An assumption a lot of people make when thinking about their income is that it’ll have a sort of linear, upward trajectory. It’s a logical assumption to make. Each year, you gain more experience, get promotions, earn raises, and move to higher-paying jobs. It’s natural to think that as you progress in your career, your income will steadily rise.
And while this is probably generally true that your income will rise over time, it’s unlikely it’ll do so in a linear trajectory. Income can actually be pretty volatile. One year you might do very well for yourself thanks to a new job or a big bonus. In another year, unforeseen circumstances might cause your income to drop. Maybe you get laid off. Or you move into a lower-paying job. Or you move to part-time work. There are a million reasons why your income can go up or down and there’s really no telling where your income will go.
My own income trajectory is a good example of how your income can be all over the place. I went into my career assuming my income would rise each year. But for most of my career, my income has actually gone the other way. Each year, I always seemed to make less than I did the previous year.
I will say, I don’t recommend purposefully trying to make less money each year. I didn’t do it on purpose. It happened because I was trying to find the right job for me – one that gave me purpose and made me happy and gave me the right balance between work and life. Or maybe it was just because I was stupid, I don’t know.
In any event, stupid or not, there was an unexpected benefit of seeing my income go down each year. It gave me a bit of a test run in living on less and figuring out how much I need to be happy. And importantly, making less money each year gave me the flexibility to make big career changes, something that I might not have been able to do if my income had been steadily rising each year.
A Brief Look At My Income Trajectory
My first job out of law school was at a large law firm, where I started at a six-figure salary. This was an absurd amount of money to me at the time – I was 26 years and before that, my highest paying job ever paid $13 per hour. I ended up working at the big law firm for three years, during which each year my income went up by a set amount (a $5,000 raise in my second year, followed by a $10,000 raise in my third year).
Like many young lawyers, I didn’t last very long in biglaw. After three years, I found my way over to the public sector, snagging myself a job at my state Attorney General’s Office. This new job paid me much less – I ended up taking a $50,000 pay cut to move into public service. The trade-off was that the new job would theoretically give me a better work-life balance.
Unfortunately, the dream of a better work-life balance didn’t end up panning out. I found myself working as many hours as when I was working in biglaw, but only now I was making much less money. After a year, I once again began looking for a new job.
I ended up finding a new job at a legal non-profit. This job came with another pay cut – this time I was making $20,000 less than what I made at my government job. If you’re keeping track at home, my income started at six figures, peaked in my third year of practice, then dropped $50,000 the next year before dropping another $20,000.
Exact numbers are always helpful, so here are the salaries at each of my jobs. As you can see, unlike what most people would aim to do, my income went backward.
- Biglaw – Started at $110,000; Peaked at $125,000
- Government Job – $75,000
- Non-Profit Job – $57,000
It Made My Transition To Self-Employment Much Easier
I didn’t go into my career with the plan to try to earn a lower salary each year. It happened by accident. For most people, making more money every year is obviously what you should try to do.
That said, this strange income trajectory did come with an unexpected benefit. It made my transition to self-employment a lot easier because the income I had to replace was much less.
I knew around my third year of writing on this blog that figuring out a way to work for myself was what I really wanted to do. For a long time, I thought financial independence was what I wanted but in reality, financial independence was a proxy for what I really wanted. I wanted to control my life and control my time. Even with an aggressive savings rate, it would take years or decades for me to reach financial independence and then finally do what I want. So instead, why not figure out what I want to do now and go do it?
As glamorous as some people make blogging and writing out to be, it’s not always a money-making venture – at least not for a long time. I’m not getting rich off my writing. But I am earning enough to live a respectable life – especially when you consider how much more of my time I now control.
When I was making six figures, trying to replace that sort of income with my self-employment income would have been very difficult. But my last job only paid me $57,000 per year. That was a number I could totally hit. I only needed to make about $5,000 per month from anything to equal what I made at my last job. The numbers worked out. I could make $1,000 to $2,000 per month from my side hustles (which I’ve been able to do without fail for years). That meant all I needed to do was make $3,000 to $4,000 per month from this blog to live the same lifestyle as I’d been living before.
I knew I could do it. And it was because my income was going the wrong way for years that I was in this position where I could take bigger risks.
What Can We Learn From This?
Most of us tend to have an upward income trajectory over time. This is obviously the right thing to do. When your skills are better, you should be compensated more for them.
But if you’re thinking about major career changes or retiring early or moving to self-employment, consider testing yourself first. What is your life like if you’re making less money? You can try a different job, one that’s hopefully less stressful and gives you more of your time back. And if you aren’t comfortable downgrading your income, then treat your current job as if you’re making way less money. Put everything else aside to use for whatever future venture you are thinking about doing.
For me, each job change I had didn’t really impact my lifestyle. It turns out I wasn’t spending that much money anyway, so I surprisingly found myself living the same lifestyle as I’d been living before, even though I was making as much as $70,000 less than what I made at my peak.
A higher income is good. But that higher income can sometimes act as golden handcuffs. If you’re paid too much, it’s often not easy to make the move to something that you maybe want to do. If I’d managed to stay in biglaw, who knows. This blog might not exist. I’d be making too much money to get out.
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Check out these other ebikes/scooters I've had the chance to do a review for:
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- Himiway Escape Bike – The Himiway Escape is an interesting bike for anyone looking for a moped-style ebike. If you’re a gig economy worker, the Himiway Escape is particularly interesting and it’s possible to think of it as an investment, especially if you can opt to do deliveries with the Himiway versus using a car. It’s not cheap, but you can definitely make your money back when you compare the mileage you’ll put on your car versus using an ebike. Check out my Himiway Escape Bike Review.
