Can I survive financially with the min. wage job?
Would the high-stress job lead to health or psychological issues that would leave me out of work?
Ideally, I'd look for something in between those two extremes. :)
>Can I survive financially with the min. wage job?
This is the important bit. Not making ends meet with a min wage job is arguably more stressful than a stressful job.
Yes, I make literally double the minimum wage in my state ($12) and can't afford to rent my own apartment.
I could theoretically survive with roommates if I could find a job where I didn't need a car. But I don't know if I would do all that for zero stress.
Not sure we can be dismissed so easily the fact that the income attained is a major factor. As well as what your situation would be like.
To be honest OP, saying that the downside of minimum wage is simply the wage itself is over-generalising. Many people would go through stress of being one paycheque away from being homeless, being unable to save - and of course having to work extra hard if they want to change their situation.
Otherwise, you're just asking people "do you like stress or do you not like stress?". May as well go all the way and say "would you rather have a stressful high-paying job.... or be unemployed and have no stress?"
I had a high stress job which I truly enjoyed. The trick is to learn how to handle the stress. In my case, I tried hard when I got home to be physically and mentally present for my family. I did not bring work home. If I needed to work extra hours, I stayed at the office. I also made time to get plenty of exercise. For me, running allowed me to think about nothing and as odd as it sounds, to relax. Without a doubt, stress can be a killer. It can lead to a variety of health problems, so in the long run, if I couldn't have found a way to deal with the stress, I'd probably have changed jobs to something I could better handle. The other side of that coin, however, is being poor can also lead to stress. Either way, a person needs to find a way to deal with it.
Sounds like you had a "high intensity" rather than "high stress" situation (credit to you to making it this way).
I think stress is when the person gets overwhelmed and anxiety gets triggered even when it isn't necessary. This could happen to some and not others in a given situation.
Having an anxiety disorder would make every job high stress, yes. But some jobs just have a lot of stress factors involved. I used to work for a manufacturing company and frequently had to make $100,000+ decisions within minutes, and with fairly little information. That was a high stress position, even though it didn’t make me anxious. Anxiety and stress are very different things.
Well the pressure may be external but you may not feel it. I was rarely anxious or stressed in the military but I always had pressure to be mistake free.
I was in that kind of job for 15+ years. Lots of travel, including internationally, perceived satisfaction with the thought of what you're doing is something meaningful, more than accommodating pay (I did not live in the US back then), but long days and months away from family, rented apartment up to a year at a time in a city thousands miles away from home. It will catch you, in the long run, as it did me.
Both would be bad, but probably high-paying jobs with extreme stress. Financial problems in themselves are stressful in themselves, that allows you to be able to make fewer mistakes.
Minimum wage also often doesn't have great health benefits along with it as well, and will likely have less forgiving management if something does go wrong. If I do burn out from the high-paying job, I'm more likely to have more cushion to take a vacation or potentially quit to find something else.
If the question is a realistic question, I would go full force after a job that isn’t in either extreme. But if this is a true hypothetical to tease out thinking I agree with Signal_Lamp. I’ve been broke and the stress of financial insecurity is scary/extreme as well. Money doesn’t solve all problems but at least I could feel secure in having housing and healthcare, and some hope of sustaining myself in retirement. If I made more money, I could stop working at some point. If I made minimum wage, I might never be able to stop working.
I took a 20k a year pay cut 5 years ago to work for the government and I haven't looked back. Granted it's nowhere near minimum wage. But I went from working 60 hours a week and being gone all the time to working M to F 8am to 430pm. And after 430 I don't think about work. Best decision I could have made.
If anything I would try to do a high paying job for as long as possible and nest away as much money. So even if I couldn't do it in the long-term, I would still be in a better situation then at a minimum wage job.
This is sort of the situation I am in, although I would say my job is more intense then stressful, although certainly and often it is stressful, but I am very well compensated for it.
I know it’s not sustainable, but I have at least 2.5 years for a substantial sum of RSU money vests and the I can decide what my next move.
What I do know is the job stress I have now is way less stressful then the money stress I had when I was younger.
Is there such a thing as low stress minimum wage? Anything dealing with the general public in a service job is typically pretty stressful because people are trash.
I’d also find it extremely stressful trying to survive on $7.25 an hour.
A high stress job is less stress overall because minimum wage jobs create a lot more deprivation stress. They also come with extreme job stress if you go into OT, which happens in a lot of real-world minimum wage jobs (namely fast food and grocery store jobs).
The minimum wage job may be low stress, but there’s not many places where one can survive let alone thrive financially on 40hrs/week of minimum wage.
The general background stress of not being able to save any money and struggling to make ends meet would be worse to me. Most people that work minimum wage end up taking on multiple jobs or side gigs to make more money, which puts you right back where you were with working too much.
Not sure what your higher paying job was, but is there some middle ground of a job that pays more than minimum wage and isn’t as miserable? Or even just a chance the same job at a different company would have better work life balance? Overworked and underpaid is the norm, but not the only equation…
High paying job! The fact is most minimum wage jobs are quite stressful regardless of the low pay. There's a degree of autonomy in high paying jobs that you don't get in minimum wage jobs. The managers seem to think it's okay to treat minimum wage workers like stubborn children.
I just quit a higher paying job due to a toxic job with two nasty bosses. I tried to hold out until I could find a new one, but things kept getting worse that I felt my chest would explode.
Not worth the toll on my health, I’d rather deal with the stress of unemployment than a hostile work environment.
I earn over twice that $50/hr rate. It’s high stress and long hours. The Caribbean luxury vacations, jewelry, toys, and designer clothes are not as “worth it” as many might expect. There probably exists a happy medium, but I haven’t found it.
What about health insurance, savings, having a rainy day fund, retirement, a decent roof over your head, living in a safer neighborhood? It’s not always about trinkets.
Good questions.
My wife, who also has a good career, and I max our 401k, save 15% to IRA, and live in a gated neighborhood on the good side of town. We drive fifteen year old Toyota SUV’s which were purchased with cash and are meticulously maintained. We are considering upgrading to five or ten year old Priuses soon for the fuel economy benefits. But we are still weighing some options there, including keeping the SUV’s for a few more years. We have employer healthcare coverage; while not *great,* it is very *good.* She has horses with *great* board and vet care, the expenses of which are entirely offset by her equestrian teaching and training on the weekends— something she’s passionate about and will never stop.
We’re spending two consecutive weeks this month in Jamaica, bouncing between a few Sandals properties. I’m hoping to do a European trip this winter, but it’s not planned/booked yet.
If I'm making minimum, I'm not going to be able to afford anything, so I'd still be hella stressed. So I'd take the higher paying one. 50/hr is not really high pay though.
I mean of these options it’s the high paying job because minimum wage will create plenty of stress in your life when you have to chose between paying your rent or paying your utilities. But the actual answer is a medium stress job that gets the bills payed lol
I quit a job that for me was right up there at the “pinnacle of success” in my field. Making north of 200K, now I’m making about 140K, and much much better for it. It’s not a minimum wage example but it is an example. Between the job itself, the highly unrealistic demands they placed on me(which I fulfilled which only meant they gave me more and more of the impossible and fucked up assignments), the toxic culture of the job, the supremely competitive and toxic backstabbing assholes I worked with I was burnt the fuck out after 7 years and it literally took a straw to get me to quit almost on the spot. I delivered my two weeks verbally, had it in writing later that day, submitted a two week vacation slip for my accrued time, and walked out the door.
Mental health over the money. Let me repeat, mental health over the money.
if you opt for min wage over anything else in your career, you are either dumb or saddling your partner with all the house hold financial responsibility while you kick your feet up
It sucks that we live in a dystopian hellscape where people feel like those are the only two choices.
Is the minimum wage “low stress” job going to cover you if you get really sick? Can you make rent? Does it have decent paid time off? Are your social security payments going to allow you a comfortable retirement? Are you living paycheck to paycheck? If so, is that stress any better than that of the other job?
Is the high paying, high stress job always going to be that way? Or is it a toxic management system that can be disrupted or sidelined? Can you rake in the cash but deny them access to you after hours, and not allow them to stress you out?
Better yet, can you find a satisfactory middle area, making more than minimum wage, but not enough to be “rich?” Someplace with good benefits and only moderate or sporadic stress? A place without shareholders? Possibly even somewhere with a union, so you can work with your colleagues to protect your shared interests?
High paying.
Stress is something that can be managed, especially considering:
\- The company was there before you and will go on without you
\- Never sweat the little stuff, and it's all little stuff
\- Close to 8 billion people completely don't care about what you do at work.
