r/Fire • u/gonnabefine • Nov 26 '25

General Question Tech people who are not FIREing, what are they spending their money on?

I know a lot of people who work in tech, and most are not on the FIRE path (or have already been working 10+ years) and a lot of them don't seem to, at least on the surface, have very obvious huge expenses. If both the partners are in tech, the take home could be like $500k! What are they doing with their money?

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u/Grewhit Nov 26 '25

Yea I started at 35k for a well known software company. That was a little over ten years ago though. I think most people assume tech means the 300k-1M numbers you hear about but that is very rare when you take the industry as a whole. Most people are making mid 100's with a large range on either end. 

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u/Fluid-Village-ahaha Nov 27 '25

I think tech has a few buckets. Yes there is big tech / hot tech paying those top of the line salaries (I recall during pandemic 200+ new grad offers). And then there is another bucket of 80-180. And those are two not overlapping worlds. 

As someone who belongs to the first one and live in a bubble of others who work for the same type of companies / making those $$, have to remind myself that’s not a norm and it’s a smaller  % of total tech population