> Once your financial house is strong, you can make decisions for the rest of your life that optimize for things other than money. Even if you are not a long-t

> Once your financial house is strong, you can make decisions for the rest of your life that optimize for things other than money. Even if you are not a long-term thinker, just doubling your pay for a year is almost like being able to skip work for 9 months after. High paying jobs come with other externalities (managers who are beyond caring for anything other than their cars's model years, deadlines which are about some VP's travel schedule etc), which suck while it is happening, but having the ability to just step away from it for a 3-6 month period afterwards makes you feel less trapped in that. The pain is real, but feeling less trapped can alleviate the suffering. That's not to say that you should rush into a burnout factory, but getting paid more has immediate consequences to your time-value at a young age - I took a sabbatical at 28 years old, which was triggered by personal issues, but the fact that I could stop work & not worry about rent for 3 months was a big factor in actually doing it.