Anonymous wrote:OP here. I feel like the number starts with a 3, at least in this area. DH is considering a job change to a higher stress/higher paying job and I’m just not sure it’s worth it. He wants to do what pp does and power save/keep same lifestyle we have now. It’s a noble idea - I just don’t want it to negatively affect his health or our marriage.

I feel that the higher I climb the more flexibility I get. I report into the CEO and I have time to train for marathons, travel for a few triathlons a year, am often at the gym mid morning, have someone who does our laundry and grocery shopping. For us, making more money has improved our health, not negatively impacted it. We also have much more vacation time as a family than rank and file employees.

DH and I together make $200k now. I work slightly less than full time and he freelances and so we are home a lot with our kids. So, obviously, the magic number for us is something around 200k. We could work more hours and make more money, but it’s not worth it to us. We’d rather hang out together instead.

Less than $200k for us. We now make around that combined w. fully paid health insurance & 10% retirement matches. It is plenty and we both telecommute frequently, travel rarely, and have flex schedules allowing one or the other to pick up the kids at school every day. Giving up the time would really not be worth more money for us. But, we are not very type A & YMMV

I have an extremely stressful job with an income of around $3M. I do love what I do though.

It depends what the starting point is. My manager makes around$120k and her job is extremely stressful right now. She works long hours doing multiple people's jobs. I don't think it would be possible to have twice the stress for twice the pay.

Depends person to person.

We are at $390K HHI and if you had asked a few hours back we would been happy if we had hit $300K HHI

Upwards of $300k for us. If dh and I can both make $170ish I’d. E happy to stay there for a while and not stress more. Of Doris rim making less than that with lots of stress right now.

OP here. I feel like the number starts with a 3, at least in this area. DH is considering a job change to a higher stress/higher paying job and I’m just not sure it’s worth it. He wants to do what pp does and power save/keep same lifestyle we have now. It’s a noble idea - I just don’t want it to negatively affect his health or our marriage.

Anonymous wrote:$300k if it's stable.

Right now I have an unstable but high-paying job, and it's very stressful, but the idea that our HHI will never be this high again is what keeps me working at it. If I could drop down to 250-300k HHI and a feeling that it was going to stay at that level; that'd be great, even though it meant cutting my pay by half to two-thirds.

is me and I'm power saving. I'm 40 and am banking as much as I can. Living with a mortgage of $2,400/mo ona. 550k income. It could all be gone tomorrow. I look at this as an bbn opportunity to give my kids the best education money can buy, a nice retirement, and a solid brokerage account.

For me it would be $1mil

Depends on where you live and what that buys you vased on the cost of living. We live in an area where housing is incredibly expensive, so at $250K you're still making tradeoffs between a reasonable commute and a third bedroom. In other parts of the country, those things are a given at an income of $250K. An extra $50K is worth the associated stress if it takes an hour off my roundtrip commute, but probably not so much if it's just going into savings.

Anonymous wrote:Once one person makes $300k.

OP here. Wanted to add, by HHI I mean total comp including bonuses and vested stock, etc.

$300k if it's stable.

Right now I have an unstable but high-paying job, and it's very stressful, but the idea that our HHI will never be this high again is what keeps me working at it. If I could drop down to 250-300k HHI and a feeling that it was going to stay at that level; that'd be great, even though it meant cutting my pay by half to two-thirds.

Once one person makes $300k.

Yes, I know there are unicorn jobs out there where people make bank and are not stressed at all. But for the sake of discussion, assume additional HHI comes with additional stress/hours/responsibilities.

At what HHI would you say the additional money is no longer worth it? $250k? $300k? More?