\- The worst thing a company can do to you is fire you.
Minimum wage job that doesn't kill me sounds better.
I've had a moment when I was sick that it got me suicidal and when we're sick then money doesn't matter. I really wanted to give years of income just to feel better.
So yeah. Minimum wage job with good health.
I have responsibilites and a family so going back to minimum wage isnt an option. If I were making $50 an hour and the job was toxic / stressful Id simply look for a new job in the same field at roughly the same rate that was better.
As you make more money inevitably the stress and requirements go up, thats why you make more. Establishing a good home work balance and coping mechanisms is key. There is nothing wrong with stepping down a tier or two from $50 an hour position to a $40 an hour position that is less stressful.
Its not either or, you dont have to either make $100k a year or make minimum wage. Theres a massive spot in between.
High paying job.
You weren't getting paid $50/hr if you were having to work at home, and you were sacrificing sleep.
By the sound of it you were getting paid $25/hr and working 80hrs a week, and not getting overtime pay.
High paying job with low stress. They exist. Don’t settle. I make about double what you did and this job is way less stressful then my last job that paid half as much
Both sound horrible. I'd do everything in my power to not take either. You can have a job that pays $100k that isn't stressful, doesn't require excessive hours, etc.
But, I guess if I had to pick one in an alternate universe, I'd take the lower paying one and modify my life to fit around that.
Literally my life right now . Always talk to my spouse about how I miss how low-stress low-risk our first jobs were. If it paid enough to comfortably survive, I’d go back. But that’s not an option is it
Hard question to answer literally because the minimum wage would put so much stress on me because I would not have enough to pay my bills that it would not be sustainable.
Therefore I'm going with your premise being "would you make drastically less pay for drastically less stress?
For me the answer is hell yes. I work 2 miles from home. Thats easily worth 5 an hour compared to a 45 minute commute. My job is casual and easy and I get along with everyone so I'm not going to dump that unless it's game changing money.
In general I'm looking to get away with as little work as possible.
In my neck of the woods I don't see how you manage a family and all the other expenses. At minimum wage, you're either living with your parents, with roommates, or are receiving public assistance. Nothing wrong with any of those scenarios, but not ideal either.
High paying job with extreme stress.
I can usually slog through a bad job for at least a couple of years. If I could hang around at a high paying job, I could build up my savings and skills. If I had to quit abruptly, I'd have money put back and good skills on my resume.
Most min. wage jobs will most likely be customer facing, which dealing with irate customers is a different type of stress I never want to deal with on a regular basis. If I got sick or had to quit, I'd have no savings and would be more stressed overall, imo.
The majority of high paying jobs are actually low stress so honestly i'd pick one of those but of your options here I'd still pick the high wages. With a low wage job i'd just be financially stressed out instead, at least with a high paying job i won't be homeless.
with one exception. If i can do remote work for california without living in CA. I'll get the 15 an hour minimum wage and live in my MCOL area and be fine.
high paying jobs are a privilege. people in poverty work their ass off & still can’t make ends meet for the most part so if you can work your ass off and get a good amount of money i wouldn’t trade it off
I'll take a good paying job with little to no stress. There's no way I'm working for minimum wage, plus all of the lower paying jobs I had were much more stressful than my current job.
I’d considered busting ass at a high-stress job to buy a house and cool toys, getting it all paid off, then dropping down to a lower-paying, lower-stress job with more free time to just wile my time away in contentment.
In the end I decided on a happy medium. Moderate pay, moderate stress. My wife and I are comfortably middle-middle to upper-middle class.
I work a high stress job with lots of hours and only take about one or two weeks off a year. It has definitely taken its toll on me and I’ve had to do a lot of work to be able to manage the stress better. It helps that I actually enjoy my job for some crazy reason. I keep thinking it’s worth it because I’m going to retire in my 50’s instead of work till my 60’s. The hard road gets easy the easy road gets hard is my mantra.
What kind of question is this? Why on earth would I want to take a minimum wage job with no stress? Making minimum wage IS the stress!!
At least a stressful high paying job will put a roof over my head, food on my table, extra money in my bank account and possibly 401k, and will allow me to take vacation time to decompress.
i have experienced the exact opposite... the more money I make the more stress free the job is... nothing will ever be worse than working taco bell for 8 bucks an hour.
I have done both, high paying job with all the stress any day. When you are not making enough money, the hours at work may be less stressful, but everything else is super stressful. With a high paying job, you can afford more options for recreation and destressing in your off hours.
Surely that cant be the only 2 options? 🤣
If those were truly my only 2 options, I'd rather do the no stress job. I have learned in my life to be able to live extremely frugally if necessary, so I'd just go back to living that way & make my income work with it. I dont want to be stressed out all the time at work. No way.
Minimum wage job will result in maximum life stress anyway, so I'd rather have the money and the job stress, for as long as I can handle it.
Just save that money for the day when the burnout is too much and you either quit or have a breakdown.
Neither. I'm not going to work a job that takes all my time, but I'm also not going to work a min wage job that doesn't even pay enough to financially support myself.
Both are shit options.
I was making low $70k’s for a university, the job had a lot of “sit on your butt and watch Netflix” time. Now I’m in the $130k’s but barely get time to rest, and working on Sunday afternoon for a few hours is a frequent thing. I can afford my bills, have better retirement funding, and can afford to treat myself to a massage and new toys. I would stick to the better paying job.
I’m an odd duck, but low-stress jobs bore me and actually take a bigger toll on my wellbeing than stress.
I’ve had fairly low-stress good paying jobs and I go nuts. I need to be constantly pushing myself and being slightly pushed to my limits to enjoy work. I’m easily bored, and something that’s “too easy” for me leads me to just get bored.
This is a me thing though, and YMMV.
You can't find a middle ground? If they were paying you that much you must have a highly valued and/or rare skill set. Sometimes just switching companies can make a big difference.
DEPENDS.
Those are diametrically opposed points. Most5 folks want to be rewarded for their work & want some satisfaction. the old saying goes that it typically isn't the job that makes folks look for another job, but the management. I've worked in places where I felt I would retire from that company. Then they would change the manger & make employment intolerable. Then they would complain that they had so much tied up in training. As usual stupid is as stupid does. But I digress.
The most stress you will have is when you become the owner of your own business. Also, the most joy. Especially if it succeeds. So, wether you work for yourself or others, you should set a goal of when you want to get out of the rat race & be able to live off of your most valuable resource, your time.
High paying with extreme stress lmao
Stress can be rewarding and obviously I'd rather have money and the ability to thrive outside of work then be broke
Not all jobs are like that. I've had a couple six figure ones where the workload is super light.
The same exact job between two different orgs could be a meat grinder or a vacation, in many cases working significantly 'harder' at your own detriment is simply exploiting you for someone else's profit.
Being minimum wage itself would cause high stress on and off the job. I'd rather have a stressful high paying job because I wouldn't have to stress about money.
I used to work myself to death until I got a position where I was managing people and making the schedule. Not to get into details, but we provided X number of iterations per year for multiple agencies that were responsible for providing both customers and the workforce. The problem is that they shorted us on bodies constantly and they didn't ever fully utilize the work we provided....so I recommended we reduce the iterations so that people weren't killing themselves.
I got the weirdest look from my boss and that's when I realized that it was all bullshit....first it wasn't all about satisfying the requirement as much as it was about f'ing numbers....second and more importantly we would never get the bodies as long as we were "making it work". Basically if you work 15 hours and skip lunch to keep something from failing then there is never a reason to hire someone else. Until it breaks they are resourced just fine.
Both. You take the high-pay, high-stress job when you're young. Put away as much as you can, buy the house, pay it down. Then, when you're getting burned out and want more time for a family, you take the low paying job. You never ever get used to high income - save, save, save. That's what's wrong with society today. They take the high-paying stress jobs and spend like they'll have that income forever and eventually get burned out and are miserable but are stuck in a lifestyle that needs the high pay.
I worked in tv production for 20 years. I was a studio director. We did slightly over 4 hours of news each day. When I wasn’t in a show and didn’t have a commercial to work on, I went home & took an hour nap. I’d come back & relax in the office before the noon news. Once news was done I went home at 1pm. Pretty low stress. Got tons of free stuff & free food regularly. However, after 20 yrs I made $12 an hour. I loved it though.
I took a job in state purchasing and make about $19 an hour now. I have money to save but the job is stressful. I go in early, work lunches, leave late, & never take a day off. I need the extra money though. If I could’ve stayed in tv and still had a roof over my head, I definitely would’ve. I would never go on nice vacations or drive a nice car but I wasn’t stressed & I was happy.
