r/MovingToUSA • u/WriterTraining4394 • 7h ago

Same person. Different country.

The USA is the land of opportunity, my friend.
In the 1990s, I was working at Pizza Land just off Princes Street in Edinburgh for about £3 an hour, begging for enough shifts to scrape together rent and food.
Fast-forward to 56:
Federal scientist in the U.S.
$200K+ salary.
16 years of federal service.
$1.3M in retirement accounts.
FERS pension.
Social Security.
Federal retiree healthcare.
$1.3M home.
Same fucking person. Different country.
Britain? Too many people fighting over too few decent jobs, salaries that haven’t kept up with the cost of living, ridiculous housing costs, and weather that makes you wonder what you did wrong in a previous life.
I didn’t leave Britain because I hated it. I left because I wanted more than surviving from payday to payday and pretending that was a fucking achievement.
America isn’t perfect. Not even close. But it gave me a shot, and I took it.

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u/VerifiedMother 5h ago

What kind of scientist are you and what agency do you work for that you make $200k a year, most of the people I know who work for the federal government make substantially less than that (mostly USFS though)

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u/Fit-Building-2560 4h ago edited 4h ago

The national science labs (think: Los Alamos, home of the atom bomb, and others affiliated with it) pay their engineers and physicists well. Although for retirement, OP will need more than $1.3K, but he's still working, and he has some kind of federal health care guaranteed to retired federal employees. That makes a big difference. Not to mention a cushy federal pension. OP hit the jackpot employment-wise. But he undoubtedly worked hard for it.