Yearly salary earned in a day

I remember my first job out of tech school. I earned $12,300 a year building and calibrating floor standing tape drives for computer mainframes at Sperry Univac. (Yes, I'm that old) I remember choosing this over a offer to work at Texas Instruments. They only offered $11,900.
Now either figure is less than a days swing in investments.
 
Texas Proud said:
Was that your first professional job? Does not sound like it...
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Well :) I was paid! I was 14 and got a job a place call Kiddieland. It had rides like at a fair, but for kids. It had a 6 seat ferris wheel, a train, boats that went around in a circle, plains on chains that went in a circle, ponies, a merry-go-round and a couple more rides I can no longer picture in my mind. Summer job, I rode my sting ray bicycle about a mile to and from the job.
 
Time2 said:
Well :) I was paid! I was 14 and got a job a place call Kiddieland. It had rides like at a fair, but for kids. It had a 6 seat ferris wheel, a train, boats that went around in a circle, plains on chains that went in a circle, ponies, a merry-go-round and a couple more rides I can no longer picture in my mind. Summer job, I rode my sting ray bicycle about a mile to and from the job.
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At that age I was working slave labor with my dad... eventually he started to pay a whopping 25 cents an hour... I then started to work at a real company part time and got $1.80 and was making BANK!!!

Nope, I do not consider these real jobs in this context... some might though...
 
Ha ha. If I include my first W-2 job (office cleaner), then some days I gain 50x or so.

5 hours per week is not a real job in that sense. However, the owner of the company was a generous man who looked after the community and gave opportunities to awkward nerds like me to interact in a business setting. I learned a lot of life lessons on that job, including the wrong way to ask for a raise. My manager sat me down and we had a nice discussion the right way, and then she gave me 10 cents more per hour. Seriously, sounds trivial, but at the time I learned so much. After that, they invited me to work in the office doing filing and other things for the summer. Really good opportunity and more learning.
 
After re-reading and looking at my numbers from my first post I have made more and lost more many times. I misinterpreted the question but forty plus years ago wages have changed a lot.
 
Sooo, the big loss yesterday was 2X plus of my starting salary... so it is really not that big of deal...
 
Well, this got me curious, so just looked at 1976 W2, $1,462 for the year, my 1st year in the Army. WOW !
1978 made $6,795, $500/month and lived like a king :)
 
A few days ago, the gain for me was 3X my starting salary. It wasn't until I started seeing daily gain equal to my then annual salary, that I felt more comfortable with ER, and BTD!
 
My starting Megacorp salary was $16,500 in 1979. I lost more than that this past Friday. It was not the first time I lost that much in a day, nor the last. Of course I have also made more than that in a day several times, so I am not complaining. :)
 
In 1980 my starting salary was $11,000 per year. I was single and the job came with a company car. I was in hog heaven.
Today making or losing $11,000 in a day is pretty common.
 
Made more today “in theory” than my entire years earnings starting out. But since they are just paper gains I don’t really think of them as comparable.

The only “Real money” I have is in my pocket or my checking and savings accounts. The rest is Investment money and I treat it like real estate and other non liquid assets although in a pinch they of course are like cash and I could borrow against them just as easily. But I don’t like to spend “investment” money without more thought…..
 
For "mainstream" professionals, such as engineers (not "software" engineers, whatever that means), it is normal for inflation-adjusted salary to rise substantially in their 20s and early 30s, but to peak at ~35-40. Meanwhile, unless we're in some horrid bear market, the portfolio keeps rising. Later in life, one might have such a large ratio of portfolio to annual W2 income, that even a moderate day in the stock market, could be +/- a year's gross salary. This isn't because our hero is such a great investor, or a rank speculator placing huge bets, but simply because our remunerative value as employees, stalls.
 
Texas Proud said:
So, I was looking at my portfolio a couple of days ago and it was up a lot...

Then it hit me that I made as much in that one day as my starting annual salary on my first job out of college. WOW... I will admit that it was not a big salary as I did graduate during a recession... but still...

Now, I might have done it before but never did see it as I do not look all the time... has anybody else noticed if this has happened to you? Where you made more in a single day that your annual salary when working? I am talking about your professional career, not a part time gig.
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So how about today? :)
 
This goes with the territory when you're dealing with 7-figure retirement accounts. The caution is always to avoid being too glad about a spike upward or too concerned about a drop. I remember one evening taking a look at the online information and seeing that the account had lost $85,000 in one day. That elicited a gasp, but I then steadied myself with the recognition that the investments that I had chosen were exactly the same before and after this drop. I made no change.
 
I haven't dared to log into the accounts today, which is usually the case in a bad down day/period.
 
OK, I'll play:
- Today I lost 3X more in the market than my highest paid year in my 32 year career (2021).
- Last year I made more in the market than all of my take home pay added together (1989-2021).

As someone who never made much money at work but regularly put 60-70% of it in the market (and invested in fairly risky stuff) any numbers I look at will always be crazy. We have been fortunate. As of a month ago, I am 50/50 AA.
 
My first check in the Marine Corps was $668. Lost 5 times that today.
 
Texas Proud said:
So, I was looking at my portfolio a couple of days ago and it was up a lot...

Then it hit me that I made as much in that one day as my starting annual salary on my first job out of college. WOW... I will admit that it was not a big salary as I did graduate during a recession... but still...

Now, I might have done it before but never did see it as I do not look all the time... has anybody else noticed if this has happened to you? Where you made more in a single day that your annual salary when working? I am talking about your professional career, not a part time gig.
Click to expand...
I have had that happen a few times, but I am a teacher, so that’s probably not saying much :)
 
Sorry I have to say that I only look quarterly at my accounts, so I have no idea what happened on a daily basis during the quarter.

But this subject reminds me of a work colleague from LA who thought he was smarter than the average bear back during the dotcom boom. For a couple of months during the heyday of the market he would call me up after work a couple of times a week to tell me how much money he made that day. One day he called me up and was ecstatic that he had just had his first $100k day. Eventually the bottom fell out of the market, and I never heard from him outside of work again. He didn't retire early, so I assume that he lost all those incredible gains just like everyone else.

To paraphrase Willie, the market during that period had its chance to strut upon the stage full of sound and fury, but ultimately signified nothing.
 
Well, like
Car-Guy said:
So how about today? :)
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Sooo, like someone above I lost more today on my big account (2/3rd of my portfolio) than the cost of my first home...

Vanguard never did have the daily change so I probably hit the up and down so many times but never knew it... Schwab shows daily change so it is visible...
 
imnontrad said:
Yes, and today my portfolio lost an amount greater than my first home.
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I was thinking about this thread today. I actually did not check the account until I came here and saw some posts about today’s drop that made me think it was a crash. But now I see it’s another blip.
 
On big swing days, I can be up or down (mostly down) ~$0.5M... more than me and my wife's combined annual salary now.
 
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