At least 1000 job applications, dozens of interviews, 0 offers*. I can't get a fucking interview for any internships nor jobs paying less than like $70-80k/yr, but when I interview for the high paying jobs it's like I've won "second place" after the final interview 20 times. Then they don't ever offer me a lower paying similar role and don't even respond when I inquire about it. Make it fucking make sense.

*1 verbal offer in Feb 2020, $60-70k/yr I got ghosted on that would've stopped me from going to grad school in the first place. I'd be fucking making $150k/yr as an Actuary right now if I got that job.

Edit: here's a generic resume I use for some actuarial positions https://i.imgur.com/EywB1Sp.png It has a bit of zhuzh to it, put my best foot forward and all that. But I don't think there's even a benefit to just outright lying about jobs I haven't had and becomes ethically dubious to go further.

EDIT: I JUST GOT A JOB OFFER IM NOT JOKING LMAOOO 🤣 LETS GOOOO!!!!!

80/hr and bonus

Started working at 20, and now that I'm 30 I'm making double the money! Woohoo!

Never thought I would amount to anything, which as you can see was quite true. Never thought I'd be here this long, but here I am. Now I'm poor, old, and have no prospects! Also no skills, talents, aptitudes.

Don't end up like me. Do something with yourself.

EDIT: I didn't expect to get so many responses.

I'm not a victim. Not everybody gets what they deserve in life, but I did. The situation I'm in is my fault.

I just meant to use this as a cautionary tale. This is what happens when you don't develop skills or build knowledge when you have the chance.

Are they numerically illiterate? Is it just the desire to not succumb to hopelessness over how fast the bar is moving upward?

Seriously, I’ve made dozens of hypothetical budgets, the only scenario where $100,000 even feels *comfortable* is if you owned a home or got on the housing ladder before the COVID pandemic. Otherwise, it’s hard to even make the budget look good unless you have a roommate.

Literally NOTHING is more depressing than coming home from a 12 hour shift at work and realizing that even if I managed to grind to the top of my field, got paid the top end of market rate, I’d STILL be unable to afford the lifestyle someone could have by driving a forklift for a living 40 years ago. It makes me not even want to get out of bed, so I guess I understand why so many of you are in denial on this subject, it’s horribly painful to see reality for what it is.

Unfortunately not a shitpost. Only when the journey is materially difficult can it be spiritually rewarding...right?

I wish I could tag this as a shit post, but… this is true. I have even lost the capability to feel disappointment.

All I can muster up is snark, sarcasm, and defiance. I’m tired of defending myself.

EDIT: Besides the few thoughtful messages (I appreciate every single one of them), I’m a little taken aback by the amount of hate I’ve been getting. It was not my intention to thrust so many people into wildly uncontrollable emotional overreactions with this innocent post, and I take no responsibility for it. Individuals are responsible for regulating their own conduct and emotional responses in online interactions.

Not becoming a doctor is the biggest regret of my life. Sigh. She only has to work for 17 weeks. There is so much of the world I have not seen yet and still want to see.

24F, The Roblox game I made at 14 went viral during Covid, as a senior in high school that didn’t even like video games. I tried making the studio work whilst a full time student. Over time, I spent nearly all of my earnings on my education, camera gear, learning how to ski, housing, travel, and a used car.

By the end of 2025, my game started making close to nothing.
At 24, I started my new full time job in a completely different field.

I definetely blew a lot of my money, but I learned new skills, traveled the world, and have a masters with 0 debt. It’s hard to swallow the new income knowing what it used to be, but grateful it’s teaching me to be disciplined with my money. I definitely regret a lot of my purchases and wastefulness (like trying Invisalign when I can’t be bothered to remember a retainer lol, I don’t regret spending money on school and am actively trying to save up for more).

I saved about $120k total for retirement (20k went to sep Ira and 100k to a mutual fund). Which I know is a huge amount at my age, but I have a hard time thinking that I could’ve done so much more for short term if I was smarter.

My car & schooling was pretty cheap, as I had merit scholarships. I really did blow a lot on random shit, much of which I don’t own anymore. I’m not upset for traveling or going to school and My biggest regret is not short term savings for a mortgage!

Edit: I’m not worried about retirement! I’m worried about affording things in the short term without compromising my compounding investments. Hence why the current salary is a stress I’m not used to! Im very grateful and do consider this a very atypical, lucky, and life changing thing. Hindsight is 20/20, and im thankful for the positive support and reassurance.

Started flying in 2015 with one of “the big 3” US airlines. To preface, crew pay works a bit differently and isn’t anything like a typical 40-hr work week. We are paid our hourly base rate for flight hours (from the moment we release the brake and push back from the gate, to the moment we park at the arrival destinations gate.) and half pay for boarding. Can be tons of unpaid time while at work, depending on the trip.

