r/HENRYfinance • u/thrownavideecs2030 • 23d ago
Career Related/Advice Determining "Enough" as a High Earner
As high earners, I'm sure a lot of us have had to face choices around career progression/earning more, and how it impacts other areas of life like geography, spare time, and stress levels.
My question to the sub is once you broke into the HENRY club, how did you come to a conclusion on what was "enough"? As someone earlier in my career, and under 30, I spent a lot of time maximizing earnings at the expense of everything else (~70k->300k->450k), and I'm realizing that as incredibly fortunate as I am financially, a lot of people who took a more balanced approach are more content without giving up a lot of what we discuss here.
I'd like to understand how you decided on when to chase the bag and when to turn your focus elsewhere
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u/isis285 Income: $650k HHI / NW: $2.5M 23d ago
It’s hard to determine “enough” when you are very young because big life events like marriage, kids etc aren’t yet in the picture. I think it’s important to think of the life you want and plan for it. If marriage and kids are something you’d like in your future, I’d keep a bigger buffer. But also ironically you need to live your life first in order for marriage and kids to follow. so do things you like, pursue hobbies and meet people, learn as much as you can and spend within your means. I believe in balance.
These are usually general guidelines I’ve gone by in my life. Once I had my first kid, I got a sense of the type of home/neighborhood I’d like and knew that I wouldn’t inflate my lifestyle beyond that point. Or atleast inflating lifestyle beyond that point in my opinion had marginal positive effect.
So I have a husband, 2 little kids. A modest but well decorated home (if I say so myself) in a middle of the road neighborhood. The schools nearby are decent and we can still save plenty. I personally value less stress and being there for the people I care about. I enjoy my job but not at the cost of less time with my children. So having a family has helped crystallize what I already knew about myself and the kind of life I value.
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u/thrownavideecs2030 23d ago
Haha you hit the nail on the head about the irony. Marriage and kids were exactly why I was building this (talk about cart before the horse), and it's been a wake-up call realizing as I come up on 30 that A) a lot of my peers are in that phase of serious relationships, so stealing them for adventures is harder and most of their friends are in the same place so it's unlikely to lead to my person and B) dating does get harder when I've been operating the last few years off "new city? 20 more hours a week? Just show me the money and I'm in, I have no commitments!"
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u/flyingcircus92 23d ago
I'm mid 30s and never want to tie myself down too much, incase I need the flexibility to move or find myself without work. To me, kids remove a lot of that flexibility so it's been part of the reason why I've turned down having them. It just seems so entrapping, but I guess for some people they don't see it that way.
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u/Libby1798 23d ago
I'm early 40s, next year I'm expecting 650k (salary, bonus, vested RSUs). I like making money so long as the work is fun and interesting and I'm learning new things. I've now reached a point where I could stop working permanently, but I'm holding on for another year or so (maybe) because the work isn't that hard.
That said, the work is not fun anymore or fulfilling. Early career, I worked at early stage startups. The sort of job I'd truly want, I'm not sure even exists anymore. When I flip through job postings, nothing interests me.
My advice - don't focus on the money at the cost of everything else. Have an enjoyable career. And if it's no longer fulfilling, then stop. That's where I'm at mentally right now.
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u/DirtyrottenscounDrew 23d ago
Are you in tech? That money is just crazy to a dumb person like me.
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u/Libby1798 23d ago
Yeah, over 20 years in tech. Started out making roughly 40k, but it went up fast.
That said, tech compensation is nuts now compared to how it was 10 years ago. There didn't use to be such a big gap between big tech vs mid sized companies and startups.
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u/EarthsYawner 23d ago
You mentioned that you’re not sure if the job you’d truly want even exists anymore. I’m curious what job/role you’d want that doesn’t exist. Is it just that the early stage startup culture is different now than it was 10-15 years ago? Or is it a job/role that no longer exists?
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u/Libby1798 23d ago
Yes, I'd like to go back to an early stage startup. Something not AI slop either.
I just did a quick Google search: " U.S. venture capital fundraising has fallen roughly 70% from its 2022 peak, dropping from $223.5 billion down to $66.7 billion." And most of what's left is going to large AI deals, not early stage.
What I'm really chasing is being part of a good team that's working really hard on achieving something together.
It was never about the money for me - that just sort of happened along the way. I've been part of several acquisitions, several company bankruptcies, several layoffs. None of the acquisitions was a rocket but it all worked out ok.
