Overspending with high income
Might get lots of mockery and hate for this but I’m genuinely a little lost.
So I’m from an immigration family, family is doing ok but didn’t provide me that much once I started college so I mostly rely on scholarships and worked part time. Fortunate enough to not have a student loan, but during college I didn’t have a car, never took vacation out of state, had the same wardrobe all four years and just didn’t spend money outside of necessity. I always envy my richer classmates who get to travel and have cool stories. I was also fat AF and didn’t have that many friends.
Now thanks to my education + the AI boom + pure luck, I landed in a 7 figure job after graduation last year. And thanks to GLP-1 I look much better now and feel more confident. I live in VHCOL and my 7 figure includes deferred equity but still it is insanely high for me. I’ve never seen this many zeros.
Issue is, I’m overspending like crazy. For 1st year of work I bought 10k chairs and 20k watch and got my first car and I blew my base salary and had 50k credit card debt at end of year. I used my bonus at end of year to pay that debt, then bought some other things, and saved 100k. I put all that into SPY+QQQ and tried to avoid touching them. I did max my 401k and backdoor Roth. I let myself do what I want. I thought I finally “made it” and I let myself enjoy the fruit of my work.
This year I read The Psychology of Money and I’ll Teach You to Be Rich and I follow personal finance blogs. I thought I was smarter, less obsessed with material goods and spent more on experiences and comfort. It did not shrink my spending at all. World Cup final tickets and yacht parties and international business flights added up to be just as much. My income grew but again I spent all my bases and had 50k debt. It’s exactly the same as last year. I thought it will be a temporary phase last year but now Im scared this will be my baseline going forward.
My job is not a secure one you can expect to last 10 years. I could lose it at any time, and despite 7 figure income on paper, at worst times I didn’t have 500 cash. If I don’t figure things out soon, I might miss this once in a lifetime opportunity to accumulate real wealth.
But at the same time when the next thing comes like the ski in ski out resort in aspen I can’t get myself to say no to that. I feel a little deprived in the past and I don’t like to say no to good vibes and new experiences and adventures because I feel I’ve been saying no to lots of things now is the time to say yes.
I want to accumulate actual wealth, I want my sudden lucky income to work long term for me or at least give me more safety net, but I also can’t get out of the spending. I don’t know what to do if reading finance books didn’t help. Maybe I should find a therapist? Genuinely frustrated.
Edit: thank you for all the comments. This is so much more helpful than what I expected and I genuinely appreciate it.
Edit: just for clarity the base is a bit above 300k and bonus+equity ~800k. Last year the cash part of the bonus was 200-250k after tax. This year I expect bonus to be more but won’t know for sure until later.