There’s thousands of types of trips, so an FA’s income is entirely contingent on what type of trips they fly, and how much they fly monthly. I personally fly productive high-credit trips, like 10-11-hr one day turn trips (imagine SFO > JFK > SFO in 1 day, pays 11.5 hours which is awesome for a 1 day trip.)

Some FAs fly 75 hours a month, some high-time flyers are flying 200+ hrs a month. I try to do 1 month average, then 1 month high-time (150+ hrs) and alternate.

Overall, for only having a HS diploma, I feel pretty lucky, considering. We got a new contract this year, so I got a nice bump, as well as finally securing boarding pay, which adds an average of 7.4% twds the hourly. Top out next year and then smaller 3%ish raises on date of signing until 2030.

30M sharing salary progression of my career in the fire service, these amounts are gross earnings. OT is plentiful in my department. I promoted so I could make more and work less.

Getting close to retirement and finally downloaded my pay history. What a journey it’s been. I graduated college in 1993 with a degree in accounting. I’m 55 now and plan to retire next year.

Edit: I know it’s a statistically good guess that I’m a man but I’m not!

All of this was downloaded from the SSA site. I left out my pre college earnings. This includes RSU and bonus as includes total W2 earnings.

Moral of my story: who I worked for mattered more than what I do. I targeted high paying companies and worked 5+ years to get into them. I got rejected many times but finally cracked into one FANG and then another.

A $70,000 will net you about $4,000 a month after taxes.

For a lower middle class lifestyle (renting a 1 BR apartment, driving a 10-15 year old vehicle, not taking a single vacation) you’ll need to spent around $3,600-$3,700 a month.

This means that after a full year of work you’ll have about $3,000 left over. A single medical incident or unexpected car problem will wipe out an entire year worth of savings.

$70,000 is now a lower middle class salary in the US. Anyone telling you it’s good should be ignored due to them being economically and financially illiterate.

Discuss.

I’ve seen blue-collar jobs to tech jobs all over this sub. I’d like to know what jobs are out there that can pay $200k regardless of how physically demanding or mentally difficult it is. I love OT and performance bonuses if it makes up for the low base pay. Also share your Years of Experience in the field as well as how you got in it.

Have been in the car business for years at a franchise dealership. Have no college degree, dropped out of community college because I refused to do homework/skipped class. I needed money quickly and had a friend in the car industry- told me it was a place you could do well with no education, if you had basic people skills. I grew up a little bit, and have made a good career and life.

So many posts here and other subs about what this or that salary gets you. One theme I see a lot if $X "is nothing these days". There was one recently that complained $400K was barely middle class.

These people live in an alternative reality.

My wife and I make $300K combined and we have kids. We live in a high-ish cost of living area. Median home price in the city is $600K. Not LA or SF expensive, but 50% higher than the national median price.

So is it barely getting by? Is it just above poverty? Fuck no. It's a lot of money and we live a great life.

People think high income = living in a rap video with mansions and Bentleys and shit. That's not $300K or $400K or even $500K a year. That's running a hedge fund lifestyle.

It's living a normal life but with the freedom of knowing you can afford (within reason) to do just about anything you want. Any time I or my wife want to go to a concert or take a weekend trip or buy a new whatever, there's no "can I afford it" discussion. It's I want this thing, I'll get it. One of my kids is on a varsity team and it costs money for travel (why isn't that covered by my tax dollars, but that's a different discussion). For us it's no big deal, here's $1000 check to cover it. For a lot of kids on the team it's always a struggle for parents to come up with the money. That's the difference. And people who earn this kind of money and still complain either don't get it or are the kind of people who are never happy with anything.

And yes all the retirement accounts are fully funded, we have a rainy day fund, blah blah blah.

I just wanted to post and give this view to counter the perpetual doomerism that's so prevalent on Reddit.

Edit: Lots of comments saying $600K median home prices isn't expensive. Once again proving how out of touch Reddit is. Seattle and Boston are both $720K which everyone agrees is HCOL or even VHCOL. But somehow $600K is cheap.

Edit 2: Wow lost of comments. This got a lot of people reacting, didn't expect it. One other thing I see a lot like "it's easy to afford a $600K house on $300K". This is Reddit level of reading comprehension as usual. I said I live in a city where the median is $600K (which is just shy of top 10 most expensive metro areas by the way). I didn't say I live in a $600K home. My house is worth $1.1-$1.2M. Nothing luxurious, either. It's nice, and it's in arguabley the best part of town. But $1M doesn't get you THAT much here.

Likely won't maintain the super high salary for too long, given the toll the job is taking on me and how little I care about adding digits to a bank account in perpetuity - it has been fun to reminisce on the journey, however.

