Would you rather choose a high salary but you're not happy with your work? or choose the low salary but you're happy doing it?

As long as the salary is enough for my needs (including unforeseen needs), I would far rather be happy with my work, than have higher income.

As long as it is livable, the latter.

Well, I’ve done low salary but been unhappy and stuck it out for a few years — so I can do unhappy temporarily.

Therefore, I’ll take high salary and unhappy, bank some cash, stick with it for a few years, then quit and go back to a low salary-but-happy-gig.

Short term, 2–5 years, I’ll take the high salary and save like crazy. Once you get a huge cushion of money you are liberated! You can work at jobs you like, pursue more life balance, you don’t have to panic if you lose your job, or God forbid get sick. Plus, money gets money. If you save $500k, and it earns 5%, it will be $1 million in 15 years, because of compound interest without having saved another penny yourself.

Money in the American society is freedom, safety, and power. Plus, keep in mind, as you age you will likely be tired of working. Even people who love their job get burnt out after years of it. Most people switch careers an average of 3 times, and the switch can be difficult psychologically and financially.

Put yourself ahead of the financial 8 ball as early as possible so you aren’t in a panic when you get older and it’s harder to find a job (starts in your 50’s usually, it happens to a lot of people) and you are more likely to have health issues, and more likely to want to have more personal freedom.

There have been studies showing people who sacrifice do better long term. The classic study was with young children, the marshmallow study. The test subjects (the children) who would wait as told to eat the marshmallows put in front of them, did much better on average over time than the kids who ate a marshmallow.

It is worth saying that sometimes the low paying job turns into making a lot of money. People who are creative, entrepreneur, ambitious, they find ways to make money that sometimes are never expected.

Edit: I was going to link the Marshmallow study, but instead I found a follow up to the old study and it’s very interesting. Here it is https://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=4622

Depends how unhappy and if I can’t stand it, also How much I need to survive. If the lower salary still means I can have a decent and comfortable lifestyle at the minimum I want, I’ll take it.

If high salary causes so much stress, depression, and long hours of work then not worth it.

Yeah. It depends on the job, and really the pay. But. I’d choose pay, over on the job happiness. Work, is work. But. If well paid. I could at least be happy off the clock…

High salary, always. The more I make the more people I can help. Work is called work for a reason, not happy happy fun time.
Frankly working with people who are in pursuit of happiness has taught me how poorly they tend to do their job. I see this in many millenials, its sad.

When faced with this choice, I took the low(er) salary in exchange for a job where I don’t have to hate myself at the end of the day.

@KNOWITALL Happy is not the same as fun. And the jobs that help people the most tend not to pay very well. I don’t care how much it pays, I would never take a job that requires me to exploit people just so that I can use that salary to help them out later. Better not to harm them in the first place.

I doubt @KNOWITALL is talking about taking a job that harms people. It’s not like all well paying jobs are evil, it might simply be a job that isn’t very appealing to the person, or a job that has high pressure, or a crappy boss, or long hours, or extreme hours.

Sometimes happiness with the job is it’s own reward. I’ll take it.

Happy.

@JLeslie It’s very stressful and not often ‘fun’, but the rewards of my hard work and stress are that I can afford to help others. Plus I’m very good at it.

I love Hacker News..

https://news.ycombinator.com/news

Lots of silicon valley boys making six figures that complain about how rent is so expensive and they can’t buy a house on their 150K a year. And it impossible to have a house and kids in SF. And tons of bitching about how public transportation has other people on it and doesn’t actually drop them at exactly where the want to be with no stops inbetween.

But they will grab a Mcmuffin in their Tesla on the way to Google HQ. Somehow that person that just made your food is getting by on minimum wage. But they simply are struggling on 10K a month. Appletinis aren’t cheap.

I’m getting to a point here.

My sisters husband makes over 100K a year as a union pipe-fitter. And we don’t live in a very expensive place.

But they are always broke. My sisters AT&T bill is 500 a month since all the damn kids are on it. Car insurance for everyone is 800 a month. The leased cars are another thousand. She spent 80 bucks on Chinese food last night. There is a 50 dollar bottle of vodka in the freezer. I could go on.

I made under 1000 last month, I don’t worry about money, I have never been broke. I even tuck away 25% into savings so I have a rainy day fund.

