Six figures accomplished... sort of

Mike-Mike

I switched jobs last year, and am currently doing my 2015 taxes. So when I added the two W2s together, I made over 100k. Barely, only like 300 dollars over it, but technically I made over a 100k last year.

It is not quite as sweet, since my old job had a lot of OT, callout pay, and bonuses and that had bumped me over the mark. So it is a little skewed. To me, I will only feel like a major accomplishment when I make a 100k for a standard 40 hour week.

But it is still pretty cool to say "I made a 100k in 2015"

clintonia

Congrats, definitely a goal of mine as well.

ImYourOnlyDJ

Congrats! I'm hoping to hit that mark in a few years as well

NetworkNewb

always to nice 6 digits instead of 5 in that field on the W2, gratz!

danny069

I hope I see that one day

TechGromit

I'll come pretty close to that magic number this year, but I'm not there quite yet.

Dakinggamer87

Still a great accomplishment!!

gncsmith

Congrats! We can all hope to aspire to 6 figures or more.

joelsfood

Congrats! Now you just have to aim for 150.

jeremywatts2005

Congrats that is fantastic. Love to hear people getting the 6 figures they deserve. I was so excited when I broke that number with a 37.5 hour week no on call and no after hours for me. You will get there it can be done. You have the certs to do it. Once you get over that bump it seems you have more room to negotiate for even higher salaries.

Mike-Mike

thanks guys, I came to this board in 2010 when I was switching careers. I started my first for real IT job in Jan 2011 at 38k.

Without this board I would have never found WGU, which would never had gotten me so many certs, which certainly got me about 20k to 30k more over the years. TE literally changed my life.

bpenn

I think it is also important to understand cost of living, as well. My buddy makes 105k in DC but would only make 82k doing the same job here in Florida. If I can reach 100k in my area than I will be living the life!

JoJoCal19

I had something similar happen in 2014 but it was a curse more than anything! I got a $15k net ($20k reported for tax/income purposes) relo package at the end of 2014, and I also had about a month overlap between two jobs at the beginning of 2014, so my income was like $115k when I did taxes. Well all that did was just screw my wife out of Pell Grants for her bachelors she's working on. And then of course I made mid $80s all of 2015. Now I'm actually making six figures so it's easy to pay for her school completely out of pocket, but it sure hurt last year.

JoJoCal19

bpenn wrote: »

I think it is also important to understand cost of living, as well. My buddy makes 105k in DC but would only make 82k doing the same job here in Florida. If I can reach 100k in my area than I will be living the life!

This! I'm able to live super comfortable over here in Jax on six figures.

No_Nerd

Congrats,

Now the trick is to never go back down. For me something that has helped push me was to always be the person in the room who made the least.... I made close to that when I was in the army but now that I am a student ....well not so much. Lucky for me The wife makes mid six figures ( I think ) I never had the guts to ask exactly how much she makes.

I hope to break into the 100K range once my MBA is finished in May and I can get this damn CISSP passed. And in Hawaii 100K won't get you to far I think my house note is like 8K a month ( again I don't pay it so I don't really know)

SteveLord

Exciting....until you do your taxes and realize how much the government takes away and how many of those tax breaks that flood commercials and you do NOT qualify for. :-\

dhay13

i remember when i finished college in 2010 i had a 'pipe dream' of making $100k but thinking that it was out of reach unless you were a doctor, lawyer, or high level executive. i'm still not there but think i can be in the next 5 years or so. my last job really hurt my career more than it helped it. nothing was done right and i was powerless when it came to changing that. i spent almost 4 years there as a glorified babysitter and felt i was further behind than when i started there. i actually had made a decision to leave IT cause i disliked it so much. now i love my current job and am excited about IT

Mike-Mike

dhay13 wrote: »

i remember when i finished college in 2010 i had a 'pipe dream' of making $100k but thinking that it was out of reach unless you were a doctor, lawyer, or high level executive. i'm still not there but think i can be in the next 5 years or so. my last job really hurt my career more than it helped it. nothing was done right and i was powerless when it came to changing that. i spent almost 4 years there as a glorified babysitter and felt i was further behind than when i started there. i actually had made a decision to leave IT cause i disliked it so much. now i love my current job and am excited about IT

I had one job for 9 years before changing careers. From 2011 until today, I have worked for 5 different companies (6 if you count a merger).

everyone is different, but for me, I have found to get a big bump, like over 10k, you have to change jobs. Raises and promotions get you decent money, but twice I have changed jobs for a 17k bump.

pinkydapimp

Congrats. Dont let up and keep moving forward. Jumps can be bigger once you crack that mark. aim for 150k now. Then, 200k!

