harder to receive a residence permit with only a bachelor’s. Didn’t aim for the stars here, I wanted a cheap and easy degree, and managed that in about 3 years.
Afterwards I joined the holding’s head office and actually devised the projects and coordinate with other consultants in the target country to help them implement it, but that got boring soon. In my spare time I ventured into the medical field as I had seen a lot of crap down in Africa, got certified in medical entrepreneurship and ISO 13485 auditing (medical device quality management systems), and ultimately a German startup wanted to open a factory in China and approached me if I wanted to help set it up. They were basically looking for someone with entrepreneurial spirit and track record of succeeding in foreign countries, not really an industry expert as they had enough of those in-house.
So we’ve embarked on a fact finding mission in late 2017, and ever since early 2018 I’ve been living in China now, first as local CEO of the factory, and then doing what I always did - hiring teams, setting up facilities, and making myself redundant. I basically stepped down through the ranks from CEO over CTO and COO to regulatory director, then procurement manager and will soon leave China as a supply chain auditor. Which is ideal since I will only interact with suppliers, making me location independent. I’ll essentially work from home or at the supplier’s site from now on, and have chosen Malaysia as my new home starting April/May. Just waiting for the paperwork to be out.
I’ll be a grossly overpaid auditor, basically… But they wouldn’t dare cutting back after I was fundamental in setting things up to begin with :-)
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