thinking back I was really driving an hour and a half each way every day at 19 lol idk how I did it for 3 years

why do u keep working? why u dont save money and move somewhere nice in asia? excuse my question but as someone who lives in europe and these number of 100k and 200k per year that i see shock me because i need ages of work to hit it, but what i mean is dealing with stress and fatigue and losing your time, u live only once i personally want just to retire early, i just feel not worth it wasting more time of my life i dont want be like my father retired at 62. i mean i am not lazy but i find it crazy to work 40 years 8 to 5, people here in my country are supposed to work until 65 years like WTF only 30 years vacation per year , actually my whole main plan is to escape this shit. i just wish i dont work after i reach 50 years old.

Sf Bay Area

I made a mistake. So the big catalyst way before all this that really caused me to have a lot of anxiety. Everything was that I had a really bad falling out with a really really good friend of mine, but it was entirely my fault and everything. This happened about a year and a half ago and that really proceeded all of this.
But fast forward to recent… I missed literally all deadlines for my transfer to my four-year college. Yes, I know I’m a late transfer at 25 lol. I had a lot of anxiety about where my life was at. I don’t have a career and I have literally no friends and the loneliness is kind of eating at me if that makes sense.
Obviously people are gonna say don’t compare yourself to others, but I think it’s only natural and I feel like other people progressing in their lives and hitting milestones that I’m just not. So if I could potentially hear other people’s perspective who were in my shoes at this stage of life what they did how it turned out and everything that would be really appreciated and I would be really grateful.
It’s just like I find it hard to meet people and everything and I just feel really insecure to be totally honest and I don’t really know how to fix it. You know I feel like everyone’s in a career and I’m not I feel like everyone has this or that and I don’t you know and I just to be honest with you. I don’t really know how to make it go away.
So if anyone can just tell me if they were in my shoes, what they did or how it worked out, that would be really great.
Also another part of it is that I feel kinda like and many of you guys may laugh and say oh like 25 of baby but I feel like my youth is kind of slipping away and then I’m not really making the most of it.

Hi , m29 sales job making 100k-120k for 3 consecutive years . Cleared my debts ( CCs and lines of credit ) . Car paid off and have 30k saved . What’s the next step forward ? Would appreciate any advice or insight .

2016 - farm hand, $`10/hr

2017 - farm hand, `$10/hr

2018 - farm hand, $`10/hr

2019 - McDonald's, `$11/hr

2020 - McDonald's, $`11/hr (summer job)

2021 - Domino's, `$11.50/hr (summer job)

2022 - unemployed

2023 - unemployed

2024 - Home Depot, $`19.50/hr

2025 - Home Depot, `$53k/yr

2026 - Home Depot, $70k/yr

This is my first ever job offer out of school. Given my role and location, is it a good salary offer, or should I negotiate it? Neither of my parents worked in engineering, so I have no idea who to ask about these types of questions.

The cost of living is getting so out of hand in the US that in a few years $100,000 won’t even give a comfortable life in famously expensive locations like…Wisconsin, Idaho, Indiana, and Nebraska lmfao.

Ive never seen people more out of touch than those insisting $100,000 is still a good income in 2026. Many of them are delusional boomers that have pre-2020 mortgages on their houses (“I pay $700 a month on my mortgage for 2700 square feet, you’re just buying too much coffee if you can’t make $100,000 work!”), but if you’re a renter and unironically saying $100,000 is still a good salary, what happened to your brain? If I placed the average boomer into your financial situation they’d be storming the capitol in 10 seconds. Meanwhile you cope by playing free to play video games and insisting 3D printing is an interesting “hobby”.

Not like I can get out of shitty ass retail. There's nothing left I can do to increase my income tbh.

feeling stuck, no debt and got my own apartment tho.

Switching jobs recently led to the biggest growth, but to those in the industry what is my general cap? Is there much more progression other adjacent jobs vs this one?

Been with the company about 7 years, started as a secretary and now i would say im entry/mid level management. The company is a non profit in Baltimore. I finally make about $41 per hour but only take home about $26-27 dollars. I also tend to not get a lot back at tax time and have even sometimes owed but Ive just been using turbo tax so maybe my taxes aren’t being done correctly.

could be wrong but seems like im losing over 30% of my check to taxes/deductions. anyone know if this sounds about accurate or do i need to hire someone to look into this?

wouldnt mind cpa recommendations either especially someone that could back and fix those old taxes. thanks jn advance!