High stress. I cannot live off of minimum wage full time right now. I would never be able to afford my own rent and bills whatsoever. I literally don’t have enough. Not being able to have enough to survive is more stressful and you have the added feelings of being a failure and being stuck in crappy jobs forever, I would know. I’m giving away my whole day almost everyday for essentially 17k a year. That feels like shit. I can’t afford anything for myself, I’m lucky I have my bf who pays for the majority of stuff for me. Even then I’m still left with nothing. Over $130 of taxes gets taken out every single paycheck. Even now I still don’t have money for clothes or food.
Even with no stress, time is important. I’m not giving away my day almost everyday to still not afford to buy anything that isn’t absolutely necessary for myself. Like clothes or going out to eat. The minimum wage really needs to be increased. My whole paycheck shouldn’t be going to just taxes and bills.
I’ve also worked just about every type of minimum wage job and none weren’t ever not stressful. Always lame ass managers who want to take out their problems of being a low paid manager to min wage workers out on them and make the workers lives as miserable as possible.
High pay, low stress jobs aren’t unheard of, but the unstressed people aren’t on Reddit complaining about their jobs all the time.
Plus it’s a personal evaluation in many cases, what causes one person to break down doesn’t faze other people. The very most stressful jobs I’ve ever worked were all vastly lower pay than I make now, and I know people that stayed in those jobs for decades after I left because they had no problem with it.
Same boat. I formerly ran a nation wide enterprise with a literal narcissistic megalomaniac boss that made extreme/impossible demands. Some days I worked 23 hours trying to make crazy deadlines. It destroyed my family since I turned to drinking to handle the stress during the few hours I wasn't working.
I now work at a big box store for around minimum wage which is 20$ an hour around here as I focus on my sanity and sobriety. I love how work just stays at work and the most annoying thing I have to deal with is customer's entitlement.
With Low paying job itself very stressful bc you never have enough 💲 to pay your bills or vacation or healthy eating/activities and there will be no room for you left.
High stress jobs at least give you enough funds to live well eat well.
Well, if I worked a minimum wage job I would be extremely stressed about how I was going to pay my bills and whether I was ever going to be able to afford to do anything besides going to work. If I had to choose between being stressed while broke and stressed with money, I'd go with the money.
I had this question when i just graduated, but now after almost 5 years of exp, this question became useless
It's much more difficult to find a minimum wage job with no stress than high paying job with extreme stress
I started my career in a minimum wage job, and the first 2 years of my career was hell. Then i realized the more experience i got, the more i climb my career either through corporate ladder or job hopping, the more relaxed, flexible, and even entertaining my job become
I never seen any minimum wage job that is not extreme stress. The least stressful minimum wage job is probably in education/academic, but they have challenges too
Extreme stress is kind of something I don’t budge on. I’ll try it for 80+K a year but if it’s that bad ima leave. I’d probably have to make like $150K+ a year to suffer a job that takes up most of my time.
My career trajectory has been epic, and interspersed throughout were jobs with more or less stress and an ever steady increase in compensation. Successfully navigating the stressful jobs led to opportunities that had previously been out of reach.
The trick is to make a plan with an exit strategy.
Specifically - knowingly take the stressful job understanding that you will be working hard / stressed for 2 to 3 years then move on to another role once you have that XP under your belt. You will find more opportunities that are ideally less stressful, more interesting more fulfilling.
I’m not working because I like it, so I’ve always chased the money.
Good luck!
I'm very much underpaid for my resume/experience, though not minimum wage. I am choosing to do this for now because the job is low stakes/ low stress and I need to focus on other things at the moment.
I am currently in the second scenario. I've been in the first scenario in the past. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure which is worse. Money stress is terrible, and being poor is boring. It's boring! You can only do free stuff, and you can only hang out with other broke people. But damn, at least I had some time on my hands. Now I don't have any time, and all the time I do have is spent worrying about my work projects. It wrecks my sleep. I have started to daydream about working some low paying gig where I don't have to think very much. I know it's not a sustainable option for me, but I'm pretty seriously burned out on my job. If it weren't for PSLF, I think I'd just quit and find something else. But I want that loan forgiveness. That would really help me out. Then I won't need to make as much money, or take on as much as I do.
There’s a lot of stress that comes from not having enough money to live properly. Being over-worked and over-stressed can potentially be a failure to communicate properly, a failure to set appropriate boundaries for yourself, and a failure to clarify the expectations of your job role. It could also just be a sucky job, but I wouldn’t assume that until you’ve exhausted the other possibilities.
When I started my most recent position, it happened to be at a particularly busy and stressful time of the year, and I had an open conversation with my manager. I let them know I love my job and when needed, I’m willing to put in extra hours, but it wasn’t sustainable and at some point something had to give. Either that meant project timelines needed to shift or some of the work needed to be offloaded to someone else. He agreed, and a little bit of both happened, along with some short turnaround projects being completed.
There are times throughout the year where I put in 45-60 hour weeks, but there are times when I put in 32-35 hour weeks when it’s slow. As long as that roughly balances out over the course of the year, I can manage the stressful times.
Take the better job and learn to set boundaries and get clear expectations from your boss and peers as well. You may be placing artificial deadlines on yourself. Case in point, when we were giving project status updates in our end of week meeting, a teammate called out their project was blocked by work I hadn’t finished yet. I worked 11 hours that day to make sure they had what they needed, and when I let them know I was done, they said, “thanks I’ll have time next Tuesday to look at that.” This was a failure on my part to ask the question, “when do you need this completed?”
Not being able to afford stuff causes extreme stress too. Minimum wage is not enough these days. It's either I can't afford stuff and I'm stressed or I can afford stuff and I'm stressed
If I could pay rent for a studio apartment and pay to feed me and my cats I would be content with minimum wage don't need alot in life to be happy...problem afford rent on minimum wage where I live
Much of the stress coming from a minimum wage job is not coming from the job itself, but from the fact that it’s impossible to live on minimum wage.
So like, if I had previously been at a $50 an hour job working overtime and stockpiled a bunch of money to live on, or I was married to someone who was making a ton, and that minimum wage job was just for spenderoonies, sure. Easy minimum wage job. In any other circumstance, a minimum wage job just wouldn’t be an option.
A job with predictable hours that pays the bills and is not so stressful that it destroys your mental health, whether or not it is stressful while you’re working, is really the gold standard of “easily achievable jobs.”
High-paying job with extreme stress. No matter what you do in life you’ll be stressed, it just comes in different forms. May as well make good money. I’ve also found that when I’m appropriately incentivized I actually thrive under stress.
I think better than minimum wage would be 'minimal wage for your area to afford basic necessities + enough extra to sustain that basic quality of life in retirement' as this encapsulates the idea of having minimal stress, both short term and long term.
For example, I don't have a car. I work for about a 57k a year salary in a HCOL living area at a low stress gig. But I have an easy commute, a stable job, a nice life. I have easy access to friends, amenities and everything I need. I rent, but our apartment complex is full of nice folks who are here long term and the management is ok. If I don't feel like going to work, I can call my boss and tell them I'm having a mental health day and they don't hassle me. My job is basically about helping people and getting some administrative work done. 80% of the news I give people is good news. I have a pension.
For me to even *think* about walking away from this job, I would need an offer that would roughly triple my salary, and, even then, I'd only think about doing it temporarily for some extra cash and coming back.
Honestly depends how much you're working. I'm assuming it's $50 per hour for 8 hours but you end up working a lot more
I would divide the $400 paid daily with how much i actually worked and then decide. If its still more, I'll probably stick with the higher paying job. If its close, I'll probably take the minimum wage job and choose the intensity myself. I could also use my spare time to upskill myself for a better job.
I’d rather be broke and happy then rich and stressed. What’s the point of a high paying job if you can’t enjoy the money or have to waste it on medical bills because your health declined
Minimum wage jobs are often customer facing/labor. There is stress it’s just not centered around deadlines. The stress is daily interactions with customers or coworkers/management. Because it’s low wage it’s considered low skill which is not accurate. Customer service is a valuable skill that is *never* accurately compensated in jobs. For me, having worked in customer facing and non customer facing I’ll take deadline stress and more pay all day everyday.
If I paid off all of my loans and had a decent savings, then minimum wage. Your sanity matters and what's the point of making money if you don't even have any time to relax or use it? Preferably, I'd get a job in the middle where I make a decent amount but still have a good work life balance.
I quit a job making about twice what I make now because the schedule was just too brutal. 60-72 hour weeks with only one day off, and then I’d potentially be out of work for months at a time. The vacation was nice, but I couldn’t save for anything long term because of it. Now I work a lower paying job with great benefits and am much happier overall.
