First things First: Savings

Whether you are saving to give or whether you are going to do research to solve the [big questions][80k_problems], or you are just don’t know what to do and want to gain solid transferable CC (Career Capital), there are somethings that we need to take care of. Savings for that rainy day. Also the goal is to “Give” all through your life, to be productive as hell, so we will be investing and focusing on things that gets us this longevity.

According to the [80k hrs website][80k_successful], they suggest to save for 6 months to 1 year of comfortable living. This is priority. Until then we need to cut back your donations to 1%. In case shit hits the roof suddenly, in case you want to take some risks or make some big career changes, you have the flexibility and saving cushion to fall back on.

Well, it might appear that, that is that. Well it’s not. We need to save for retirement. I don’t know how much I need, I don’t know what is good. I don’t know how to factor like inflation etc… Without getting into the detail of it, I am again citing [80k articles’ ][80k_successful]. Their rule of thumb is to save 15% for retirement. Right now I shall not question it. As and when I find time to read about it, I shall optimize the retirement savings.

My situation right now is that I have to give money back to my parents (no pressure), in the regime of 36k euros. It will take 3 years of good savings to do that. I will get back to retirement savings once I have paid my parents this money. It feels really wrong to talk about this now. But my parents are probably going to leave me a house worth 133k euros in India, plus 13k euros in savings atleast, and probably these 36k euros will come back to me as well, as they are extremely well off. So for these 3 years, I am not going to be worried about retirement savings, but just will keep my cushion, so that I can take the decisions that I want to and can be independent.

In conclusion, these are some crucial years for me, I will keep with me 6k euros (6 months worth expenditure), and the rest, I will send it back to parents. I add to the backlog to read the recommended books regarding financial matter as in the [80k hours website][ 80k_successful].

First things first : Physical health

Having had ailments like RSI and even to this day back pain and knee pain (seemingly not serious), and noting the alarm from the [80k website][80k_successful], it seems wise to invest in physical health. This means eating well and regular exercising. By the end of December I will read more and come up with concrete parameters regarding health and what exactly I should do. One of the parameters I believe is fat percentage, that directly relates to good/bad health. For now, I am strength training 4-5 days a week and doing cardio for atleast 20 minutes everyday as per the “advice” of an STM. I also play sport for about 2 hrs on sunday.

It’s been 2 months since I started the intermediate workout of scooby. 3 years back when I tried the intermediate workout I became “bedridden” for a while. Its going well now in the sense that I am working out to my best current capability and am not “bedridden” in any way, by that I mean I try to keep the workout sessions challenging. I could never imagine doing squats a year and a half ago. From time to time I still do get BP. I don’t know if it is associated with my 8 hr sitting at work, or something I am missing in food, or my lack of posture at home while writing sitting on the bed, or stressing my back during workouts (barbell rows and deadlifts).

I am particularly concerned that maybe some exercises like the barbellrow and the deadlifts are probably causing some pain, as I remember seeing backpain when performing those exercises recently. Usually my rule of thumb is that if there is no serious pain in the back after a workout, the next day or a few hrs from the workout then, all is good. Having learn’t about RSI, I am skeptical about any pain in the back, neck, or knee. It could all be in the head. But what about the off-chance that your form is shit and you are actually screwing your back? I would expect increased frequencies of backpain or more lasting pain.

Right now I don’t measure anything, like the number of occurrences and duration of bp, but maybe I should?

A quick test would be to not do these excercises for a week and see if I have the typical pains I do have during the week, such as pain when sitting etc… or I could log the pain when I get them, for 2 weeks, and see if it has anything to do with the type of workout. I would suspect to see patterns related to days when I do pull workout (barbell row) and leg workout (squats & Dead lifts).

One of my biggest worries is if I really minutely keep tabs of this whole situation, constantly check if I have pain or not, like I did 3 years back, I am internally on high alert for pain. As I write this and think about it, I feel pain already. This is the type of shit I want to avoid. Over the past many months, my mantra has been not to give a fuck about pain, especially when it comes for seemingly silly reasons, for example having a bad posture while writing. I have read a lot of articles from people with RSI and chronic BP. The goal is to continue doing things, unless there is a crazy alarm. I remember this amazon review of this guy who shared his story of being bedridden to I-can-dance-again. It was all about challenging the status quo and not being afraid to challenge the body about it’s alarms.

Sure, I could start doing machines instead of doing the excercises where the form could go wrong. I will look into it. My current gym, does not have too many machines, as it is a small gym. I will look into the options. I don’t want to spend too much time in the gym as a result. As long as I am able to work the same muscles shouldn’t be a problem.

In summary, I think I am saying I will stick to slow form and low weights in cases where I think it is serious and slowly build up. For squats I initially started with nothing and over 3 or 4 months moved slowly to a barbell. Recently I am pushing further and further to my limits as I am more confident with it. In case I see pain beyond what I think is normal (normal being the thing I feel when I do squats), I will stop or try again with lower weights. I will roughly keep tabs about BP and see how I am doing over time, by that I mean, I will do it on paper, in a way that I can’t see the history, so that I don’t worry myself causing more pain. I will review this once a week.

Stress I should admit that I am sometimes afraid to give up working out as I will loose my gains or my progress. Sometimes, certain things make life so busy that you can’t go to a workout, it’s not the end of the world. Although, Cardio should ideally not be missed. Only recently have I come to terms about not stressing about missing a workout or not worrying that I am unable to make progress in weights in an exercise. Things take time. I want to tell myself that the visible gains will take a few years. Gains such that I will be able to shoulder press 30kg with one hand will take atleast a year. I want to focus on the now, and how I feel during a workout, do my best at eating well and reaping the best gains possible.