My point here is that people will always push their limits no matter what their income is. Two hours ago I had to send my mom 50 bucks so she could buy toilet paper and cat food. That is not a joke.

https://stfudamnit.com/stuff/shit.png

My life insurance doesn’t go to my sister or my mom. At goes to my sisters painfully tedious daughter (19 years old) that worked at a Subway for six months to save up enough cash for a new MacBook Pro. I trust her to give my mom and sister an allowance so they don’t blow the wad in a single spree. I just know they would. My mom got in a car accident in a parking lot a few years ago and got a 8K settlement. The money was gone in under a month. She just bought shit. A kiln that I don’t think she has ever used. Never used pasta maker. Never used rototiller.

So happy.. People that say they would save tons and retire early but barely ever do. You just want more and you are still broke as fuck with lots of toys you never enjoy.

Might as well not dread going to work everyday.

Funny thing is one of my favorite jobs was being a janitor at a hippie dive bar. Cleaning male restrooms at a bar is interesting. You can tell how busy it was by how far you can get to the toilet without tucking in your shoelaces.

But awesome job. I was alone. It was at 4am and I am a night owl. And I could eat and drink whatever while I was there. Clean for two hours, drink Sierra Nevada Pale Ale from the keg for hours. I was broke but I didn’t really care and had a lot of fun.

Work you enjoy can end up making you dislike something you enjoy simply because it makes demands of you which makes it lose its luster.
Aim for the money, but spend like you have that lower paying job. Save that extra cash like your very life depends on it. At some point that may become true.
As we age, medical problems tend to pop up which we never considered, and medical bills can become a hurdle you can’t conquer. The good news is, if that doesn’t happen to you, there is going to be a fun, busy retirement life.

Happy.

Average life expectancy: 80 years
Hours in a day: 24
Hours in one week: 168
Hours asleep (daily): 9
Hours awake (daily): 15
Hours awake (weekly): 105
Hours working (weekly): 45

Roughly 43% of your waking life is spent working. Do you want to spend 34 years of your life being miserable?

@KNOWITALL It’s like a curse being great at something that you don’t love doing.

@JLeslie “I doubt @KNOWITALL is talking about taking a job that harms people.”

I didn’t say she was, so this is irrelevant.

“It’s not like all well paying jobs are evil”

No, but the highest paying jobs probably are. So if salary is someone’s overriding criterion, the only thing standing between them and taking an evil job is their qualifications.

“it might simply be a job that isn’t very appealing to the person, or a job that has high pressure, or a crappy boss, or long hours, or extreme hours”

My job has high pressure, some of my bosses are crappy, and the hours can be both long and extreme. But I still like it and am happy with it (which just goes back to my original point, which is that we shouldn’t define “happiness” so narrowly as to think it requires everything to be gumdrops and lollipops).

@KNOWITALL “It’s very stressful and not often ‘fun’, but the rewards of my hard work and stress are that I can afford to help others. Plus I’m very good at it.”

I am also very good at my job, which is frequently stressful and not always fun. But my job is helping people, which means I don’t need my salary to be higher in order to help others. Plus, I am happy with it. The point is that “happiness” and “fun” are not the same thing, and I think the people who choose jobs that make them happy largely understand that (even lousy Millennials like myself).

In fact, I would challenge the premise that you’re not happy with your job. You’ve said nice things about your job in the past, and you like what it allows you to do for others in your free time. So it sounds to me like you have a job that provides both happiness and a high salary. My job will also provide that soon enough. but I’d choose it over a job that made me unhappy even if my salary was going to stay low.

@Patty_Melt “Work you enjoy can end up making you dislike something you enjoy simply because it makes demands of you which makes it lose its luster.”

This is an important point. If you take a hobby and make it a job, you could end up with a job that doesn’t make you happy even though you thought it would. And you might lose the ability to enjoy that hobby, making you unhappier still. This is another reason that we have to distinguish between “a job that makes you happy” on the one hand and “a job that is fun” or “a job that involves doing something you like doing for fun” on the other. They’re not necessarily the same thing, and people who expect them to be the same thing could end up very disappointed.

@Savoire Most days I love it, yes.

Not all millenials are the same, I wasn’t being mean, just my experience.

I have always felt that happiness is worth money, meaning I’d rather be happy and make less than be miserable and make more.

I’ve had jobs where I couldn’t stand the work or I couldn’t stand the boss. I didn’t just jump ship, but I used it as an opportunity to reassess and make some changes.

Every job has good things and bad things about it, and no job is perfect so it’s all about what you can tolerate and what your situation is (work situation, financial situation).

@KNOWITALL “Not all millenials are the same, I wasn’t being mean, just my experience.”

No worries. Just standing up for my people.