This period of having high income is new to me. I used to be homeless, living in a truck, couch surfing, begging for money for food and gas.
I'm terrified of losing it all, so I'm doing my best to not put myself in a situation where if I lose my job I lose it all.
They're okay with rolling a $25,000 credit card debt from card to card to fund their life.
I still pick up pennies on the ground.
Good old Chucky D. was a financial guru before it was cool.
I didn't love the numbers in the article -- they assume $500k total comp, but the levels.fyi heatmap from a few days ago shows SFBA median total comp is $263k, with 64% being base so $169k. Federal taxes are 64k, state taxes are 21k. That leaves you with maybe ~$80k in liquid salary.
A market-rate studio apartment is $2700-$3000/mo which is about $36k in annual expense. That's about half of your income. Add food and transportation and there's not much left to save for retirement or emergency fund.
If for some reason you are in the lurch and have to start driving ubers or working at starbucks, you're not going to be able to afford the same kind of apartment that you need to do hybrid work and join meetings at a FAANG job.
One of my previous employers had a rule where they would vest all of my RSU if I were to die while employed there.
Idle curiosity: Was that in lieu of or in addition to life insurance? (Most of my employers have had free life insurance with a payout of a multiple of base salary.)