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Kevin is an attorney and the blogger behind Financial Panther, a blog about personal finance, travel hacking, and side hustling using the gig economy. He paid off $87,000 worth of student loans in just 2.5 years by choosing not to live like a big shot lawyer.
Kevin is passionate about earning money using the gig economy and you can see all the ways he makes extra income every month in his side hustle reports.
Kevin is also big on using the latest fintech apps to improve his finances. Some of Kevin's favorite fintech apps include:
- SoFi Money. A really good checking account with absolutely no fees. You'll get a $25 referral bonus if you open a SoFi Money account with a referral link, and an additional $250 if you complete a direct deposit.
- US Bank Business. US Bank is currently offering new business customers a $750 signup bonus after opening a new account and meeting certain requirements.
- M1 Finance. This is a great robo-advisor that has no fees and allows you to create a customized portfolio based on your risk tolerance. You also get $100 for opening an account.
- DCU. Digital Federal Credit Union (DCU) is a free, nationwide credit union that I recommend to readers for two reasons. First, DCU has a $20 referral bonus if you open a free DCU checking account with a referral link. Second, DCU has a savings account that gives you 6.17% interest on your first $1,000.
- Personal Capital. One of best free apps you can use to monitor your portfolio and track your net worth. This is one of the apps I use to track my financial accounts.
Feel free to send Kevin a message here.
Marvelous perspective. When the money we earn is the only metric we judge (or a judged by) our success on, those “golden handcuffs” can quickly become an impenetrable golden prison.
Thank you for sharing this- I have been a “failure” for years, moving from higher-pay to lower-pay in order to prioritize my time with my kids, while they are still kids, because THAT is what is important to me.
Comforting to read a “money blog” that remembers our humanity is not defined by what we earn, but by what we choose.
Thanks Kevin. Made my Tuesday a better day.
Glad you found this post helpful Alex!
how nice, and light – all the very best –
Thanks!
My pay did the other thing, it almost always went up, especially near the end of my career. I admire you looking on the bright side. My last year was huge, several hundred thousand dollars in pay and bonus, and my timing was perfect to leave. Profits fell off a cliff the next year and there were no bonuses at all. My compensation would have been cut by more than half! And the amount of abuse I would have taken for global economic factors nobody could control would have been epic! I really got out at the perfect time.
Nice!
I bet it was hard to walk away, right? The more you make, the harder it is to walk away from that income.
This completely rings true. After the last five years of making big money it has been an adjustment for my wife and I to not be making ANY for the last six months. Sure my investments are performing and they are churning out more than I would have hoped this year, but it still is uneasy to to make such a quick and fast adjustment. I think your transition was definitely timely and glad that you are blogging now!
I didn’t mean to do it, but it was a nice way to sort of ease myself into self-employment. The funny thing is I’m making the same amount as I made at my lowest paying job these days, but I’m 100 times happier. And with my self-employment, the income can actually scale a bit too, which means more upside.
I’ve often though about taking a government position and slow down – however I know I would work the same no matter where I was spending my time. I’m sure with your work ethic you are the same. Unfortunately there are public servants the world over that abuse the system that has been built up around them. I totally agreed that you have to happy with what you spend your valuable time each day.
I went into govt work thinking it’d be a slower pace and more satisfying. I think it was probably a little more satisfying, but the hours weren’t any better. Funny enough, while our pay was for 40 hours per week, our handbook required all lawyers to work at least 45 hours per week. So in effect, I was required to give 5 hours of work per week for free.
Here’s something you didn’t mention, but I’m sure that you appreciate and that gave you the freedom to make decisions that have come with lower earnings: those BigLaw bucks you earned after graduating law school enabled you to pay off your debt in 2.5 years. That was yuuuge, because it eliminated in short order an albatross that, for many years after graduating, might have forced you to make decisions you might not have preferred. I spent 13 years somewhat aggressively paying off my law school debt on a salary very far from BigLaw numbers. Most of that time it was very painful as there wasn’t much financial slack for probably the first 10 years of that timeframe. I certainly couldn’t easily have afforded to take a lower-paying job. Lemme tell you, being in that situation sucks. So, yeah, you’re earning less money now than earlier in your career. But your smart moves paid the dividends that have enabled you to trade time and control for money. Well done.
Absoulutely. I went into biglaw with that plan – use the income and pay off my student loans fast. If anyone is going into law school, I always tell them to pursue biglaw first unless you’re really in a position where the student loans don’t matter.
Great perspective!
“That said, this strange income trajectory did come with an unexpected benefit. It made my transition to self-employment a lot easier because the income I had to replace was much less.”
It became harder and harder for me to leave banking, until I got a terrible 2011 bonus. Then, it was much easier for me to try and negotiate a severance in 2012 and be free.
The lower income is one of the reasons perhaps why you see A LOT more Midwestern and Southern bloggers in the personal finance spaces versus the coasts.
I don’t know any other bloggers in San Francisco, for example.
Sam
Exactly – if your bonus in 2011 had been bigger than the previous year, who knows. Maybe you’d have kept sticking it out because it’s not easy to jump off when you’re making more each year.
I think there might be some prestige element too with the coasts that makes it harder to do something outside of the norm. I’m from DC originally and there’s a lot of pressure to define yourself by your job.
Health is Wealth!!!!
I earned solid money as a consultant but it is a different world. I earn less money now and much happier.
Thanks for sharing! I did the opposite really – starting in a very low paying field where I expected to be lucky to ever crack $60k in my career. Then I changed fields…
I did take a paycut for my second job, effectively. I used to work shifts and was on a collective union contract which meant that working my weird schedule, I effectively made like 40% more than my normal pay. Then I took a small pay cut from that typical amount to go to a regular 9-5 salaried job. It was worth it.