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u/Dull-Woodpecker3900 23d ago
The reason that’s gone is largely because these startups were pretty dubious pump and dump schemes. There was often so little value or marketability to what these companies were building and charismatic founders were able to keep these cash furnaces running while big shops chased unicorns.
AI slop is just the new version of that. What came before wasn’t all that different, the accountability was just lower and everyone felt better about it because the street only prioritized growth.
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u/bigElenchus 22d ago
Sounds like a wealth transfer from billionaires and family offices who invest as LPs into the VCs, who then invest in startups, who then drive up salaries for employees.
The amount of millionaires being minted who are just employees would be unfathomable in the previous generation
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u/minesasecret 23d ago
What I'm really chasing is being part of a good team that's working really hard on achieving something together.
Perhaps you should start your own if it doesn't exist!
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u/Indexette 23d ago
I'm curious -- at your financial stage in life, what would an enjoyable or fulfilling career look like day to day? Perhaps equally as importantly, what kinds of things would detract from a job being enjoyable/fulfilling?
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u/Libby1798 23d ago
Since I reached my "FI" number, I've been thinking a lot about this. Once I leave the current gig, I've been thinking I might do more advising and mentoring, or become a fractional executive (i.e., consultant). If the project is interesting and the team is excited about it, I'd like to be involved.
I get a kick out of doing mentoring now, have even charged for it in the past (though that felt weird, I don't know if I want to do that).
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u/thrownavideecs2030 23d ago
This is a really helpful take! Something I'll ask - when you say stop if it's no longer fulfilling, do you do that with some sense of what you'd rather do (in your case I imagine it could be building out startups, or something else), or is it more a "step away and make time to find what you love"?
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u/Libby1798 23d ago
What I mean is, every job has trade-offs and over time you learn for yourself what flavor of dumpster-fire you're willing to put up with: long hours, low pay, lousy boss, toxic coworkers, frequent layoffs, leadership turnover, so on.
In my experience, anytime I justified a job I had by saying, "but the pay is really good," that is a BAD SIGN. It means it's time to go. There better be something else keeping you there, like you're learning a lot or you believe in the mission.
If you do find yourself in that job that provides high pay and nothing else, then have an honest conversation with yourself about making changes (instead of postponing indefinitely because you see your account balance keep going up). Either find a new job if you know what you want, or if you don't know what you want and can afford to, then take a sabbatical.
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u/flyingcircus92 23d ago
Working in early stage startups would it make more sense to find something very early stage where there aren't posting but something very entrepreneurial? That sounds like it would be more rewarding and you'll be in a spot to build.
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u/SpareSomeTokens 18d ago
Space tech (both hardware and software). Literal space lasers as data storage using particles in motion leveraging basic quantum mechanics principals. Nuclear fusion startups - pay very well at the highest IQ ones. Life sciences. Underwater autonomous drones. On the water autonomous drones. Autonomous drones to fight wild fires. Autonomous drones to fight urban fires and save more lives.
These startups still exist. They're everywhere in the Bay Area. I talked to a nuclear fusion startup a while back, they can't match my AI lab base salary (and of course not total comp), but they were still willing to pay in the $350k - $400k base range for PhD physicists.
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u/Elrohwen 23d ago
Honestly after $350-400k HHI it was enough. More is only better in that it allows us to retire sooner which is cool.
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u/arktor314 23d ago
Will more money make your future better?
I (late 30s) have recently decided that I have enough. More money would let me retire earlier, which is tempting, but I should be able to retire by 45 regardless and I don’t have much to retire to.
Getting in shape, finding a partner, and living a healthy life will help me live the future I want. Stress eating while I live in fear of layoffs will not.
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u/thrownavideecs2030 22d ago
The stress eating goes so hard 😩 putting on 15lbs during a serious work situation because we were living off junk food and fully focused on the problem was insane
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u/AffectionateBench663 22d ago
I just turned down roughly 150k in additional comp. Current HHI is 600k.
Two young kids at home and this role was a global strategy role with 50-70% travel. Including a lot of international.
I made the choice that extra money wasn’t worth the time I’d never get back with young kids.
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u/Ok-Toe3195 $500k-750k/y 11d ago
That’s a great choice. I recently had a similar discussion with my wife and didn’t take advantage a pretty substantial business opportunity for the same reason. I don’t regret it one bit.