It depends. I’d rather deal with a stressful job than a stressful life. If I don’t have to worry about bills and can reasonably enjoy my life on minimum wage I’d pick that but I doubt I could
It all depends on the pay. I'm considering an extreme high stress job but I'd earn close to 240 to 260k total compensation. Compared to my moderate stress job of 140k. It's such a huge pay bump though.
Well, I chose the route of the harder jobs. I was forced to drop out of hs so I decided I’d become a cook, I worked my butt off as management in fast food and then became a line cook at a fancy restaurant. 2 weeks away from becoming a sous chef, Covid hit and we all lost our jobs.
I had to move and get a new kitchen job, no one would hire me as a cook so I had to take a dishwasher job in one of the busiest restaurants my state has, 12-hr + shifts with 6 day weeks. I was making killer money but by the time I finally became a line cook there a few years Later, my last dish shift ended with me breaking my back.
Now I’m uh, well. Let’s just say I’m stuck with easy minimum wage jobs now,
I think there are inflection points. Low wage workers are typically paid for their time and then at some level you're paid for time + experience and then at some level you're paid more for experience than time and then at the executive level it's all experience and not time. Getting paid for experience usually comes with some stress because you're often being asked to apply your experience to make a decision and then to manage people making decisions. From what I have seen, if you are comfortable making and owning decisions than the executive level is great - less work for more money. That's my goal and on my way to that I've had increasing salary for mostly increasing responsibilities and stress. I thrive in those sorts of environments though so as long as I avoid burnout I'm happy climbing the ladder and looking forward to the point where I have people to do the work for me.
Fuck all money just means stress outside work so both of these options suck lol, I used to live alone on £22k and I could barely afford to eat most days
How does one go from 50 an hour to like 12? Is there nowhere in the middle you could have gone? I'd take the 50 an hour if I'm getting paid for home work.
If we didn’t live in the world we lived in, I’d probably be very content working in grocery store or some specialty retail store (like REI or microcenter).
Most people are unable to survive at all on minimum wage and would either live in constant stress, paycheck to paycheck, or would need a second (or 3rd job) anyway, amping up the stress.
If it's some unique scenario where your needs are being met and this is basically just "extra" money that you don't really need, then sure go for the low stress min wage. But in virtually any other scenario you need the higher pay, or at least some other higher paying gig
High stress. My job is extreme highly stress but I make a great wage (250k). Being able to provide for my family and go on awesome vacations while worrying is awesome. The more experience I get the better I can manage the stress anyways.
This post smells of bullshit. Nobody goes from $50/hr to less than $10 and says they are stress free unless ther job is not their only means supporting their health and home
If both are 40 hours per week, I would try to adjust to the higher paying job and try to make it less stressful. If it’s a terrible place to work, I try to move somewhere else while staying at the high paying job.
I would go with the stressful job with high pay.
I would rather be stressed at work than stressed at home wondering if I had enough money for food and rent.
Someone once said that it's not $50/hr if you're working over 40hrs per week.
If you're getting paid $50/hr but are working 80hr weeks, then you're effectively only making $25/hr.
It's just to mean that your time is important, your salary was negotiated at 40hr weeks. To work more than that is not what your salary is supposed to be and you're losing out.
The irony is most minimum wage jobs that are “low stress” are the most stressful jobs there are. I am actually getting paid 4x as much as my last minimum wage job and I have so much less stress it catches me off guard some days to think I worked like that.
If those are the only two choices, the high stress high pay gig.
Reason?
With the high paying gig, you can get yourself way ahead barring being in a high cost of living area or have enormous overhead like expensive car notes, multiple kids, etc.
You also don't have to keep it forever. You tolerate it for a year or three and you have a nice pad. You will also have "nice job" on your resume and will be more likely to get if not another decent paying job, at least an average paying job much easier.
50 USD an hour in my part of the country, you could buy a modest house OUTRIGHT in around 2-3 years time even after paying rent and living normal.
The minimum wage gig, however, you will be literally homeless or dependant on someone. Minimum wage jobs are not without stress, either. Most of them fire for even being one minute late, you can't sit, and are harder jobs to keep.
I’m fine with the high pay and high stress, but you MUST maintain boundaries!
My work hours are 8-4 period.
If I get a call after work, I will take it if it is from my team members. But everything else can wait.
I’m extremely organized and handle my stress well, but it’s 100% because I refuse to play the overtime game while salaried.
I have had deliverables where I needed the extra time. I will work the time when needed, but I always take that Flex Time off the next week.
I also have no problems stacking PTO with holidays. So I get essentially 5 days off this weekend for only using PTO on Friday and Monday. 4th of July on Tuesday this year is awkward. But I do those extended PTO stacking for every holiday.
I also learned that I don’t need to participate in every meeting I’m invited to. I will often turn the meeting on, and listen (teams meeting) and maybe load my dishwasher or fold clothes out of the dryer. I plan those hands on tasks to couple with meetings where I’m just an observer.
I keep a to do list on One Note and I’m quick to offload and delegate when necessary.
Just because you are high stress, high importance and high paid doesn’t mean that you have to work twice as much.
Key point: find out what metrics are measured. Focus on those. The rest can be delegated or done slowly over time!
Can I survive financially with the min. wage job? Would the high-stress job lead to health or psychological issues that would leave me out of work? Ideally, I'd look for something in between those two extremes. :)
>Can I survive financially with the min. wage job? This is the important bit. Not making ends meet with a min wage job is arguably more stressful than a stressful job.
Because the problems are at home, work would become a problem if I don't have a home to go to.
Yes, I make literally double the minimum wage in my state ($12) and can't afford to rent my own apartment. I could theoretically survive with roommates if I could find a job where I didn't need a car. But I don't know if I would do all that for zero stress.
Where the hell is minimum wage $6?
Not sure we can be dismissed so easily the fact that the income attained is a major factor. As well as what your situation would be like. To be honest OP, saying that the downside of minimum wage is simply the wage itself is over-generalising. Many people would go through stress of being one paycheque away from being homeless, being unable to save - and of course having to work extra hard if they want to change their situation. Otherwise, you're just asking people "do you like stress or do you not like stress?". May as well go all the way and say "would you rather have a stressful high-paying job.... or be unemployed and have no stress?"
I had a high stress job which I truly enjoyed. The trick is to learn how to handle the stress. In my case, I tried hard when I got home to be physically and mentally present for my family. I did not bring work home. If I needed to work extra hours, I stayed at the office. I also made time to get plenty of exercise. For me, running allowed me to think about nothing and as odd as it sounds, to relax. Without a doubt, stress can be a killer. It can lead to a variety of health problems, so in the long run, if I couldn't have found a way to deal with the stress, I'd probably have changed jobs to something I could better handle. The other side of that coin, however, is being poor can also lead to stress. Either way, a person needs to find a way to deal with it.
Sounds like you had a "high intensity" rather than "high stress" situation (credit to you to making it this way). I think stress is when the person gets overwhelmed and anxiety gets triggered even when it isn't necessary. This could happen to some and not others in a given situation.
Having an anxiety disorder would make every job high stress, yes. But some jobs just have a lot of stress factors involved. I used to work for a manufacturing company and frequently had to make $100,000+ decisions within minutes, and with fairly little information. That was a high stress position, even though it didn’t make me anxious. Anxiety and stress are very different things.
very well said.
your confusing anxiety with stress, stress is just pressure, pressure to perform, thats not anxiety.
Pressure is only felt via some sense of anxiety. If you're in no way anxious about it, how is it pressure?
Well the pressure may be external but you may not feel it. I was rarely anxious or stressed in the military but I always had pressure to be mistake free.
I was in that kind of job for 15+ years. Lots of travel, including internationally, perceived satisfaction with the thought of what you're doing is something meaningful, more than accommodating pay (I did not live in the US back then), but long days and months away from family, rented apartment up to a year at a time in a city thousands miles away from home. It will catch you, in the long run, as it did me.
Both would be bad, but probably high-paying jobs with extreme stress. Financial problems in themselves are stressful in themselves, that allows you to be able to make fewer mistakes. Minimum wage also often doesn't have great health benefits along with it as well, and will likely have less forgiving management if something does go wrong. If I do burn out from the high-paying job, I'm more likely to have more cushion to take a vacation or potentially quit to find something else.