TechGromit

pinkydapimp wrote: »

Congrats. Dont let up and keep moving forward. Jumps can be bigger once you crack that mark. aim for 150k now. Then, 200k!

I disagree, aim for a work / life balance. Life is no fun if all you do is Live to Work. You should aim high enough to have a comfortable lifestyle, but not so high that you live to work.

pinkydapimp

TechGromit wrote: »

I disagree, aim for a work / life balance. Life is no fun if all you do is Live to Work.

Oh i agree. I simply said keep moving forward. That doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice work/life balance to do so. In fact, you may get better work life balance as you continue to learn, grow and progress in your career(and compensation).

Mike-Mike

my current role has a pretty sweet work/life balance. Best I have ever had probably. So it would take a large payday to get me to leave

Mike-Mike

Mike-Mike wrote: »

my current role has a pretty sweet work/life balance. Best I have ever had probably. So it would take a large payday to get me to leave

or... a good payday, a great opportunity, and still a sweet work life balance..


i did switch from that last job, and I'm a sneeze away from a six figure base salary, but easily cracking the six figures with on call and extras

9bits

Congrats! I don't expect to ever hit 100k, but I'm hoping to up my salary a bit more. I've come to realize having one career would have been a lot less stress in life. I've had two career changes, IT being my third, so I've started over twice. Starting from the bottom starts to wear on you as you get older.

sj4088

Congrats. You are doing better than me. It took me ten years in IT to hit 100k.

Quench24

What certs do you have?

goatama

I finally broke that six figure barrier late this year. I was so happy, then I saw what my new tax bracket did to my paychecks and it made me a sad panda. I'm making 40k a year more but it feels like 10k. The jump from 15% to 25% is a little nauseating.

Mike-Mike

Quench24 wrote: »

What certs do you have?

I have 22 certs total, and a bachelors and masters. Big items that made a difference were the CCNA and degrees, and the number of certs (which can be good or bad), many people comment on the CEH as well

goatama wrote: »

I finally broke that six figure barrier late this year. I was so happy, then I saw what my new tax bracket did to my paychecks and it made me a sad panda. I'm making 40k a year more but it feels like 10k. The jump from 15% to 25% is a little nauseating.

yup, tax time is not fun anymore

powerfool

Yeah, this has always been something of interest to me. I started out my IT career straight out of high school w/o certs and made $25k/year. The first thing I looked at was the Social Security cap (like $70k/year at the time... around $118k/year now). But, my immediate goal was to get about $5k/year more, then again. Once I had been doing IT for a couple of years, I looked to the $52k/year mark as that is $1k/week. Then it was about $10k/year bumps. Then, it was $100k/year. As I approached that, I looked at $104/year as it was $2k/week. Finally, my goals shifted to surpassing the ever growing Social Security cap, $120k/year ($10k/month), and $130k/year ($10k/per 4-week period).

Much like OP, I now have tons of valuable certificates, a BS, and an MS. As I met my various goals, I always approached it with the feeling that I was near the maximum I would practically be able to attain, and I feel like that now, but it is probably never reality.

$150k/year is a lofty goal, and I think adjusted for inflation is more like the $100k/year mark 10+ years ago. $200k/year... very lofty... probably limited to a few circumstances for the next decade or so (pre-sales engineers w/ good commission structure, VP and executive level IT folks, folks that are independent or have their own company with good revenue, or folks that make very good money in a primary job and have side money).

ratbuddy

Mike-Mike, what kinda of comments do you get on the CEH? I've kept mind off my resume due to how little I think of the EC Council and the cert itself. Maybe I should rethink that...?

Mike-Mike

powerfool wrote: »

Much like OP, I now have tons of valuable certificates, a BS, and an MS. As I met my various goals, I always approached it with the feeling that I was near the maximum I would practically be able to attain, and I feel like that now, but it is probably never reality.

$150k/year is a lofty goal, and I think adjusted for inflation is more like the $100k/year mark 10+ years ago. $200k/year... very lofty... probably limited to a few circumstances for the next decade or so (pre-sales engineers w/ good commission structure, VP and executive level IT folks, folks that are independent or have their own company with good revenue, or folks that make very good money in a primary job and have side money).

The more I make the more I'm surprised how high the ceiling cap goes. I think i do pretty good, but I have a boss.. he has a boss.. he has a boss.. and so on...

So the amount of money at the top must be staggering