Quote:
Originally Posted by zetta
Just what is this dream job that pays $316k a year for 1.5 years experience, only works 30 hr/wk, gives 7 weeks vacation a year, is not too stressful, not on Wall Street, and is fairly secure? Doesn't sound like any small business or well-paid profession (law, medicine, engineering, big-5 accounting) that I'm familiar with.
Regardless, if you want to maintain the $18k/mo lifestyle to which you've grown accustomed, you will need to sock away about $5.4 million dollars for retirement. Are you on track?
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In what way doesn't it sound like any of the well-paid professions? Just curious. I will say that we chose to live in a less desirable location (by many people's standards, including our own in some ways) for the foreseeable future for the sake of being able to have this lifestyle (in terms of time off) and income. Salary is played in part by how hard you are to replace, and having a relatively unique skill set in a less desirable location with a small population contributes greatly to my current situation of income and lifestyle/time off.
Judging by some of the responses I'm not sure I've conveyed the "lifestyle" we live now. Yes- 9K/month roughly is what we are spending monthly, but that includes what we donate monthly to various charities (totaling a little over $3000 per month, which might surprise some BTW, perhaps less so to others- not to toot my horn or anything since I hope with my life this posting is completely anonymous
), and a few small luxuries that I'd be happy to cut out and probably will shortly (like the extra movie channels on TV we don't even watch).The mortgage may sound disastrously high, but I live in a state and county that has huge property taxes- 5 times or more than other states I've lived in which adds tremendously to the mortgage payment. Not that we couldn't have chosen a smaller house, but my wife really likes this one, and that is important to her, less so to me. Since starting this job, the other ~50% of the monthly income has gone to get furniture for the home, a little remodeling, some travel, and savings. I wonder if I had made it sound like we are burning $18K monthly buying diamond-studded watches, etc. I still have the same wristwatch I got in school 8 years ago, the same daily loafers I got almost 2 years ago, and my wife and I still bargain shop for groceries, hotel deals, everything. So far we've just been trying to get established after living on very little the last 10 years. Now that the home is about the way we like it (and having furnished our home almost from scratch) we are trying to decide how best to spend the money we had been putting into the home. Again, the home is very nice and I enjoy it, but I would be happy in a smaller home with a smaller mortgage. My wife is encouraging me on the car probably in part because she knows I've worked hard to get to this point, and she knows that she is getting probably a little more satisfaction from the home than I am, and the car would be something that would give me something I really enjoy. It is something I could do without too, and if it ever came to a pinch I could let it go (or not get it in the first place), but I know it would certainly be fun have nonetheless
I know I know how to be happy with much less than I make monthly right now. I also know that spending money doesn't make me any happier. But for me part of life is making some great memories, and I guess it is to each his own what kind of car/house/clothes/relationship/country/state those memories are made in.
We have found some very helpful advice here. We did find some used M3's that are about 2 years old with low miles, under warranty, listed approx 15K dollars under new prices. That might be an option we consider, or maybe just save a few more months and decide on something else, even if it is a 335i or 135i, which are both great cars as well. Infiniti has some great cars as well it seems, but they haven't really been on the list of "dream cars" for me, mainly because I didn't know much about them until recently.