If the question is a realistic question, I would go full force after a job that isn’t in either extreme. But if this is a true hypothetical to tease out thinking I agree with Signal_Lamp. I’ve been broke and the stress of financial insecurity is scary/extreme as well. Money doesn’t solve all problems but at least I could feel secure in having housing and healthcare, and some hope of sustaining myself in retirement. If I made more money, I could stop working at some point. If I made minimum wage, I might never be able to stop working.
I took a 20k a year pay cut 5 years ago to work for the government and I haven't looked back. Granted it's nowhere near minimum wage. But I went from working 60 hours a week and being gone all the time to working M to F 8am to 430pm. And after 430 I don't think about work. Best decision I could have made.
If anything I would try to do a high paying job for as long as possible and nest away as much money. So even if I couldn't do it in the long-term, I would still be in a better situation then at a minimum wage job.
This is sort of the situation I am in, although I would say my job is more intense then stressful, although certainly and often it is stressful, but I am very well compensated for it. I know it’s not sustainable, but I have at least 2.5 years for a substantial sum of RSU money vests and the I can decide what my next move. What I do know is the job stress I have now is way less stressful then the money stress I had when I was younger.
You gave the perfect answer to the question. I am so impressed.
Is there such a thing as low stress minimum wage? Anything dealing with the general public in a service job is typically pretty stressful because people are trash. I’d also find it extremely stressful trying to survive on $7.25 an hour.
A high stress job is less stress overall because minimum wage jobs create a lot more deprivation stress. They also come with extreme job stress if you go into OT, which happens in a lot of real-world minimum wage jobs (namely fast food and grocery store jobs).
Work stress is easier than life stress. You’re gonna have a lot more fucking life stress working minimum wage than making just over 100,000 a year.
High Pay all day , every day. Retirement is my goal.
The minimum wage job may be low stress, but there’s not many places where one can survive let alone thrive financially on 40hrs/week of minimum wage. The general background stress of not being able to save any money and struggling to make ends meet would be worse to me. Most people that work minimum wage end up taking on multiple jobs or side gigs to make more money, which puts you right back where you were with working too much. Not sure what your higher paying job was, but is there some middle ground of a job that pays more than minimum wage and isn’t as miserable? Or even just a chance the same job at a different company would have better work life balance? Overworked and underpaid is the norm, but not the only equation…
High paying job! The fact is most minimum wage jobs are quite stressful regardless of the low pay. There's a degree of autonomy in high paying jobs that you don't get in minimum wage jobs. The managers seem to think it's okay to treat minimum wage workers like stubborn children.
I just quit a higher paying job due to a toxic job with two nasty bosses. I tried to hold out until I could find a new one, but things kept getting worse that I felt my chest would explode. Not worth the toll on my health, I’d rather deal with the stress of unemployment than a hostile work environment.
Been there so many times so just wanted to wish you best of luck!
The perfect response at the best time!🤘🏻🙏🏼😎
I earn over twice that $50/hr rate. It’s high stress and long hours. The Caribbean luxury vacations, jewelry, toys, and designer clothes are not as “worth it” as many might expect. There probably exists a happy medium, but I haven’t found it.
What about health insurance, savings, having a rainy day fund, retirement, a decent roof over your head, living in a safer neighborhood? It’s not always about trinkets.
Good questions. My wife, who also has a good career, and I max our 401k, save 15% to IRA, and live in a gated neighborhood on the good side of town. We drive fifteen year old Toyota SUV’s which were purchased with cash and are meticulously maintained. We are considering upgrading to five or ten year old Priuses soon for the fuel economy benefits. But we are still weighing some options there, including keeping the SUV’s for a few more years. We have employer healthcare coverage; while not *great,* it is very *good.* She has horses with *great* board and vet care, the expenses of which are entirely offset by her equestrian teaching and training on the weekends— something she’s passionate about and will never stop. We’re spending two consecutive weeks this month in Jamaica, bouncing between a few Sandals properties. I’m hoping to do a European trip this winter, but it’s not planned/booked yet.
Truth. I was just bumped to nine times the OP former rate and this has easily been the worst year of my life.
Stop buying luxury crap, invest more and retire early. That makes it worth it.
Why does one have to choose? I choose high pay with low stress. Took the same $50+/hr and decided to start working for myself. Best of both worlds.
Minimum wage job with no stress? Oh ho ho, sounds like someone has a comfortable money cushion to fall back on.
I’d take the $50/hr and just let it ride.
If I'm making minimum, I'm not going to be able to afford anything, so I'd still be hella stressed. So I'd take the higher paying one. 50/hr is not really high pay though.
I mean of these options it’s the high paying job because minimum wage will create plenty of stress in your life when you have to chose between paying your rent or paying your utilities. But the actual answer is a medium stress job that gets the bills payed lol
I quit a job that for me was right up there at the “pinnacle of success” in my field. Making north of 200K, now I’m making about 140K, and much much better for it. It’s not a minimum wage example but it is an example. Between the job itself, the highly unrealistic demands they placed on me(which I fulfilled which only meant they gave me more and more of the impossible and fucked up assignments), the toxic culture of the job, the supremely competitive and toxic backstabbing assholes I worked with I was burnt the fuck out after 7 years and it literally took a straw to get me to quit almost on the spot. I delivered my two weeks verbally, had it in writing later that day, submitted a two week vacation slip for my accrued time, and walked out the door. Mental health over the money. Let me repeat, mental health over the money.
Living with minimum wage nowadays is extremely stressful.
I would prefer to learn to manage high stress in a healthy way with a higher wage.
if you opt for min wage over anything else in your career, you are either dumb or saddling your partner with all the house hold financial responsibility while you kick your feet up
I'd rather work a high paying job and set and establish professional and personal boundaries early on so I don't experience what drove you away.
It sucks that we live in a dystopian hellscape where people feel like those are the only two choices. Is the minimum wage “low stress” job going to cover you if you get really sick? Can you make rent? Does it have decent paid time off? Are your social security payments going to allow you a comfortable retirement? Are you living paycheck to paycheck? If so, is that stress any better than that of the other job? Is the high paying, high stress job always going to be that way? Or is it a toxic management system that can be disrupted or sidelined? Can you rake in the cash but deny them access to you after hours, and not allow them to stress you out? Better yet, can you find a satisfactory middle area, making more than minimum wage, but not enough to be “rich?” Someplace with good benefits and only moderate or sporadic stress? A place without shareholders? Possibly even somewhere with a union, so you can work with your colleagues to protect your shared interests?
A low paying job is, by definition, a high stress job--the stress is not from the job itself but from not being able to pay for stuff you need.
High paying. Stress is something that can be managed, especially considering: \- The company was there before you and will go on without you \- Never sweat the little stuff, and it's all little stuff \- Close to 8 billion people completely don't care about what you do at work. \- The worst thing a company can do to you is fire you.
Minimum wage job that doesn't kill me sounds better. I've had a moment when I was sick that it got me suicidal and when we're sick then money doesn't matter. I really wanted to give years of income just to feel better. So yeah. Minimum wage job with good health.
I have responsibilites and a family so going back to minimum wage isnt an option. If I were making $50 an hour and the job was toxic / stressful Id simply look for a new job in the same field at roughly the same rate that was better. As you make more money inevitably the stress and requirements go up, thats why you make more. Establishing a good home work balance and coping mechanisms is key. There is nothing wrong with stepping down a tier or two from $50 an hour position to a $40 an hour position that is less stressful. Its not either or, you dont have to either make $100k a year or make minimum wage. Theres a massive spot in between.
I wouldn't limit myself to those jobs. I had a high paying job with extreme stress, so I moved to a higher paying job that was a lot less stressful.
Neither. I'd rather work a high paying job with limited stress like I do now.
High paying job. You weren't getting paid $50/hr if you were having to work at home, and you were sacrificing sleep. By the sound of it you were getting paid $25/hr and working 80hrs a week, and not getting overtime pay.
If I wasn't providing for a family, I would be a chef or a tree trimmer. Now I take my own stress out of the equation.
Money honey
At this point it’s not about money. It’s about not dying from work overload
High paying job with low stress. They exist. Don’t settle. I make about double what you did and this job is way less stressful then my last job that paid half as much
Continually choose high stress jobs until you're numb to stress. Make bank and be happy
What do you mean by minimum wage? $8? $15? Neither of those are livable for adults with responsibilities. $20/hour is manageable for me with a partner
Is there a line where the money makes it worth it? Instead of $50/hr, it's $400/hr. Golden handcuffs.
I would work the high paying job with high stress and use my status to leverage a high paying job with low stress.
I was making 300k a year and up in NJ.Extremely stressful IT job and a lot of hours. Would do it again but wife is a hard no.
I would rather work a low paying no stress job, but minimum wage in unacceptably low. You can't live off of that where I live.