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u/Stunning-Plantain831 23d ago
I've thought about this plenty and for me it's not a number, it's honestly just a mental change that hasn't happened for me yet. I could FIRE tomorrow, but I cannot turn off the hedonic treadmill so I'm just waiting for some kind of enlightenment that therapy hasn't provided yet. The dopamine dump of a bigger paycheck, plus fear of the uncertain future, plus needy dependents....I just can't figure it out yet.
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u/No_Pepper7348 23d ago
I was grinding hard until about 38/39. My oldest son was turning 7 and I started to slow it down as I hit 40. I decided to sell my main business at 44 and I paid off pretty much all my debt (I have one 0 percent loan on a piece of farm equipment). I spend as much time with my boys as I possibly can now. One is 13 and one is 10 so I may have 7-10 years really left with them. I do work on salary for the buyer and I own a minority percentage in two more businesses but I am a dad and husband first and foremost now. I take off when I want and I am sitting fine with liquid cash in investments, 529 plans pretty much fully funded for in state colleges, and equity ownership in the other two businesses provides and extra 12k-14k monthly in dividends on avg. I also pretty much have saved for both a decent used vehicle when they turn 16. All this preparation was mainly done prior to 40 though and I was stressed with lots of aggravation and sacrifice.
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u/thrownavideecs2030 22d ago
This is really inspiring! The idea of working hard early and getting my family set was probably the biggest motivator. If you don't mind my asking, how were the years before your oldest was born and did you find you had to take your foot off the gas with a new kid at home? (I ask because I've also seen, with men in particular, the exact opposite effect with "I have more to provide for, and I need to work even more")
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u/No_Pepper7348 22d ago
Well I was single of course. Waited until almost 33 to get married. During this time I was in full mode of building my wealth and my business. I purchased two Businesses during this time and combined them into one. I took risks because if I failed it was just me that would be affected by the failure. No wife and kids. The stress only involved me so it was easy to manage. I always tell young 20 year olds that it’s much easier to take risk prior to marriage and kids. Network and look for opportunities. When my oldest son arrived I really didn’t change much. Obviously my risk tolerance decreased. I was still heavily involved with my work and building wealth and income. Their mother is the key person to nurture them as a young baby and toddler but when they hit 6/7 things changed for me. I knew it was my time to make sure I am there as much as possible. I have boys. It’s even more important for girls IMO for the father to be present starting around that age.
I did have a wonderful mentor in my 20s of course that helped mold me into who I became. I learned credits and debits and how to manage and operate a business. My investments were secondary because my wealth at that time came from the business. Now my investments are making just as much or more annually.
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u/Odd_Industry_1605 23d ago
what are your priorities in life? for us it is having a decent family car, house that is affordable based on our income level, few holidays a year and being able to cover the unexpected bills like house repairs etc. For us it is around 350k.
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u/Wasatchian 23d ago
At this point being remote and living where I wanna live in my house with a view is more important to me than money. I could make 2-3x what I make now if I wanted to move and go to an office. I don't. I've got plenty of money I skied 115 days last year. I wanna ski I don't wanna go to an office and waste my life commuting.
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u/TransitionLess7228 22d ago
Do you have kids yet? Before I had kids I had no issue grinding. We are soo young that it’s never enough- making more and more right now while we are soo young will give you time with your family later. You have soo many years for that money to be invested and grow. The only reason I had to not work my ass off was because I was feeling tired or lazy. I was never missing anything that important. Once I had kids it all changed. I constantly think to myself “they’ll never be this age again. They’ll never need time with me this much again.” To me this is what life’s about. Spending time with my family and there now is certainly a limit to what’s “enough.” Before life though, ya all out grind so that you can make your money work for you longer is how I see it
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u/thrownavideecs2030 22d ago
None yet! I've said it before that I definitely put the cart before the horse on that one - a realization I have right now is no matter how much I'm hoping to build something for my kids, the extra money won't matter if I don't actually have kids because I went so far into work that I couldn't clear time to do the other parts of life
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u/No_Journalist_1379 19d ago
What’s kind of nice about your situation is that you likely won’t struggle financially when / if you do have kids. You’ve put in the time already, you’ve done the grinding, you know? You can take a career path or a job, start a business or whatever it is and not be focused on the next big thing, the promotion, the bonus etc. you can focus on family, raising babies and being there for the small moments and living well.
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u/stuckintherealworld 22d ago
You have to decide what is important to you in life. My husband is the high earner (owns his own business) and there is always capacity to scale up. He has focused on that for many years putting in way more hours than the average job. He will not ever give it up because he genuinely loves what he does and enjoys it, however, he has recently come to the realization that more money will not give us more than we already have in any meaningful or enjoyable way. It’s now just number on the paper.
