I would then take time to find a remote company which to some degree would align with my moral values. I would not need to rush to keep working in the automobile industry, but instead would try to get in somewhere where they would need my experience and work with renewable energy or smart grids or something similar. For that I would probably need to spent some time doing some courses on that topic and educate myself so I'm employable. The 80k would give me that possibility.

(My case is rather specific that I also need a work visa sponsor to be able to stay in Korea, so that makes it much more difficult.)

I had this. What i did was consider what the best title/type of company i could get with respect to career growth and turned down interviews for everything that wasnt that.

I came VERY close to changing my search parameters after about three months of looking with no firm offer. I landed one of the ones i wanted. Pay isnt on the upper end for the title but its still the title and a large company.

If i had to rush i probably would have taken a much shittier role with far less growth opportunity.

I am a highly trained professional with 10 years experience though so ymmv.

Ok in your case, let's say you have 80K in savings.

Half a million would be about the point where it would change my ways.

With only 5 million I would stop working for money.

Ok, now we're talking. That will get me through a couple of years if managed well, so I would have the luxury to be choosy about my next job, get multiple offers (hopefully) and not have to sacrifice on having fun while looking. Still, I'd be planning to get a new job in 2-3 months max, ideally.

The problem is that unless you had enough investments to be generating an income you can live on, all a neat egg does is focus your mind on the fact that it is diminishing and that could be used as a deposit for a house or just a rainy day fund.

What it might do is encourage you to get something lower paying just to pay the bills while you are waiting for the dream job or you might be able to undertake an unpaid apprenticeship as long as there's a solid job offer at the end of it.

People downvoting have never lived a different country, or city, than where they were raised ... seriously, cost of living varies wildly. 10k/month in expenses with a family, house (mortgage, insurance, maintenance, etc), cars (gas, maintenance, insurance, etc) travel / vacations, you name it, is not unreasonable.

If I was still in my own place I think 2 months would be a stretch, I'm currently sharing a house with my in laws so that's helping us out.

Texas. My rent us 800 a month in a decent area. 1b 1b

Me, me, me haha. If you have the money to live nicely for awhile, spend time finding out what jobs youre really passionate about and go for those. Even if your under qualified it cant hurt to apply. Sometimes they can offer entry jobs to get were you want to be. If you already know what you want to do, spend some time updating/improving your resume and see if you can get a a few companies to fight over you. There's a lot of power being able to walk away from the negotiation table if you're qualified and its just not the right time.

Um... I like never said that. What medication are you on?

Yes, exactly this

Bruh these people absolutely have the option to scale back, don't feel bad for them. They live paycheck to paycheck after their $80k car payments and $600k house mortgage. That's not the same.

Bruh, I live in Seattle. The cheapest ones are still in the $1000s for minimal sq/footage. My place is $1700/m w/parking at 640 ft.

Average people who work in service or labor can't afford to live here if they have a family. Commuting on 90 or I-5 or 99 is always a slog, so living outside of the city incurs massive time and effort, which aren't sunk costs. Gas is $5-6/gal here. Public transit is better than most places, but still bad. And we haven't even brought up the homeless dilemma, rampant drug use, and property crime.

Most cities are like this now. Dallas/Ft Worth are cess pools. Miami is a mess. Tampa, SFO, LA, NYC, and so on... If people don't see it, it's because they're ignoring it or are in a bubble.

They're not the only source. If you want to equivocate, cool, but your experience isn't everyone else's.

How in the world are you able to live off $5k/year? My last months credit card bill was $2.6k and I don't even pay rent or tuition on my card. I'm also single with no dependents, own my own car, and have extremely cheap rent.

Cost of living isn't the same everywhere and perspective is relative.

Rent in my area averages around 3k USD/mo for fairly plain arrangements. Between that and "unavoidable" costs like utilities, you'd get 3-4 months max on that amount, even living frugally. It really isn't that much for a lot of people, even if that amount might be to you.

That would last you two years of not working???? That wouldn't last me a year of rent (maybe 6 months or less), never mind other expenses like food. I don't even live in an overly expensive place like California or NY. I also don't have any extravagant expenses. What in the world place do you live in with rent that cheap?

The insane levels of post-COVID inflation has been a real bitch, though. Prior to COVID, that would have been around a year's worth of rent (but still not enough for other things like rent and utilities). But everything has skyrocketed since. But even pre-COVID, I can't imagine $10k being two years of total living expenses.

Don't blame the responders, look at your question. If what you really want to know is "if you had 2 years worth of savings to live on", ask that. The low end average cost of living in the US anyway is $2,500 a month, so 10k is 4 months of living expenses. That's also about the average length of a job search.

I used to say 10k is enough to solve one major problem in my life and that was it. Enough to bailout a relative, enough to move across the country for a new job, enough to rebuild after a fire/flood, enough to buy a reasonable car in cash. 10k is not just money, 10k is a force in its own right. It represents one thing that should destroy my life or someone around me life nd make it go away.