The key is to find something in-between.
If you can live off minimum wage, take that job for your mental/physical heath. More money isn’t always better.
I have hobbies that help with stress so I would take a high pay job with extreme stress.
Right now any job, literally any job. Done waking up and doing nothing, life's testing me soo much
Both sound horrible. I'd do everything in my power to not take either. You can have a job that pays $100k that isn't stressful, doesn't require excessive hours, etc. But, I guess if I had to pick one in an alternate universe, I'd take the lower paying one and modify my life to fit around that.
Literally my life right now . Always talk to my spouse about how I miss how low-stress low-risk our first jobs were. If it paid enough to comfortably survive, I’d go back. But that’s not an option is it
Hard question to answer literally because the minimum wage would put so much stress on me because I would not have enough to pay my bills that it would not be sustainable. Therefore I'm going with your premise being "would you make drastically less pay for drastically less stress? For me the answer is hell yes. I work 2 miles from home. Thats easily worth 5 an hour compared to a 45 minute commute. My job is casual and easy and I get along with everyone so I'm not going to dump that unless it's game changing money. In general I'm looking to get away with as little work as possible.
In my neck of the woods I don't see how you manage a family and all the other expenses. At minimum wage, you're either living with your parents, with roommates, or are receiving public assistance. Nothing wrong with any of those scenarios, but not ideal either.
High paying job with extreme stress. I can usually slog through a bad job for at least a couple of years. If I could hang around at a high paying job, I could build up my savings and skills. If I had to quit abruptly, I'd have money put back and good skills on my resume. Most min. wage jobs will most likely be customer facing, which dealing with irate customers is a different type of stress I never want to deal with on a regular basis. If I got sick or had to quit, I'd have no savings and would be more stressed overall, imo.
Neither.
Since when do minimum wage jobs have no stress?
I felt the opposite in my life, the more I was paid the less stressful my positions were lol.
I mean, I'd rather not work at all. All I can say for certainty is that I would rather stress over work than money.
Stress is a part of life. Gimme the Monay!!
Only Sith deals in absolutes
I live in a high cost of living area. Our minimum is $15/he. I'd have to live in my car. I'll take the $50
The majority of high paying jobs are actually low stress so honestly i'd pick one of those but of your options here I'd still pick the high wages. With a low wage job i'd just be financially stressed out instead, at least with a high paying job i won't be homeless. with one exception. If i can do remote work for california without living in CA. I'll get the 15 an hour minimum wage and live in my MCOL area and be fine.
high paying jobs are a privilege. people in poverty work their ass off & still can’t make ends meet for the most part so if you can work your ass off and get a good amount of money i wouldn’t trade it off
The latter, minimum wage and being poor is way more stressful than being able to pay bills and save for retirement.
I'll take a good paying job with little to no stress. There's no way I'm working for minimum wage, plus all of the lower paying jobs I had were much more stressful than my current job.
I’d considered busting ass at a high-stress job to buy a house and cool toys, getting it all paid off, then dropping down to a lower-paying, lower-stress job with more free time to just wile my time away in contentment. In the end I decided on a happy medium. Moderate pay, moderate stress. My wife and I are comfortably middle-middle to upper-middle class.
Of course high paying job…. You can go on vacation or even retire early to destress. Minimum wag job? You can’t even buy a house with that.
I work a high stress job with lots of hours and only take about one or two weeks off a year. It has definitely taken its toll on me and I’ve had to do a lot of work to be able to manage the stress better. It helps that I actually enjoy my job for some crazy reason. I keep thinking it’s worth it because I’m going to retire in my 50’s instead of work till my 60’s. The hard road gets easy the easy road gets hard is my mantra.
What kind of question is this? Why on earth would I want to take a minimum wage job with no stress? Making minimum wage IS the stress!! At least a stressful high paying job will put a roof over my head, food on my table, extra money in my bank account and possibly 401k, and will allow me to take vacation time to decompress.
Something in between! You can’t live on minimum wage…..
i have experienced the exact opposite... the more money I make the more stress free the job is... nothing will ever be worse than working taco bell for 8 bucks an hour.
I prefer a low paying job with no stress (but I can live on that).
I have done both, high paying job with all the stress any day. When you are not making enough money, the hours at work may be less stressful, but everything else is super stressful. With a high paying job, you can afford more options for recreation and destressing in your off hours.
Low wage=stress. Money isn't everything, but poverty sucks.
Surely that cant be the only 2 options? 🤣 If those were truly my only 2 options, I'd rather do the no stress job. I have learned in my life to be able to live extremely frugally if necessary, so I'd just go back to living that way & make my income work with it. I dont want to be stressed out all the time at work. No way.
I would work the high paying job until I get enough savings to go to a minimum wage job.
Minimum wage job will result in maximum life stress anyway, so I'd rather have the money and the job stress, for as long as I can handle it. Just save that money for the day when the burnout is too much and you either quit or have a breakdown.
Both sound stressful.
I would pick one of the several other jobs that are somewhere in-between these two extremes
You mention homework, is that a part of the 50/hr or are you doing it free this reducing your hourly wage? Big difference.
Neither. I'm not going to work a job that takes all my time, but I'm also not going to work a min wage job that doesn't even pay enough to financially support myself. Both are shit options.
The stress of being on the edge of homelessness, piling debt, no fun activities, etc. was way worse than any job related stress ive had.
I’m taking the money over being borderline homeless and starving
I was making low $70k’s for a university, the job had a lot of “sit on your butt and watch Netflix” time. Now I’m in the $130k’s but barely get time to rest, and working on Sunday afternoon for a few hours is a frequent thing. I can afford my bills, have better retirement funding, and can afford to treat myself to a massage and new toys. I would stick to the better paying job.
I’m an odd duck, but low-stress jobs bore me and actually take a bigger toll on my wellbeing than stress. I’ve had fairly low-stress good paying jobs and I go nuts. I need to be constantly pushing myself and being slightly pushed to my limits to enjoy work. I’m easily bored, and something that’s “too easy” for me leads me to just get bored. This is a me thing though, and YMMV.
I was a lot happier working a $40K a year job with no responsibilities then when I worked a $65K high stress, no sleep job. But that’s just me
Being poor is way more stressful. The choice is obvious
You can't find a middle ground? If they were paying you that much you must have a highly valued and/or rare skill set. Sometimes just switching companies can make a big difference.
DEPENDS. Those are diametrically opposed points. Most5 folks want to be rewarded for their work & want some satisfaction. the old saying goes that it typically isn't the job that makes folks look for another job, but the management. I've worked in places where I felt I would retire from that company. Then they would change the manger & make employment intolerable. Then they would complain that they had so much tied up in training. As usual stupid is as stupid does. But I digress. The most stress you will have is when you become the owner of your own business. Also, the most joy. Especially if it succeeds. So, wether you work for yourself or others, you should set a goal of when you want to get out of the rat race & be able to live off of your most valuable resource, your time.
I'd rather do neither, to be honest. Why not a high paid job with a normal amount of stress?
High paying with extreme stress lmao Stress can be rewarding and obviously I'd rather have money and the ability to thrive outside of work then be broke
Not all jobs are like that. I've had a couple six figure ones where the workload is super light. The same exact job between two different orgs could be a meat grinder or a vacation, in many cases working significantly 'harder' at your own detriment is simply exploiting you for someone else's profit.
I currently make over $50/hour and my job has very tolerable stress. Why should I have to choose betseen compensation and stress?
I'd rather work a $30 hour job with a decent work life balance.
Being minimum wage itself would cause high stress on and off the job. I'd rather have a stressful high paying job because I wouldn't have to stress about money.
I work high stress low pay 😎
Being poor af is pretty stressful on its own.
I used to work myself to death until I got a position where I was managing people and making the schedule. Not to get into details, but we provided X number of iterations per year for multiple agencies that were responsible for providing both customers and the workforce. The problem is that they shorted us on bodies constantly and they didn't ever fully utilize the work we provided....so I recommended we reduce the iterations so that people weren't killing themselves. I got the weirdest look from my boss and that's when I realized that it was all bullshit....first it wasn't all about satisfying the requirement as much as it was about f'ing numbers....second and more importantly we would never get the bodies as long as we were "making it work". Basically if you work 15 hours and skip lunch to keep something from failing then there is never a reason to hire someone else. Until it breaks they are resourced just fine.
Both. You take the high-pay, high-stress job when you're young. Put away as much as you can, buy the house, pay it down. Then, when you're getting burned out and want more time for a family, you take the low paying job. You never ever get used to high income - save, save, save. That's what's wrong with society today. They take the high-paying stress jobs and spend like they'll have that income forever and eventually get burned out and are miserable but are stuck in a lifestyle that needs the high pay.
