yes. you can’t afford private in Manhattan at 500k/yr. whether public is excellent or not. I am sure we saw the nyt article the other day about her school choices in the city.
you can’t be employed somewhere else if you are on garden leave. you could go to school I think.
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Sadly having a drug problem and potentially stealing said drugs (not an uncommon occurrence in healthcare) will cause you to lose your medical license and ability to work in healthcare.
Not a stretch to say that is different than being outsourced.
Not picking on your post, pointing out that losing your license to do your job is hard to come back from.
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Correct
Garden leaves are fairly standard on Wall Street (for senior leadership positions). I’m not familiar with how they work in other industries.
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Though a household with $500k wage/salary income in California still ends up with $335k or so after income and payroll taxes, which leaves them with more money than someone with $100k or $200k income (that they have to pay income and payroll taxes on).
pretty sure his clause said if you take a certain type of job they will limit payment to 30% of base or some fraction rather than the full base or something similar. so i naturally thought there are many situations you can get paid from both places
if you declare that you are going into some other industry, they will/may let you go without enforcing non compete. But then they won’t pay you. This is different than garden leave at a bank based on title, which is enforced regardless of where you claim you are going.
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This was not the experience anyone I knew had at the elementary level, but that was some time ago. It seemed that everyone 's affordable housing was not in a zone with good schools. Has this changed?
Certainly many were delighted when Stuy and Science became options, but that was after shelling out for K-8.
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Assuming the numbers stated are household income, there is a difference in the money available after taxes, etc. if the money is from one income or two. For example: assuming a $250k household income from one salary vs from 2 salaries. In the first instance, there is less social security paid and no childcare costs ( assuming a married couple). Also the person not earning money could decide to take a job. Likewise single person making $250k would pay more in taxes than a married couple. Etc.
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I used Federal Income Tax Calculator (2025-2026) . For $500k in California, it estimates $337k after income and payroll taxes for married filing jointly and $296k for single.
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ok. So the difference is filing single vs filing joint
just to close loop - asked S22 to check - in this instance they pay the $ if they enforce non compete and pay a reduced x% if you take up a job at a non-competing entity like an AI lab or big tech. I am pretty there are a million different versions of this depending on firm and role.
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Yes. At least a good percentage of people, as hourly union workers with these positions available to anyone based purely upon seniority.
But if you lose this job, you start out at the bottom elsewhere (if you’re lucky) and may never get a job in the industry elsewhere. People absolutely worry about their financial security since the industry is cyclical and fickle, the job sometimes tenuous. One day you’re at your dream job and the next week you’re unemployed with no prospects. When that happened to us with two little kids and almost no money saved (we were at the bottom of the income scale at that time), we were not worried about being homeless, because we had the option of moving in with my parents. If you knew my parents, you might consider homelessness as the better option. 
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It’s $500k household income, not $500k individual income. There are also plenty of $500k income households with 2 adults working standard 9-5 type jobs. This is particularly common in tech, sometimes substantially less than 40 hours per week, if working remotely. The reason for higher earnings often more relates to providing a service or skill with high market value rather than working a larger number of hours (earnings per hour vs number of hours).
However, none of this has much to do with the referenced GS survey and thread. The thread is about portion of households living “paycheck to paycheck” not whether the higher earning households are deserving of their earnings.
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I am on a garden leave now. My status is I am still an employee of the company. It’s just I don’t have go in the office or do any work, and I can’t work for another company during this period. After garden leave, I will get a severance based on number of years I have worked. At that point I can go to any company (including competitors) to work. Non compete of not able to work at a similar industry doesn’t usually hold up because we all have the right to earn a living, unless they are paying you for that time and severance doesn’t count. The only non compete I’ve had to adhere to is not to go after anyone from the old company for X years, but if an employee should approach you it would be ok.
I have gone through this a few times. I have usually able to get another job quickly and able to pocket the severance. But this is the last time I will do this. 
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It’s a survey, not a study. A key asset not mentioned is after tax investments. If you have $1M in after tax investments that can be sold if/when you need cash, then you may not be big on storing hundreds of thousands in a relatively low yield bank account to have a traditional x months of expenses “emergency fund”. That cash can be better utilized elsewhere. This may fall in to the living paycheck to paycheck selection on the survey, but that does not mean they will be in a bad financial situation if they miss a few paychecks.
Of course there are also high income persons that spend money as fast or faster than they make it and have little savings or investments. However, they seem to be in the minority. Stats on financial assets (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, cash …) by income percentile are below, according to SCF survey.
- $700k+ Household Income – Median = $5 million in non-retirement financial assets
- $350k to $700k Household Income – Median = $1.5 million in non-retirement financial assets
- $260k to $350k Household Income – Median = $500k in non-retirement financial assets
Enforceability of employee non-compete agreements varies by state in the US, according to State Noncompete Law Tracker - Economic Innovation Group .
This is not really a non-compete – it is more like a non-recruit agreement.
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No, it’s under non-compete in all of my employment agreements.
My sister was a general council for a large company. I live in one of those “Other restrictions” states. Her advice to me was not to worry about it because it’s hard to enforce.
To be accurate, this thread is about portions of households who “struggle to save and find it difficult to make any progress on long-term financial goals.” That’s different from truly living paycheck-to-paycheck, in the sense that they’d starve or become homeless if they missed a couple of paychecks.
It’s a misleadingly named survey and report, perhaps by design to increase clicks (or to get lots of people all riled up like in this thread 
).
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