Poll: Average Income Before FIRE

[PsyopRanger]

What was your average income during your working years?

 

[kowski]

What was yours?

 

[BUM]

I suspect many who responded may have been business owners with income over your high limit.

 

[Nords]

What was your average income during your working years?

1977: 20 hours/week at a golf course (when it wasn't snowed under): $1868.
1983, my first full working year after college: $17,417 salary + $5,810 untaxed allowances = $23,227. Spent the whole year at nuclear-engineer training schools.

Through the '90s I was pretty much paid between $60K-$75K, including sea pay, submarine pay, & nuclear bonus pay.

2001, my last full working year: $59,839 salary + $27,788 untaxed allowances = $87,627. This was my highest-earning year ever, but no sea pay or sub pay or nuclear bonus pay either.

Today's military O-4 submarine nuclear engineer pay would probably be pushing $140K total. They can keep it.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

According to my social security statements...898K in 1999, 1046K in 2000 and 540k in 2001, but that was less than a half years earnings as I ER'ed in late April or early May of that year.

So maybe we need a few more #'s on the poll?

 

[73ss454]

Hey Bunny, I don't know what you did to make a living but you must have been good at it.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Hell yeah!

Considering according to my 2000 annual review I was responsible for a $3B uptick in company revenues, I think they got off pretty frickin cheap.

 

[MasterBlaster]

< Post deleted after re-thinking what was posted >

 

[Jarhead*]

According to my social security statements...898K in 1999, 1046K in 2000 and 540k in 2001, but that was less than a half years earnings as I ER'ed in late April or early May of that year.

So maybe we need a few more #'s on the poll?

Brother, can you spare a dime.? (For an old Korean Veteran).

 

[flipstress]

This is one of the things that impress me about CFB and other posters on the board--the ability to walk away from such huge incomes and realize they have enough, scale down, and retire.

I've heard the explanations: BS bucket being full, traumatic or life-altering disease/event in others' or their own lives, etc. Still, it takes quite a lot of courage (and figuring and wisdom) to give up a lot of income.

 

[haha]

This is one of the things that impress me about CFB

Agree. Also impressed by his modesty.

Ha

 

[flipstress]

Agree. Also impressed by his modesty.

Ha

:

 

[unclemick]

Heh heh heh heh heh

1966-$8k, last year of full time work 1992-$60k

2005 - 13th year of ER $79k taxable before deductions.

If you stay cheap enough, long enough - well Then you get time in the market and all that rot.

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

This is one of the things that impress me about CFB and other posters on the board--the ability to walk away from such huge incomes and realize they have enough, scale down, and retire.

Not to discount CFB's impressive accomplishments, I suspect with that income over several years he was able to walk away without sustaining too much financial hardship (though obviously with a big drop in income). Either way, it sounds like his priorities are right on.

What repeatedly astounds me is how many are willing and able to ER on a pretty basic income; seemingly few needs, flexible but always low spending habits, and are just as happy as can be.

Lots of paths to a secure and content retirement. Just not so easy picking one .

 

[HFWR]

I expect to retire with less than one year of CFB's income...

Ok, no European vacations, beach homes, Beemers or Lexi, but no w*rk either!!

 

[tryan]

peaked out at 107k .... of course 1/3 of that went to uncle sam.

 

[brewer12345]

This is one of the things that impress me about CFB and other posters on the board--the ability to walk away from such huge incomes and realize they have enough, scale down, and retire.

Depends on whther the outsized income really means anything to you.

As an example, I work with a few people who are very wealthy. Decamillionaires, by my estimation. Do they live higher on the hog than your average bear? Sure. But they spend a fraction of their income. If any of them walked away, they would never even come close to running out of oney. They stay at work because they want to.

 

[Moemg]

My income never went over $50,000 as an Rn but I still retired with seven figures plus.

 

[flipstress]

Yeah, you are right, brewer. How big your income is in relation to your assets/wealth matters.

In the case of decamillionaires, their income from their jobs might well be small and not significant in relation to their total wealth. In their case, I would admire them if they were working because they were making the world better through their jobs.

 

[brewer12345]

In their case, I would admire them if they were working because they were making the world better through their jobs.

Haaaaaahahahahahaha!

Well, maybe by making the capital markets more efficient and providing liquidity to people who really, really want to liquidate on the cheap.