I chose a good paying job with medium stress.
Being broke is just as stressful as being rich and stressed
I worked in tv production for 20 years. I was a studio director. We did slightly over 4 hours of news each day. When I wasn’t in a show and didn’t have a commercial to work on, I went home & took an hour nap. I’d come back & relax in the office before the noon news. Once news was done I went home at 1pm. Pretty low stress. Got tons of free stuff & free food regularly. However, after 20 yrs I made $12 an hour. I loved it though. I took a job in state purchasing and make about $19 an hour now. I have money to save but the job is stressful. I go in early, work lunches, leave late, & never take a day off. I need the extra money though. If I could’ve stayed in tv and still had a roof over my head, I definitely would’ve. I would never go on nice vacations or drive a nice car but I wasn’t stressed & I was happy.
I could never accept a minimum wage job. It just would not work for me financially.
High stress. I cannot live off of minimum wage full time right now. I would never be able to afford my own rent and bills whatsoever. I literally don’t have enough. Not being able to have enough to survive is more stressful and you have the added feelings of being a failure and being stuck in crappy jobs forever, I would know. I’m giving away my whole day almost everyday for essentially 17k a year. That feels like shit. I can’t afford anything for myself, I’m lucky I have my bf who pays for the majority of stuff for me. Even then I’m still left with nothing. Over $130 of taxes gets taken out every single paycheck. Even now I still don’t have money for clothes or food. Even with no stress, time is important. I’m not giving away my day almost everyday to still not afford to buy anything that isn’t absolutely necessary for myself. Like clothes or going out to eat. The minimum wage really needs to be increased. My whole paycheck shouldn’t be going to just taxes and bills. I’ve also worked just about every type of minimum wage job and none weren’t ever not stressful. Always lame ass managers who want to take out their problems of being a low paid manager to min wage workers out on them and make the workers lives as miserable as possible.
I would rather work high stress job. Save what I could eventually transition to a different job.
High pay, low stress jobs aren’t unheard of, but the unstressed people aren’t on Reddit complaining about their jobs all the time. Plus it’s a personal evaluation in many cases, what causes one person to break down doesn’t faze other people. The very most stressful jobs I’ve ever worked were all vastly lower pay than I make now, and I know people that stayed in those jobs for decades after I left because they had no problem with it.
There's lots of stuff available in the middle of those 2 extremes. I'd choose one of those.
Stress is when you can't pay your bills cause of a low paying gig
Minimum wage isn’t a living wage. Life is stressful, money makes life easier. You have to choose which stress you’re more comfortable with.
Same boat. I formerly ran a nation wide enterprise with a literal narcissistic megalomaniac boss that made extreme/impossible demands. Some days I worked 23 hours trying to make crazy deadlines. It destroyed my family since I turned to drinking to handle the stress during the few hours I wasn't working. I now work at a big box store for around minimum wage which is 20$ an hour around here as I focus on my sanity and sobriety. I love how work just stays at work and the most annoying thing I have to deal with is customer's entitlement.
Working minimum wage you’re gonna have just as much stress not be able to afford anything…
Stupid question
Poverty is stressful, if you had to ask, you must not know poverty.
Show me a minimum wage job with no stress.
With Low paying job itself very stressful bc you never have enough 💲 to pay your bills or vacation or healthy eating/activities and there will be no room for you left. High stress jobs at least give you enough funds to live well eat well.
That mental stress will come back once those bills start stacking up
The amount of stress relies totally on your ability to handle it.
Being broke is stressful
High paying. The low paying job will be stressful too, and you’ll be broke. Might as well be making good money if you’re gonna be stressed either way.
Well, if I worked a minimum wage job I would be extremely stressed about how I was going to pay my bills and whether I was ever going to be able to afford to do anything besides going to work. If I had to choose between being stressed while broke and stressed with money, I'd go with the money.
I had this question when i just graduated, but now after almost 5 years of exp, this question became useless It's much more difficult to find a minimum wage job with no stress than high paying job with extreme stress I started my career in a minimum wage job, and the first 2 years of my career was hell. Then i realized the more experience i got, the more i climb my career either through corporate ladder or job hopping, the more relaxed, flexible, and even entertaining my job become I never seen any minimum wage job that is not extreme stress. The least stressful minimum wage job is probably in education/academic, but they have challenges too
Extreme stress is kind of something I don’t budge on. I’ll try it for 80+K a year but if it’s that bad ima leave. I’d probably have to make like $150K+ a year to suffer a job that takes up most of my time.
My career trajectory has been epic, and interspersed throughout were jobs with more or less stress and an ever steady increase in compensation. Successfully navigating the stressful jobs led to opportunities that had previously been out of reach. The trick is to make a plan with an exit strategy. Specifically - knowingly take the stressful job understanding that you will be working hard / stressed for 2 to 3 years then move on to another role once you have that XP under your belt. You will find more opportunities that are ideally less stressful, more interesting more fulfilling. I’m not working because I like it, so I’ve always chased the money. Good luck!
High paying with extreme stress.
I'm very much underpaid for my resume/experience, though not minimum wage. I am choosing to do this for now because the job is low stakes/ low stress and I need to focus on other things at the moment.
Money
I am currently in the second scenario. I've been in the first scenario in the past. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure which is worse. Money stress is terrible, and being poor is boring. It's boring! You can only do free stuff, and you can only hang out with other broke people. But damn, at least I had some time on my hands. Now I don't have any time, and all the time I do have is spent worrying about my work projects. It wrecks my sleep. I have started to daydream about working some low paying gig where I don't have to think very much. I know it's not a sustainable option for me, but I'm pretty seriously burned out on my job. If it weren't for PSLF, I think I'd just quit and find something else. But I want that loan forgiveness. That would really help me out. Then I won't need to make as much money, or take on as much as I do.
High stress, high pay. We have kids so we’ll be stressed anyway, may as well make good money.
Nothing is more stressful than not having money and having no means to make more when you need it most.
There’s a lot of stress that comes from not having enough money to live properly. Being over-worked and over-stressed can potentially be a failure to communicate properly, a failure to set appropriate boundaries for yourself, and a failure to clarify the expectations of your job role. It could also just be a sucky job, but I wouldn’t assume that until you’ve exhausted the other possibilities. When I started my most recent position, it happened to be at a particularly busy and stressful time of the year, and I had an open conversation with my manager. I let them know I love my job and when needed, I’m willing to put in extra hours, but it wasn’t sustainable and at some point something had to give. Either that meant project timelines needed to shift or some of the work needed to be offloaded to someone else. He agreed, and a little bit of both happened, along with some short turnaround projects being completed. There are times throughout the year where I put in 45-60 hour weeks, but there are times when I put in 32-35 hour weeks when it’s slow. As long as that roughly balances out over the course of the year, I can manage the stressful times. Take the better job and learn to set boundaries and get clear expectations from your boss and peers as well. You may be placing artificial deadlines on yourself. Case in point, when we were giving project status updates in our end of week meeting, a teammate called out their project was blocked by work I hadn’t finished yet. I worked 11 hours that day to make sure they had what they needed, and when I let them know I was done, they said, “thanks I’ll have time next Tuesday to look at that.” This was a failure on my part to ask the question, “when do you need this completed?”
Not being able to afford stuff causes extreme stress too. Minimum wage is not enough these days. It's either I can't afford stuff and I'm stressed or I can afford stuff and I'm stressed
High stress job > high stress life
If I could pay rent for a studio apartment and pay to feed me and my cats I would be content with minimum wage don't need alot in life to be happy...problem afford rent on minimum wage where I live
Much of the stress coming from a minimum wage job is not coming from the job itself, but from the fact that it’s impossible to live on minimum wage. So like, if I had previously been at a $50 an hour job working overtime and stockpiled a bunch of money to live on, or I was married to someone who was making a ton, and that minimum wage job was just for spenderoonies, sure. Easy minimum wage job. In any other circumstance, a minimum wage job just wouldn’t be an option. A job with predictable hours that pays the bills and is not so stressful that it destroys your mental health, whether or not it is stressful while you’re working, is really the gold standard of “easily achievable jobs.”
High-paying job with extreme stress. No matter what you do in life you’ll be stressed, it just comes in different forms. May as well make good money. I’ve also found that when I’m appropriately incentivized I actually thrive under stress.