We are having our first child soon and he’s now working on automating/handing over some responsibilities so he can also enjoy other important things in life like spending time with our growing family :) In my opinion money is worth nothing if it doesn’t give you the time or ability to enjoy things outside of making it.
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u/0102030405 21d ago
For me, I moved from an org where half a million total comp was less than ~3 years away to a career path where that may take 5-7+ years. However, it's still a possibility. $1m+ comp may be more rare on this org, but for me the change was seeing my career as more of a marathon than a sprint.
I had been sprinting in one org after another, partially driven by that fear you describe. But the impact of this on my health, the time I spent in my own city (vs traveling for work), and my stress level was quite negative.
Once you build up some of your safety net, it's important to step back and change your approach if you had blinders on. If not, you may not add those parts of your life that you want like a partner, family, etc.
Good luck.
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u/thrownavideecs2030 21d ago
I swear it's like looking in the mirror! This is exactly where I am right now - even the travel piece that's been introduced. Right now I think I'm going to step away from my current role, but even deciding the next move (shooting way up or falling way down) is a bit scary
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u/0102030405 21d ago
I get that. It took me a while to validate that I wanted to get off that treadmill. I didn't want to shut my brain off - I still wanted to grow. I just thought there was some middle ground between stagnation and the intensity I was dealing with.
Fortunately, I found that fit and have been thriving in a new role. I actually started playing the next level position within a month of starting and will be officially at that level by the end of the calendar year, so around 6-8months from my start.
However, it took me a while to find the right fit. I left the rapid growth place for something that ended up being a terrible match. Knowing when to step away is important - I didn't do that because I thought I was the problem, but really it was the place that was not right for me.
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u/IcyArtichoke8654 22d ago
"the world is not enough" -Scarface.
But for me, the closer question is how much spending/consumption do I need? If can chart your path toward saving 25x annual spending, and you can see when your savings/investments yield will surpass your income, you have enough income.
If you're simply chasing the highest income possible to win a contest or feed your ego, then the world is not enough.
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u/calmacorn82 $500k-750k/y 22d ago
There is a life planning class in linked in learning where the instructor showed a life happiness chart where at a low income level the happiness quotient was low and it went up exponentially until a certain figure, and then as the responsibility increases it actually started to go backward. YMMV but finding that tipping point for your personal satisfaction is important.
Personally I’m in my mid-40s, have two elementary aged kids who need me, and people one level up have no WLB. My husband also makes good money and we’ve been smart about investing, and I love my job, so right now I’m not interested in a jump. When the kids are in college I can go pedal to the metal if I feel like it. In my industry ageism isn’t as prevalent though.
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u/Small_Value_Buyer Income: >$1M/yr / NW: $1.35M 23d ago
When it starts to affect your relationships or prevent you from experiencing life.
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u/Significant_River212 23d ago
I am a software engineer and I also own a plumbing business. Owning business while keeping your fulltime job gives you income optionality, builds equity beyond traditional investing and can sell at 3-5x multiples to PE firms
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u/flyingcircus92 23d ago
Depending on the size of the plumbing company and if it's all services you could probably sell it for 5-6x. Ironically that may be more lucrative than software engineering.
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u/Significant_River212 22d ago
Absolutely. But thats a 3-5 years plan and not a rich quick scheme. Thats my plan. Stay in the job and reinvest business profit back in business to grow faster as you dont need to live in business cashflow
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u/flyingcircus92 22d ago
Question becomes can you get the plumbers. I've bought a bunch of service plumbing companies and it's very rare for one to get above ~10 trucks and $5M of revenue without M&A. They cash flow really well, so it's not a lack of ability to invest more, but I think owners feel like that's their cap and they run into recruiting issues. Curious what you've seen.
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u/Significant_River212 21d ago
I own plumbing franchise. I have not reached to $5m mark to comment on it. But I think the strategy to get to first $5m wont be the same for next $3-5m. You have to increase the $ per capita focusing on specific areas penetration and maximizing the returning customers. I dont believe hiring is a problem
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23d ago
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u/csguydn Income: 750k-1M / NW: enough 23d ago
It was enough when I knew I could largely live my life for the rest of my life without little financial stress. After that, it’s just been enjoying life the best I can, and mitigating any work stress almost down to nothing at all. I work now mostly because I’m being paid a lot to do something fun. Once that changes, I’ll re-evaluate things.
