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[quote=Anonymous]Personally, I'd focus less on your net worth as a benchmark and more on your budget and ability to continue to save going forward.  Someone in your shoes still has 25-30+ years of working life ahead of you -- your net worth matters less right now than your ability to land on your feet with a decent paying job that supports your lifestyle and allows you to save 15% towards retirement.

For some perspective, I left biglaw after 5 years, and joined DOJ.  I've been at DOJ for about 4 years now.  When I graduated law school (2008) I had about $175k in student loans and relatively minimal assets.  When I left biglaw in early 2014, we (I got married in the interim) had NW of about $350k, and I still carried student loan balance of $130k (my wife, not a lawyer, thankfully had no student loans).

Leaving for DOJ meant our combined salary dropped from about $350k to $250k.  But we kept our living expenses at about $90k after taxes).  So, we were still able to save and invest and grow our wealth.

Since then, our living expenses have gone up (we have had kids), but also our salaries have increased.  My DOJ salary has increased from $125k when I first started to over $150k now.  And my wife's salary (marketing) has increased from $110k when I left biglaw to about $135k now.  So we're up to $300k salary again.

NW has continued to grow, and we're at about $900k.  I still carry about $50k in student loans, because they have a low interest rate (3.5% currently).

YMMV[/quote]

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