retire2020
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2012
- Messages
- 459
Yes. It's new 100K for me. I made my first 200K in 1998 and it's still 200K..so with inflation it sure feels like 100K...
Eh, when my wife quit her job as a senior software engineer this year (not a project lead or really in charge of anyone), she was pulling in over $260k.
Seems to me that take-home pay is what matters. Big taxes at the $200K - $400K level tend to shrink the thrill of it all.
Amethyst
Sounds too high. It's been 4 years but I was at that kind of megacorp and we were on the same scale as the Silicon Valley people and I don't think salaries have soared that much. I could be wrong.I disagree with these numbers. DS tells me starting salaries for software engineers with 3 years experience are 120K in start ups not including stock options. Starting salaries are higher in established companies such as Google/Apple/Facebook, etc.
I'd give Glassdoor more credence than the few "mine is bigger than yours" posts here, lol!
Is $200k what it takes now to say you've made it?
Median home price in our zip is around $685K. I guess you don't have it made if you're only getting $200K much less $100K.I remember the old rule of thumb where "making it" takes an annual salary more than one third of the median home price in your town or city, so it's a bit higher than that where I live. Of course these days with dual incomes and low mortgage rates maybe it doesn't need to be this high?
Makes me wonder if I made the right decision going with a government job in a low income region. I graduated into the dot com implosion which played a big part in my decision. Back then I couldn't tell which internet company would survive or become roadkill. A safe and secure gov job with a COLA pension looked like a good bet at the time.
Oh well, I have 15 years vested in the pension. I'm not going to leave that until I am FI (probably 3 more years).
Rather than gaze wistfully at the greener grass of industry salaries you can value your pension directly as part of your compensation. Friends of mine teaching college in the CA state system make about $100K/yr, and sometimes make envious comments about the somewhat higher salary I receive in industry (though my pension is much worse and will freeze after this year). The annual pension they will receive, however, increments by about $5K for each additional year they work. The value of a $5K pension as an annuity is about $70K (depending somewhat on the age of the recipient). So I believe they could think of their total compensation as comparable to that of someone making $170K with no pension - right in the range of what their industry peers make.
And suddenly the disparity between industry and government compensation levels disappears (if not reverses).
That's how I look at it. Industry pays better in your working years, government pays better in your retirement years.
The $5K a year in pension at $100K annual salary seems unusually high. I think even public safety officers only get 3% per year max.Friends of mine teaching college in the CA state system make about $100K/yr, and sometimes make envious comments about the somewhat higher salary I receive in industry (though my pension is much worse and will freeze after this year). The annual pension they will receive, however, increments by about $5K for each additional year they work. The value of a $5K pension as an annuity is about $70K (depending somewhat on the age of the recipient). So I believe they could think of their total compensation as comparable to that of someone making $170K with no pension - right in the range of what their industry peers make.
And suddenly the disparity between industry and government compensation levels disappears (if not reverses).
Is $200k what it takes now to say you've made it?
Sounds like it could be an early retirement reduction factor then. Typically, the retirement multiplier is fixed (usually at 1.5-3% per year of service). However, if you retire earlier than normal retirement age, there's an age-based reduction factor so instead of getting 2%, you could be getting less than 1% per year of service if you retire before a certain age.FWIW I'm pretty sure it was a nonlinear scale, with pensions increasing by 4-5% of salary once one had 25 years in at age 55+, but growing more slowly in the early years of their career. I only know a couple of examples and then not in all details, but know one of these folks retired recently with 24 years in at 60% salary at age 62 (which works out to 2.5%/yr), and several older folks got 90-100% pensions with 35 years in (but they may have been grandfathered into an earlier more generous plan).
By way of comparison, with 28 years in industry I will retire at age 56 with a non-COLA'd pension of 22% of my final salary - and that's 22% more than anybody hired after 2003 will get.
Too true. Would be quite difficult to live on just $40K a year (4% SWR) before taxes in Los Angeles unless you have a paid off house.Yes, in the same sense that $2 million in a retirement account is probably now the new $1 million.
As noted, where one lives in the country has a lot to do with what's considered fair salary levels. Cost of living in Silicon Valley and Manhattan is entirely different from somewhere in the Mid-West.
Exactly. Not too far from here you can buy a SF house for five figures. It'll be a starter-type home, but nice, and not in a slum or in anything near tear-down condition.
I get the sense that Silicon Valley hasn't seen five figure home prices for 20+ years.