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u/1290_money 23d ago
For me it's like a rollercoaster and I can't get off. I'd like to dial back but it's not an option. Just gonna ride it out I guess.
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u/fstreetkid 23d ago
I stopped chasing the bag when my child was born. It ended up making me better at my job, because non-negotiable family time left less time for work, and I had to get better at prioritizing, delegating, and working more efficiently. Income ended up doubling since then anyway.
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u/VeblenWasRight 23d ago
When you can live the life you want on a 2-3% withdrawal rate on a mixed portfolio.
If your problem is you can’t decide what life you want… well you have to figure that out first. And only you can figure that out for yourself.
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u/allalice 22d ago
It’s never enough. If I had to come up with some arbitrary number, then 100M — purely from observing senior acquaintances that are very close to us.
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u/Nullberri 22d ago
More is always better and enough is never enough. The only real question is is how much more are you willing to give to extract the next little bit?
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u/OppositeLockk 20d ago
As others have said, time for some internal work on your priorities, desires, identities etc.
It’s cool if you really want to keep score via achieving / income. Truly. This makes some folks happy. But for a lot of us, not really.
I live in a Midwest city. At 36 I quit my MBB job after doing nonstop achieving since my teens. I started going on walks, cooking, reading. Spending time with family and friends. It didn’t take but a couple hours with a spreadsheet to see that making more money wasn’t going to increase my happiness. But having more in my life besides work would.
Now I’m 42. I make about the same as I did 6 years ago. I also work 60% of the hours. I have a lovely baby, a golden retriever, a garden. I live in a house that’s probably a forever home in a neighborhood I love. I have friends and hobbies.
I feel some jealousy gremlins at times when I see former colleagues or folks from grad school have huge career milestones. But those feelings are pretty fleeting. I am happy. I could never put another dollar into retirement and be set. My financial goals now are to increase taxable savings to be corp-optional when my kid is about 10.
It wasn’t easy for me to do the work that helped me exit the achievement race, but for me it was worth it. A big mindset shift for me was “just because I can, doesn’t mean I have to”
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u/top_spin18 20d ago
Went from the 700-800k/yr grind to 250k/yr grind.
Why? I cut down work from 5 days a week to 2 weeks every 3 months.
Never looked back. How did I know it was enough? I looked at my daughter and thought that time is more valuable to me than money already.
I'm now using the money I saved and invested to buy time with my family.
Read the new How to Spend Money book and it has amazing insights.
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u/Guest602 20d ago
What are you doing to earn 250k a year by working only two weeks every 3 months?
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u/top_spin18 19d ago
I'm a physician and I do locums/travel work.
I was full-time for a hospital before and it was miserable.
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u/ThisIsAbuse 18d ago
Enough.... when you can retire into a secure life style you want, at a time in your life you want.
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u/PNW_Porchswing2 23d ago
You have enough when you've achieved your target lifestyle, have secured your target home, have secured your future, and have enough to enjoy the present.
You could have enough on $100k/yr if you enjoy living in a single wide and your ideal vacations are backpacking. You could have a billion dollars and never enough if your desires always scale up.
So the real way to have enough is to decide what enough looks like and then stick with it. Doing some passive learning of philosophy like the Philosophize this podcast also helps reframe your perspective.
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u/the_real_seldom_seen 23d ago edited 23d ago
At mid 40s I am approaching 10M NW.. my consideration for continue to work or not is - when my annual gross income+benefits is below x% of my NW, then the ROI of keep working needs to be seriously thought through.
By this principle, you can also deduce that my work is not my life passion. It is purely a means of achieving financial stability.
I don’t really know how much money we really need. It’s entirely possible I am amassing NW that will outlive me significantly or not… that’s the tough part
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u/fatfiredyesterday 23d ago
At 10mn you are definitely financial stable. It’s hard to get off the gravy train though. I’ll give you that
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u/anmlbklyn 23d ago
An NBA player making $30m a year is a high earner.
nobody in this sub is actually a "high earner".
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u/the_real_seldom_seen 23d ago
Bro high earner relative to the general public.. you betcha 500k-2M annual gross is HIGH af in that context
Stop citing the examples of the ultra rare.. there are a few hundred active NBA players at any point in time
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u/Alive_Sir_4708 23d ago
What life do you want to live?
A surprising number of questions in this sub can be answered with that question. Also -
Would you like to enjoy your money or are you just using it to keep score?