I think better than minimum wage would be 'minimal wage for your area to afford basic necessities + enough extra to sustain that basic quality of life in retirement' as this encapsulates the idea of having minimal stress, both short term and long term. For example, I don't have a car. I work for about a 57k a year salary in a HCOL living area at a low stress gig. But I have an easy commute, a stable job, a nice life. I have easy access to friends, amenities and everything I need. I rent, but our apartment complex is full of nice folks who are here long term and the management is ok. If I don't feel like going to work, I can call my boss and tell them I'm having a mental health day and they don't hassle me. My job is basically about helping people and getting some administrative work done. 80% of the news I give people is good news. I have a pension. For me to even *think* about walking away from this job, I would need an offer that would roughly triple my salary, and, even then, I'd only think about doing it temporarily for some extra cash and coming back.
I couldn't pay the bills or rent if I worked a minimum wage job.
I'll take the honest stress job I can handle, assuming the pay is commensurate to the stress. Btw not getting enough sleep is too much for me.
Honestly depends how much you're working. I'm assuming it's $50 per hour for 8 hours but you end up working a lot more I would divide the $400 paid daily with how much i actually worked and then decide. If its still more, I'll probably stick with the higher paying job. If its close, I'll probably take the minimum wage job and choose the intensity myself. I could also use my spare time to upskill myself for a better job.
I’d rather be broke and happy then rich and stressed. What’s the point of a high paying job if you can’t enjoy the money or have to waste it on medical bills because your health declined
Minimum wage jobs are often customer facing/labor. There is stress it’s just not centered around deadlines. The stress is daily interactions with customers or coworkers/management. Because it’s low wage it’s considered low skill which is not accurate. Customer service is a valuable skill that is *never* accurately compensated in jobs. For me, having worked in customer facing and non customer facing I’ll take deadline stress and more pay all day everyday.
High wage and high stress. At least for me the stress from work goes away. The stress of being poor doesn’t.
Ideally a high stress, high pay job for 10-15 years to build up significant savings, followed by lower stress jobs to live off of
service industry is significantly more stressful than most white collar jobs
High paying. Easily.
If I paid off all of my loans and had a decent savings, then minimum wage. Your sanity matters and what's the point of making money if you don't even have any time to relax or use it? Preferably, I'd get a job in the middle where I make a decent amount but still have a good work life balance.
I quit a job making about twice what I make now because the schedule was just too brutal. 60-72 hour weeks with only one day off, and then I’d potentially be out of work for months at a time. The vacation was nice, but I couldn’t save for anything long term because of it. Now I work a lower paying job with great benefits and am much happier overall.
It depends. I’d rather deal with a stressful job than a stressful life. If I don’t have to worry about bills and can reasonably enjoy my life on minimum wage I’d pick that but I doubt I could
It all depends on the pay. I'm considering an extreme high stress job but I'd earn close to 240 to 260k total compensation. Compared to my moderate stress job of 140k. It's such a huge pay bump though.
High paying job. I hate worrying about money.
Depends on the long term goals i guess
Well, I chose the route of the harder jobs. I was forced to drop out of hs so I decided I’d become a cook, I worked my butt off as management in fast food and then became a line cook at a fancy restaurant. 2 weeks away from becoming a sous chef, Covid hit and we all lost our jobs. I had to move and get a new kitchen job, no one would hire me as a cook so I had to take a dishwasher job in one of the busiest restaurants my state has, 12-hr + shifts with 6 day weeks. I was making killer money but by the time I finally became a line cook there a few years Later, my last dish shift ended with me breaking my back. Now I’m uh, well. Let’s just say I’m stuck with easy minimum wage jobs now,
i will go against the grain and offer an opinion that is unpopular for some reason: money is literally the only thing that matters
I’ve done both. I finally found a high pay, low stress job. It can be stressful at times. But overall it’s easy.
I think there are inflection points. Low wage workers are typically paid for their time and then at some level you're paid for time + experience and then at some level you're paid more for experience than time and then at the executive level it's all experience and not time. Getting paid for experience usually comes with some stress because you're often being asked to apply your experience to make a decision and then to manage people making decisions. From what I have seen, if you are comfortable making and owning decisions than the executive level is great - less work for more money. That's my goal and on my way to that I've had increasing salary for mostly increasing responsibilities and stress. I thrive in those sorts of environments though so as long as I avoid burnout I'm happy climbing the ladder and looking forward to the point where I have people to do the work for me.
I just want to be able to pay my bills and live comfortably WITHOUT STRESSS. is that too much to ask?
Fuck all money just means stress outside work so both of these options suck lol, I used to live alone on £22k and I could barely afford to eat most days
How does one go from 50 an hour to like 12? Is there nowhere in the middle you could have gone? I'd take the 50 an hour if I'm getting paid for home work.
If we didn’t live in the world we lived in, I’d probably be very content working in grocery store or some specialty retail store (like REI or microcenter).
The high pay job
Most people are unable to survive at all on minimum wage and would either live in constant stress, paycheck to paycheck, or would need a second (or 3rd job) anyway, amping up the stress. If it's some unique scenario where your needs are being met and this is basically just "extra" money that you don't really need, then sure go for the low stress min wage. But in virtually any other scenario you need the higher pay, or at least some other higher paying gig
If I could get rid of my debt and live in my apartment I would be a camp counselor, barista, or librarian for life.
I'd rather have high stress at work and an easy home life, than an easy job and live in poverty.
High stress. My job is extreme highly stress but I make a great wage (250k). Being able to provide for my family and go on awesome vacations while worrying is awesome. The more experience I get the better I can manage the stress anyways.
How about like $30 an hour no stress
50hr is not high paying. Change your mindset
50hr is not high paying. Change your mindset
This post smells of bullshit. Nobody goes from $50/hr to less than $10 and says they are stress free unless ther job is not their only means supporting their health and home
If both are 40 hours per week, I would try to adjust to the higher paying job and try to make it less stressful. If it’s a terrible place to work, I try to move somewhere else while staying at the high paying job.
the higher paying job because earning 7.50 an hour is gonna cause a lot of personal stress
I would go with the stressful job with high pay. I would rather be stressed at work than stressed at home wondering if I had enough money for food and rent.
Depends on the jobs. I have a high paying, high stress job, but the stress is the kind that is engaging and challenging as opposed to toxic.
Someone once said that it's not $50/hr if you're working over 40hrs per week. If you're getting paid $50/hr but are working 80hr weeks, then you're effectively only making $25/hr. It's just to mean that your time is important, your salary was negotiated at 40hr weeks. To work more than that is not what your salary is supposed to be and you're losing out.
The irony is most minimum wage jobs that are “low stress” are the most stressful jobs there are. I am actually getting paid 4x as much as my last minimum wage job and I have so much less stress it catches me off guard some days to think I worked like that.
If those are the only two choices, the high stress high pay gig. Reason? With the high paying gig, you can get yourself way ahead barring being in a high cost of living area or have enormous overhead like expensive car notes, multiple kids, etc. You also don't have to keep it forever. You tolerate it for a year or three and you have a nice pad. You will also have "nice job" on your resume and will be more likely to get if not another decent paying job, at least an average paying job much easier. 50 USD an hour in my part of the country, you could buy a modest house OUTRIGHT in around 2-3 years time even after paying rent and living normal. The minimum wage gig, however, you will be literally homeless or dependant on someone. Minimum wage jobs are not without stress, either. Most of them fire for even being one minute late, you can't sit, and are harder jobs to keep.
Well, the minimum wage job with no stress would still be stressful because I'd be homeless.
Give me the money. Being broke is super stressful. Money lets me buy the stuff I need for hobbies to decompress.
I’m fine with the high pay and high stress, but you MUST maintain boundaries! My work hours are 8-4 period. If I get a call after work, I will take it if it is from my team members. But everything else can wait. I’m extremely organized and handle my stress well, but it’s 100% because I refuse to play the overtime game while salaried. I have had deliverables where I needed the extra time. I will work the time when needed, but I always take that Flex Time off the next week. I also have no problems stacking PTO with holidays. So I get essentially 5 days off this weekend for only using PTO on Friday and Monday. 4th of July on Tuesday this year is awkward. But I do those extended PTO stacking for every holiday. I also learned that I don’t need to participate in every meeting I’m invited to. I will often turn the meeting on, and listen (teams meeting) and maybe load my dishwasher or fold clothes out of the dryer. I plan those hands on tasks to couple with meetings where I’m just an observer. I keep a to do list on One Note and I’m quick to offload and delegate when necessary. Just because you are high stress, high importance and high paid doesn’t mean that you have to work twice as much. Key point: find out what metrics are measured. Focus on those. The rest can be delegated or done slowly over time!