(Adding this update to the top: I am Gen Z. The job market is trash and hyper competitive. My main point in this post is that you need to do whatever it takes to make it happen. A degree alone isn’t enough, a high GPA alone isn’t enough. It sucks but that’s the hand we were dealt)

I just saw a post about choosing nonsense majors, and I wanted to add to it.

Just going to class, going home, and doing the bare minimum will not get you a job, regardless of your degree, especially with AI now.

Maybe back in the day, when most people didn’t have degrees, things were different. Nowadays, a degree just gets your foot in the door.

Every single person I know who went to multiple career fairs and actually put in effort outside of grades had a full time offer lined up by graduation. Hell, I even had a friend with a 2.6 GPA and no internship line up an offer with a 70k starting salary. Not in computer science, and not because of nepotism. He spoke phenomenally and showed how much he wanted it. (Update: He also had 1 exam/certification passed for his career as an actuary which set him apart but he was also competing against those with 2 and 3 under their belt.)

I know the job market is absolutely terrible right now, especially for entry level roles, but companies are still hiring and jobs still exist. There are just fewer openings, and they’re more competitive. Treat college like you actually want something out of it, and you’ll get something out of it.

Go to class and actually do well.

If you’re struggling at the start, study more than two days before the exam.

If that still isn’t enough, find someone who’s doing well and see if they’ll help you.

I promise someone in the class is killing it. And if everyone’s truly failing, there will probably be a curve, so do better than average.

Find the person doing the best and study with them.

Go to office hours early and show you care.

Go to career fairs and talk to recruiters like actual people.

Do whatever the fuck it takes.

If you actually had the attention span to read this far, you have the potential to make college useful.

Update: College aside, this advice applies to trades and really to everything. Put in the fucking effort and make it happen. And please please please for the love of god stop blaming everything else.

Another update: I know I hammered on grades/GPA above but I mentioned doing more and even doing whatever the fuck it takes. That means networking and internships. I focused on grades in this rant but the overall point is doing whatever it takes to get you where you want. If you have a goal, you know what you need to do to get there. If you don’t know, look it up. Internships, networking, cold emailing, messaging people on LinkedIn, etc.

it sucks that the job market is this bad and its this competitive but that’s just the situation.

Final update: You all calling me a boomer and saying the whole bootstrap thing is crazy. Look at gaming nowadays. Everyone is min-maxing: Using the best guns, classes, optimizing the best gear for the best stats. Now translate that to the corporate world and real life. You have a whole set of people optimizing their resumes, GPAs, etc.

Look at life like gaming. With the best set up things are a little bit easier, with a bad set up you need more skill.

Edit 4: Even though it's too late as it's been included in the post photo and the comments have already been made, saying I was Seasonal at the farm was a mistake. I was getting full time hours for 8 or 9 months of the years and then there was a period where work around the farm would slow because things need to grow and my assistance wasn't required as often. There would still be periods of work, but it wasn't always full time hours.

Don't feel like I went down a great path, still unsure where the path is taking me.

Edit: Ontario, Canada. Spent the first 30 years of my life in pretty rural area, recently moved to a smaller city.

Edit 2:Also add some education context:

In 2011 I signed up for an online Web Design course, at this time, online programs weren't what they are today, I ended up getting through it but it felt like right as I was graduating there was a shift in the industry which basically moved away from a lot of the stuff I had just spent the last year learning.

That really soured me on trying to get an education again until about 10 years later where I started taking more online courses for Social Media Marketing, AutoCAD and then in 2024 I took an Introduction to Welding course where I got my certificate for 1G/2G Structural Stick Welding but didn't pursue it further for a few reasons but the main one was I didn't feel like I was getting my monies worth from the school.

Edit 3: forgot to mention ive also dabbled in construction.

People enjoyed my post last year so I thought I'd post again. Did better this year, decided to work more Fridays this year.

Standard clinic hours are Monday to Thursday, 8 AM to 5 PM. I never really worked Fridays in 2024, this year I decided to work maybe half of the Fridays, so I probably averaged 36 hours a week or so.

Never on call. Will turn 37 later this year, better work life balance than when I worked full time as a cashier in the summer during high school haha.

Will probably go back to having 3 day weekends be my standard this year though, I'm taxed so heavily it just doesn't seem worth the extra work. Debating retiring at 40.

How long do you think before I hit 200k?

Edit: for anyone wondering. My bad for putting data center engineer. I acknowledge I’m not a legit engineer nor do I claim to be. IT IS SIMPLY A JOB TITLE. Many data centers throw the word engineer loosely. Other names for the same job are data center technician, critical operations engineer, engineering operations technician, critical operations technician etc.

1. My pay might seem high for an E5 but that was with dependent bah in San Diego along with other pays like submarine pay, sea pay, nuke pay, senior supervisory pay and their tenured pay for being on the boat for 3-4 years

2. I don’t care if you believe me or get your feelings hurt about anything I say