First things first: other things

Maintain your closest friendships. There is a lot to be read about positive psychology that can improve our overall productivity and happiness, these need to be looked at as well. [80k hours][80k_successful] explains several other ideas to keep yourself mentally and physically capable. This is added to the backlog for now.

profession, main salary, best saving, pressure, tax, savings expenditure, bonus and % increase, per hour payment, in 2 years pay and saving and in 5 years pay and saving

Career data I have

I am a mechanical engineer, I am 27 years old. I live in holland and earn 40k euros/ year working at a precision engineering company as a design engineer. My best saving per year will be 16 k euros, with reasonable living. It’s a 9 to 5 job, relatively no pressure. I am doing design work as well as solving and troubleshooting for issues that occur in my company. For not so big companies, unlike ASML, this is a “pretty good” salary for a starter after masters according to my peers. My tax is about 26%, savings about 40%(16k), 34% (13,6k) expenditure. I think I can expect a 3 to 5 % increase in pay every year, maximum (1.5k after taxes), leading to a saving of 17.5k.

My friend works at shell, holland in a management role, fresher just like me. Shell is big company, and so he gets paid 45k when he started; 12.5k increase per year, which comes to 27% hike for the first year. He would earn 52.5 k in the second year. It is a relatively high pressure job, where you are responsible for a lot of important things. 2 years of managing people is great experience and can further your salary by jumping companies. I guess you can get a good hike of atleast 20% when jumping companies. For me this would mean a tax of 30%, expenditure of 27.2 % (13,6k), and a saving of 22k euros (42.8%). But the growth is crazy for holland standards. At the end of 1st year a saving of ~19k. At the end of 2nd year a saving of ~27.5k. We are looking at a 100k salary in 5 years. A possible saving of 50k in 5 years.

My colleague who is a fantastic electrical engineer 48 years old, who knows his shit, who is probably atleast as important as me in the company, gets 52k now after 3 years of work here. He is 48 I cannot believe, all those years of work has got him only this far, when my friend from shell can earn more than him in a year.

If I had a career at ASML, within the same profession, as it is a big ass company, the pay is more, the bonuses are crazy depending on what record the company breaks each year. With ASML the start salary is 46k. Roughly the tax is 30%, expenditure still the same of 13,6k (29%), and a saving of 19k (41%). Also there is this thing called profit sharing within the company and I heard last year everyone got a bonus of 20% (9.2k), when taxed at 50%, becomes an extra 4.6k in the pocket, making the annual possible savings as 23.6k. I don’t know what the salary hike is with every year, It has to be around 10% atleast (in between what shell and my company offers). This would amount to 3.5k euros. In total at the end of first year I would be able to save ~19k+4.6k = 23.6k. At the end of second year I would be able to earn an additional 3.5 k = 27.5k.

I want to check how the growth is within ASML. Maybe this career and slowly moving to a design leader position where I don’t do stuff, but manage people, will make me earn more.

A friend in the same field as me, growing in a general manner (also like me) says he can save 32k euros (38k$) off a 81.7k euros (95k$) first year salary in the bay area US. I don’t know how the pay hikes in the US are. Assuming a 5% increase we get about ~36k in savings at the end of 2nd year. Work timings are quite erratic for the first 2 years, with long hours and pressure. But after those 2 years the company claims its going to be different, with possibilities to change to different departments.

Another friend doing data science in Apple earns about 130k in his first year. Which means it is possible to save 50k. In fields like these, it is possible to get good hikes. My friend claims he will get atleast a 30 to 40 k hike in the next year. This would mean that you could potentially save 70k euros.

Another friend who did her electrical engineering in india, did her masters in engineering management. This fetched her a job in analytics & finance, leading to a pay of only 85k after 3 years in Detroit in JP morgan. She can save 15k easily. I will make that 25 k$ (21.5k Euros) as a miser. In 2 more years she expects to reach 120 k easily. An estimated saving of 36k Euros.

Another friend who is in Deloitte, also gets paid about 85k euros and this is after 3 years of working there should be saving 21.5k euros now and in 2 more years, 36k euros per year.

A first peak into the data shows me that I probably need to work in the US, becuase the pay and pay rise is higher than what is achievable here. It can be admitted that the work culture seems to be quite different than in holland, with the clocking of more hours to taking up a lot of pressure. If I am going after maximizing money, as long as I don’t have a startup, I should probably go to the US. As a last point Data Science seems very attractive for 2 reasons, [80k hours][80k_problems] recommends it for people to pursue rather than mechanical engineering, and the big bucks seem to be located here especially with top companies like Google, Apple etc…

If one has to go to the US, the typical path is via Masters. There is also another route of directly applying to companies but I am told the chances are much lower. In case Data science is the option, it could possibly be done by first migrating to a job in holland in Data science and then trying to jump to US with rich experience. The Masters route although a typical one, is going to cost me a few years of uncertainty and a lot of money. There are other factors that affect your chance of getting into the US, such as the work visa. Maybe jumping career here in holland, getting the citizenship in the next 4 years and then taking a bigger risk to go to the US makes sense. In case things don’t work out, we can always come back to holland and continue what we were doing here once we have a citizenship.

The whole thing is quite fuzzy. I will collect more data and ideas of attempting migration and write another essay next week.