Comment by BrandoElFollito
3 years ago
This is a good point.
I look at 900k$ and think wow from the perspective of my very well paid job in France.
Getting 900k$ a year would bring great things to me and probably make me retire earlier. This will not be life-changing though.
And then I think about people who earn 5% of what I do and for them multiplying their income by two would probably be truly life changing for them.
And then these 900k$ do not look that wow anymore.
I'd call "may retire, or work on whatever you want for the rest of your life, after a few years of saving" life-changing.
Twice my salary will not allow me to retire much earlier and sustain my level of living. Maybe ay 1M€/year that would be doable.
If you don't increase your standard of living, it will. (Or the other caveats of course; assuming you're not already close to retirement, impending economic catastrophe or whatever).
Doubling salary post-tax will at the very least put you at a 50% savings rate, and that yields a time from zero to financial independence of 16.5 years. Assuming historically-similar stock market returns and a safe withdrawal rate of 4%. This relationship does not depend on absolute numbers beyond those stated above, only savings rate.
Most likely you'd not be starting from zero and having a positive savings rate already. Whether you'd be comfortable doing this is a different question. Many would never be, and hence never completely comfortable retiring.
For people not living there but curious about trying it out: What's a reasonable range for "very well paid job in France"? Is it all cash or is there equity?
For a entry-level developer in a large French company you would aim a 50k€.
But this is just the bare salary - you will have to take off about 20-30% for various taxes. But then you get free healthcare and education, and retirement.
Some companies will have a bonus ("intéressement / participation") which can be an extra 10 to 20% once a year.
You would typically have a straight salary, no equity or something like that.
When you look at the most senior positions, this is about 130k€.
But it really depends on the city, on the industry etc. Generally speaking your salary is not that big, bt you have extra advantages (such as the social committee, a company-funded organization that will reimburse part of your vacation costs, give gifts at Christmas, ...)
> For a entry-level developer in a large French company you would aim a 50k€.
> When you look at the most senior positions, this is about 130k€.
You're being generous here. A new grad in France in engineering or development gets more often in the 40k€. The most senior positions in most companies plateau around 90k€.
In some companies in Paris it's higher, but that's the exception.
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At 62k€ before taxes you're in the 10% top earners in the country. That's about 41-47k€ after taxes depending on your situation.
Are you here to just brag? Also the dollar sign goes on the other side.
Currencies are formatted differently in different locales, even foreign ones.
Brag about what? Please take a moment to read my comment with understanding.
And the dollar sign goes on the side I put it: nine hundred thousand dollars. The fact that you want to write $900k is just an idea specific to the finance world (such as using parentheses for negative numbers).
Do you usually write m4, in7 or lb9?
Dollar sign goes before the number, cent sign goes after, other units go after: $7, 7¢, 7 lbs. You can’t pretend convention doesn’t exist just because it’s weird! That’s why it’s convention and not common sense.
imho most countries on earth use the format: [scalar] [si-prefix] [unit]