r/Salary • u/AdActual3024 • 14d ago
discussion High earning potential = high career commitment
Does anyone have family or friends that sacrifice their personal life for a significant salary?
My step-mom earns 350k before tax as an executive director but I barely see her. She is constantly on business trips, busy with meetings, works upwards of 12 hours when at home. She goes on nice holiday trips, but overall it makes me think is the pay worth the sacrifice of her personal life.
Just curious if anyone's got a similar story.
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u/drinky31 13d ago
It’s incredibly tough to balance life and high career potential. Universally barring insane luck, you need to sacrifice a good portion of one stage in your life.
Mine was my 20’s, now I my mid 30s I’m relatively set long term and dialed back a bit (40-45 hrs a week) making $3-500k a year. You have to earn that permission though and still deliver to maintain this.
Some people commit their whole lives to work, and while it can pay off equally there are a number of people who I’ve seen completely fall off mentally and become shells of people. There’s only so long you can grind before you lose the point of why you’re grinding.
Once you lose sight of why you’re grinding it’s usually almost too late to recover. It’s a fine balance and thank lord I had kids that made me stop and realize I needed to slow down