Many years ago my wife wanted to finish her degree and she made 2k a month. I gave her my ten thousand and told her to focus on studies for five months. Worked out.

With inflation it is probably 15k now.

I don't buy it. Not in the US, at least. Even if that was exclusively spent on rent alone, that would put it at $417/month. The only way you're doing that is if you own (at least bought before the real estate spikes since ~2017) or you have a personal relationship with the landlord and are getting well below market rates. Or if you live in a van down by the river.

And that's even before things like food, insurance, etc.

My apartment, which is about 22 square meters, costs me the equivalent of 1300 dollars a month. Add in a electricity, food, Public transit card, mobile data, and other small necessary things, and it's at least 1800 dollars a month. And that's without any extra expenses like fun things.

Which would, of course, last under 6 months. That's not a lot of time. I'd need to start a job search immediately to be safe.

I'm happy to hear that wherever you live is a helluva lot cheaper than Cali

You said in another comment that your rent was $800 a month, two years of that is $19,200. Rent is (supposed to be) about 1/3 of your living costs, so that would be $2400 per month. You're good for a little over 4 months, more if you live very lean.

Average cost of groceries per person per month in Texas is $289. Let's say you're thrifty and only spend $200. https://www.sofi.com/cost-of-living-in-texas/

Gas has averaged about $3.10 over the last year. https://ycharts.com/indicators/texas_retail_price_of_gasoline_monthly I don't know how much gas your car uses or how much you drive, but lets say you drive a prius and get 50mpg. Most people drive about 1200 miles per month ( https://www.thezebra.com/resources/driving/average-miles-driven-per-year/ ) let's say you only drive 1/4 of that, so 300 (75 miles per week). Not bad, only $18.60 for gas. Minimum legally required car insurance in Texas (gets you nothing if your car is damaged) is $47 per month (https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/average-cost-of-car-insurance-in-texas/).

Average utilities in Texas (including internet) is $402 per month, again you're thrifty so we'll halve that at $200 per month.

So, if you buy absolutely nothing besides bare minimum groceries, gas, car insurance and utilities (I'm assuming you're on no-cost Medicaid here), that's $465 per month + $800 rent is $1265. You're good for almost 8 months. Not a dire as some here are claiming, but also not two years. If you lived like the "average Texan" it would be about 2.5 months.

My condolences for your situation but the reality is that it simply isn't a lot of savings.

10K lasting you 2 years is a fantasy. If rent is $500 a month, (which is an overwhelmingly generous estimate in this economy), you're still talking about $500x24 months = $12K. That's ignoring literally all other costs of living like food, transportation, electricity, etc.

I'm single, no dependants, don't need a car to get around, and 10K would still not even last me a year simply because my rent is $1100 a month (and that is considered really good for a 1br in my city)

Tell us then, how do we get rid of family that we have to provide for, and where do we get that sweet cheap rent?

The suitors problem (aka the 37% rule, an optimal stopping algorithm) doesn’t apply to job offers unless you have to either accept or decline the offers on the spot.

Yeah the thing is typically you only have fairly short windows to accept/pass on job offers. At least here in North America, I usually wasn't given a very long opportunity to make my choice for a given offer. Usually tops 1-2 days to say yes or no once an offer is tabled. If I lingered on it too long, they would usually go with someone else who can decide faster.

Which meant usually tops I only had 2-3 offers tops on my table at the exact same time.

By comparison usually the interview process took about a week on average, total.

And, yes, once you decline a tabled offer you are much less likely to be able to go back and get it again, from my experience.

The suitors problem, in a high flow environment where job offers come and go every day on the fly... does indeed apply quite well.

And thats what I did, I estimated I could go for about 4 months if I tightened the pursestrings, so I spent the first month and a bit gathering job offers and simply just writing everything down in a spreadsheet, and created a scoring algorithm to rank them all based on wage, benefits, bonuses, remote vs in office vs hybrid, and a bunch of other variables.

Once I felt satisfied that I had a ranking formula that "felt" right, I took the highest scoring job on that list from the first month of data, and then started actually seriously considering offers and took the first job that gave me an offer that scored higher than that highest score from prior data.

I also recommend Algorithms to Live By, haha, it's an awesome book and I'm gonna +1 that recommendation to anyone else who reads this thread XD

I want to note that by following this process, I over doubled my wage compared to my last job, and if I had just jumped on the first half decent offer I got early on, I would have been making about 2/3rds the wage of the job I actually ended up holding out for.

Its alot tougher to save it up now, i changed my mind about wgere i wanted to work. Im a journeyman electrician, and travel work i made stacks, no fixed address, living in work camps and just slaving. But after the break i thought thats just killing me, i have no friends outside of work and my whole life was being an electrician. Now i work 8h in a shop in a city of my choosing and have 16h a day for me.