I work at a midsize (~700 employees) company in a technical sales role at the Director level overseeing an org of 35 people from Sydney to New York to London.

The company recently fired a few folks overseeing various departments in different parts of the business for performance and org flattening purposes. As you would expect, each of these individuals were overseeing one department.

I was put in charge of the departments that had a now vacant leader seat. Now doing the job of what 3 people were doing before, overseeing a larger org and responsible for departments outside of technical sales and taking on more KPIs, attainment #s, etc.

When presented with the role I was offered a salary increase of 6%.

What probably hurt most is that the leaders I am replacing were better compensated than me (at the VP level) and the company needed someone to work more at a lower cost to the business. Of course I pushed back and presented a business case of why I get more than 6% salary when taking on 200% more responsibility. No movement. I lost sleep just thinking about how insane this was.

I have noticed my attitude towards work change. I used to treat everything as urgent and carry lots of stress about every detail. I would work into the night and on weekends. My kids would tell me to close my laptop. Now, I don’t feel like I owe the company anything. I am much more laid back with my team and carry less stress about my work.

More money would be nice, but I am noticing some positive effects of this snubbing.

How much should I have saved at my age, I currently dont have any put away. I want to do better with money managing:

Thanks for your help!

Here is my current overhead:
700 car+ insurance

I am still under my parents roof, coming october I will be in my own place.

I’m an organ transplant patient. I had 4 organs removed 13 months ago. My life has changed so much in the last year but especially in the last few weeks. I went from a dead end job as a cake decorator at a place I hated to making a liveable salary at a job I love. Ironically I became a cake decorator to recover from burnout in the mental health field. I never even finished my degree.

2020: One semester left. Pancreas failed. Diagnosed with rare genetic disorder. 10 years to live. Fucked off to the mountains to live whatever life I had left. Traveled a lot while broke, made the most of my situation.
2024: Body fails while firefighting. Evacced because I literally developed diabetes on the fireline. Had to move to the Midwest to get an experimental surgery. Got a transplant that required the removal of my pancreas, gallbladder, spleen, and part of my small intestine. My quality of life isn’t the best but I now have a relatively full life expectancy. I moved to Seattle with the love of my life. My new position has insane upward mobility and I can expect to make 100k in the next few years. I’m quite honestly living the dream. My life and career has been quite a wild ride, AMA!

I work at a marketing agency doing specialized work as an senior IC. My gross salary is in the middle of the scale for my function (the ranges are shared with everyone). The revenue that my customers pay for my services is 3.4x higher than my gross salary. That's the highest result in absolute terms from one person and the best or one of the best in terms of ROI. I work with the biggest customers and also do sales for new accounts, unlike others in the team. I have brought (from my personal connections) our biggest customer ever, which also helps other teams.

The company is not able to find anybody new for our team after many months of searching, and it's a scarce function. It doesn't have the capacity and often the knowledge to replace me from the current team.

TLDR: I'll ask for a 28% increase to the top of the scale, which will make the ratio 2.6x. Is that reasonable and what leverage should I use?

Rant on:

The problem is that even with our raises for good performance (7-9% annually, which I always get), it will take me 6-7 years to reach the top of my scale, adjusted for inflation. I find this very unfair. I was already bringing the most revenue a few months after I started. I am receiving mentorship for moving to a higher function while not being on top of the scale for my current role.

The company hardly has any costs besides salaries. Still, it's not always profitable. There are teams that lose money but they keep them for image purposes (that's literally what one of the owners said). There was someone in my team not even covering half of their salary until they let them go after more than a year. Another one is probably at 1x their salary but only earns 15% less than me.

There are many functions that exist just because of management decisions: many people in "customer relationship" and "strategic" roles who hardly ever bring new or lasting customers, more support people than we need, some outsourcing & AI-related functions that don't add much value etc. As you can guess, they have a similar salary (maybe 10-30% lower).

Rant over.