Ask HN: How can I be happy with my pay?

I'm going to guess that the money has nothing to do with it.

You use $ as a way of keeping score and when you hear of others making more, you feel like you failed.

Bad news - no amount of money will fix that.

Good news - you can change it today with a real healthy and honest talk with yourself (and good friends who know you) to find out how you should define success.

Put it in your own terms. For me: I found much more happiness when I made a little less but increased my autonomy. It was huge for me. Like Night and day difference in my happiness.

Hope that helps

I struggle with this too. Perspective is really what helps me. Any amount of money that you make can be high or low relative to who you are surrounding yourself with. Try volunteering at a homeless shelter or getting involved with Habitat for Humanity or something. It's hard to feel bad about your salary when you work with people that just want a bowl of soup. On the contrary, if you hang around with a more affluent group than yourself, you may be more likely to feel like you are not making enough. Take a look at mean/median salaries in your area [1]. You are doing fine!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

At a certain point more money doesn't really mean much unless it amounts to a lifestyle change. Suppose you make $120k/yr and you hear someone makes $132k/yr for the same job at a different company. Is the extra ~$660/mo really going to change your day to day life? Probably not. So, it's at that point that more money doesn't really make a company change all that attractive unless it also comes with better work or leaving a company with better work for a pay increase that doesn't change your lifestyle.

Why the push to feel happy? You want to be paid more, identify where you'd like to go (company and/or position) what you feel that ought to be worth, and what you need to go to get there. Then execute on that plan, move into that next position, repeat until you hit your skill ceiling, run out of upward mobility, or are satisfied with the compensation.

If you can get a job within the big 4 you probably have a least a base line competency; leverage that and climb the ladder. Life is too short to settle.

"Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today"

Read this: https://jordanbpeterson.com/12-rules-for-life/