u/cheesyboba

99 Scott Main Room, 8/14 Today

Hi folks,

Thanks for letting me post here. NW is currently 145K.

I (28F) have recently hit a very "full-circle" era of my life, in terms of reflecting back onto the choices I made in my 20s leading to now. On one hand, I have gotten extremely lucky in some ways, and the other, I made stupid decisions that essentially (if all was well) could have resulted in me being in a much stronger shape to FIRE by my mid to late 30s.

I'm a pandemic grad, and at 23 I was able to secure a job offer at Amazon in e-commerce. I was preparing to take it despite heavily disliking my first job in the same field (IT troubleshooting, merchandising, etc), when my former internship team reached out with an offer to return to media research. I enjoyed media research much more, even tho the pay difference was already 20K at the time. I was very, very reckless. I remember my brother calling it and telling me I was going to regret it "in 5 years". Well, here we go.

I was on that team for about 1.5 years when I decided to go on a travel break for about 8 months at 25 (fully self funded) and when I returned back to the States I was able to transition right back to media analysis at one of the biggest titles in the field. I know I got very lucky, but right now I'm upwards of 30%+ underpaid. I don't regret the travel break however, but it has been hard for me to not compulsively compare myself with my college peers who all appear to make 200K+, when alot of that I know is confirmation bias. I've even gone on the AI chats to constantly read about how if I took that Amazon offer, I would be making 200K right now. But what is even the point of doing those comparisons?

There have been other changes in my life, too. I recently ended my relationship of 9 years, largely spurred by an unclear end to career-related long distance. He is a SWE now making 300K, and while we have completely different career tracks, I further feel the mounting pressure of feeling very behind.

At the same time, most of my family is still very poor. I compare my current situation to them and realize that in some ways, I am certainly ahead financially as well. But did I throw out further potential? Did I sabotage my own life? Is there a richer, healthier, happier version of me in some parallel universe?

Thanks for reading.