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

i never defined myself by income or career. i simply kept myself out of debt and, aside from college, above the poverty line.

my lifestyle was never yachting socialite but more yachting socialist. i spent much of my youth boating with parents and friends. i’d help them drink the beer crew neighbors’ boats on the intracoastal or on way to the bahamas. my partner & i used to take his parent’s boat out and pick up complete strangers new friends who were hanging out on seawalls. we were completely nutz and had amazing fun together.

life pretty much went like that until my partner died at 35, when i went from party boy into a few years of deep depression. then the ol’man died, the boats were gone. i lost interest in my other boating friends. mom & i started dealing with her alzheimer’s by ourselves for the first 5-8 years because she wanted to keep her life running as normal as possible. we considered getting a small boat. i asked my sil (who i didn’t get along with at the time) how she saw her family using the new boat so i’d know how to shop. she said to me “we’ll be taking it out every weekend. i don’t know when you’re going to use it but that’s the only time we have.” how odd because i was expecting something like: we’d like to go out for a few days at a time or just some day cruises or something with a lot of shade. so instead of shopping i went back to mom and said “no boat.”

landlocked ever since, i found a cheap little cottage in crack town and settled in, working for once good but later crappy mcfortune5 and working to clean up my town before mom became too much of a responsibility that i had to let go of my civic work. shortly after, my little area would be featured on the front page of the new york times for its transformation. still, mostly an observer by nature, life for me has always been a bit less of what i did and a bit more of where i was. how much money i made was probably one of the most irrelevant parts of my life.

had i been raised in the midwest rather than on the east coast, i would have been just as happy riding a horse or spending my afternoons laying in a field and chewing on a blade of grass. i am that lazy.

in considering where i want to find myself into my early retired future i’m still keeping boats in mind but think i will do land-based travel first. but in the last two years i started going to marinas again to see what’s to be found there. as i seem to happen upon frequent coincidence in life, it was pleasant but not a complete surprise that on my very first dock walk after many years of staying away, i came across one of the boats i used to play on which belonged to a friend when i was in my 20s. it was being renovated and looked like they were doing a beautiful job on an absolutely gorgeous historic vessel now in charter service up north. i just found a picture online.

this is what you can enjoy in life on minimum wage and without even trying, but just by being there, smiling and introducing yourself…

 

[flipstress]

brewer, I'm glad to have provided you with some hilarity for the day with my idealistic, naive notions. I dunno no decamillionaire...

...or even anybody with a sailboat, but lg4nb, I've been on a sailboat just once in my life and I loved the experience. They actually have a sailing club with lessons here in town--something to explore in the future for me...

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

flipstress, if i recall correctly you live where most boaters here only dream of cruising. take swimming lessons first if you are not a good swimmer so that you will be safe and confident. then join that sail club. you will love love love it. some of my very best times on the water were with my bud and a cooler of beer on our little sunfish. life doesn't get much better than that.

 

[ESRBob]

Re: the original post, my W2 income throughout my career was really spotty-- entrepreneurship, working overseas, owning the company and not taking salary during lean years, then taking 5k/month draws meant that I was dragging down the average income in our town for awhile. Then there was 1999 when I wrote a (just barely) 7 figure check to the feds for capgains taxes on the sale of my company... that may be a secondary profile of business owners' finances alongside the consistently high-salary model.

LG4NBum,
you hit on an important point that (duh!) is slowly sinking in for me. That people who own boats need people to help them sail them. I am in the process of shifting from boatowner (lots of expense and tons of mental overhead) to friend of boatowners (more offers than I can handle and none of the expense, none of the headache). Obviously helps if you grew up around boats like you did and know how to be useful onboard, and have friends with too much money and not enuf time!

Love the classic beauty you show there in NY harbor. Friend has a similar one (about 10 feet shorter) classic wood 1950's rich-man's toy -- what a lot of fun we've had on her. And he pays the gas bill (last I looked it was less than a mile per gallon)

btw, my 11-year old son calls himself lazy and I am trying to get him to reclassify his behavior as 'efficient'. He says he likes math because you get rewarded for taking shortcuts that make solving the thing simpler (what he calls being lazy). I think he may be on to something... Maybe lazy is about to get a long-overdue restoration to its proper place as a virtue.

 

[BUM]

some hilarity for the day

Favorite cliche:

I've been rich and I've been super-rich. Super-rich is better.