Jason Voorhees
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One thing that people miss about very high salaries in say quant, surgeon, legal firms etc is the actual salary they receive in hand, the purchasing power and whats actually left after taxes. Because taxation at this tier of wages becomes very muddy
Going from broke college studet to a stable high corporate salary completely changes your life no doubt about it but once you start climbing from $140-150k to $300k you hit a weird no man's land. I have already driven this point home in my previous threads
but let me quantify it for you properly. You are making a lot of money now yes but you aren't really getting richer. Your day to day life comes down to what kind of grind you want to tolerate. If you choose quantitative finance, big law, or surgery, you're signing up for a high pressure meat grinders for 70+ hours a week. In this regard I feel big tech is better than anything else. I asked Gemini for a rough break down and here it is.
A tech guy can hustle hard for a few focused hours, get work done, and spend the rest of the day just chilling on Discord, scrolling TikTok and living comfortably. Yes he won't be making as much as cardiologist or quant traders but still paid similar per hour rates for less effort but the problem still remains W-2 payroll.
$200k and $400k aren't much different. Again another example with cold hard numbers
So if you live in High tax hub like California or New York you're going to have 40% to 50% of your check instantly bleed out into taxes before it ever hits your bank account. That's how brutal it is
This is why in my opinion after a certain income bracket it doesn't make sense to be an employee. Once you move from W-2 to 1099/K-1 partnership then it starts making difference. Let's quantify it again.
Both making $300,000 Person B keeps ~$49,000 more cash every single year than Person A. Over a 10 year career that single change compounds into an like extra $700,000+ in net worth, entirely funded by money that Person A paid in taxes and this is just for starters. There are also other loopholes that exist for owners
This is what highly skilled people realize that at some point that they are generating millions of dollars for an entity that throws you a fraction and the firms aren't stupid. They know that at some point you will figure out the game and to prevent you from leaving and pulling a Jim Simons or starting a competing firm. They give partnership.
This means turning into partner at a law firm, surgeon given clinics or engineer with equity or some top quant guy getting partnership in performance pool. They aren't doing this because they want to be fair. They are basically turning you a volatile asset into an owner who is now locked into the survival of the mothership. This isn't something unique to US either. Similar things exist in Europe, Asia too. I just took US example because it's easy to pull numbers.
Wage slave is wage slave regardless of how high his wages are. I don't define someone wealthy when the moment they stop selling their hours they end up in the streets. This is why I keep shoe horning the point that the ultimate goal cannot and should not be a bigger paycheck. It must be equity and ownership.
Going from broke college studet to a stable high corporate salary completely changes your life no doubt about it but once you start climbing from $140-150k to $300k you hit a weird no man's land. I have already driven this point home in my previous threads
but let me quantify it for you properly. You are making a lot of money now yes but you aren't really getting richer. Your day to day life comes down to what kind of grind you want to tolerate. If you choose quantitative finance, big law, or surgery, you're signing up for a high pressure meat grinders for 70+ hours a week. In this regard I feel big tech is better than anything else. I asked Gemini for a rough break down and here it is.
A tech guy can hustle hard for a few focused hours, get work done, and spend the rest of the day just chilling on Discord, scrolling TikTok and living comfortably. Yes he won't be making as much as cardiologist or quant traders but still paid similar per hour rates for less effort but the problem still remains W-2 payroll.
$200k and $400k aren't much different. Again another example with cold hard numbers
So if you live in High tax hub like California or New York you're going to have 40% to 50% of your check instantly bleed out into taxes before it ever hits your bank account. That's how brutal it is
This is why in my opinion after a certain income bracket it doesn't make sense to be an employee. Once you move from W-2 to 1099/K-1 partnership then it starts making difference. Let's quantify it again.
Both making $300,000 Person B keeps ~$49,000 more cash every single year than Person A. Over a 10 year career that single change compounds into an like extra $700,000+ in net worth, entirely funded by money that Person A paid in taxes and this is just for starters. There are also other loopholes that exist for owners
This is what highly skilled people realize that at some point that they are generating millions of dollars for an entity that throws you a fraction and the firms aren't stupid. They know that at some point you will figure out the game and to prevent you from leaving and pulling a Jim Simons or starting a competing firm. They give partnership.
This means turning into partner at a law firm, surgeon given clinics or engineer with equity or some top quant guy getting partnership in performance pool. They aren't doing this because they want to be fair. They are basically turning you a volatile asset into an owner who is now locked into the survival of the mothership. This isn't something unique to US either. Similar things exist in Europe, Asia too. I just took US example because it's easy to pull numbers.
Wage slave is wage slave regardless of how high his wages are. I don't define someone wealthy when the moment they stop selling their hours they end up in the streets. This is why I keep shoe horning the point that the ultimate goal cannot and should not be a bigger paycheck. It must be equity and ownership.
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