Paradoxically, inflation has contributed to me taking a sabbatical. While I live in a LCOL area and made ~140k/year it just no longer felt worth it to work as I saw my retirement accounts start to match and exceed my salary in yearly gains. I do plan on going back to work in a part time manner, but inflation has killed any reason for me to work hard at a job for that level of salary. Furthermore, the feeling of "what's the point" around white collar work has never been more intense.
This actually makes 0 sense. Like, do you even understand what you're saying? The value of your savings is decreasing at a faster rate than ever before, so its a good time to stop saving and spend it?
The stock market increasing is not the same thing as inflation. What you're saying makes sense only if you are referring to stock market valuation... strictly retiring because inflation is high makes no sense.
> Like, do you even understand what you're saying?
That comment is unnecessary and has the effect of making people feel bad.
I think the rationale is that wages are stagnant in comparison to investments (stocks) and costs (inflation). So there's decreased incentive to focus on wages as a form of income, and more incentive to focus on investments.
I've definitely felt this personally, as my income shifts towards investments, my will to work for a wage has decreased. That shift has increased because I've accured more investments, but also because investments have grown kind of ridiculously compared to my wage.
> This actually makes 0 sense. Like, do you even understand what you're saying?
It makes perfect sense if the decision to work is based on real, after-tax income. Change the comment to say "the tax rate keeps climbing so I quit working" and it would not occur to anyone to challenge it.
Once you have enough saved to generate income covering the very basics (probably somewhere around $30k/year in a LCOL area in the US) it becomes a question of whether selling a 40-hour block of your time on a weekly basis is worth it. For this individual, it is not.
If you don't understand second-order effect that is. What happens when everyone stops working, either QoL falls or prices rise. Labor force rate is at 83.8% for prime age workers. (Most of the QoL add comes from immigrant labor while most of the QoL extraction comes from high tech. So this does complicate the math) The govenment then lacking revenue extracts more from prime age workers and raises the retirement age and early withdrawal penalties.
>The value of your savings is decreasing at a faster rate than ever before, so its a good time to stop saving and spend it?
Inflation does incentivize spending, yes. Would you rather have 100 kilos of rice today, or wait and have 99 kilos of rice tomorrow for the same price?
> Inflation does incentivize spending, yes.
All inflation incentivizes is finding an asset class that isn't devaluing. If that is what you mean by "spending" then we align. But does inflation incentivize spending money on depreciating assets? Only for fools.
??? "All" it incentivizes? Uh, no. The vast majority of people don't treat their salaries as an investment opportunity, they have to live off it. If you need to fix your water heater, you might get it fixed now while inflation is high than wait until winter (not a great example given the time scales involved, but it gets the point across). Even if you have nothing that you desperately need, if inflation is really high you might blow it on something frivolous because if you try saving it it won't be worth anything in one or two year's time.
Would you rather spend your savings before or after they become worthless?
Stock market returns will tend to exceed inflation. Salary may not. It's quite possible for inflation to make your salary shrink in real terms, making it no longer worth working if you can afford to retire.
I don't understand this point of view. $140k in a LCOL is a fantastic salary. Median US household income is $83k/yr.
It feels more likely your investment account gains are driving your decisions. Stock gains are also driven by inflation though!
I can sort of understand the feeling though, I just recently got a 2.5% raise for "inflation", which hardly feels like it's making a dent.
I don't think that OP meant to say their wage income was low.
I think OP means that once their investment returns starts exceeding their wage income, their motivation for continuing to work drops.
Which, I kinda get. If you don't really like what you're doing, it's harder to stay motivated at continuing to work when your bag of money makes more money than you do.
It sounds like OP is already planning on some amount of return to work, which may be necessary because that exact point (investment returns > wage income) isn't necessarily a safe point to retire. But it might be, depending on how much you spend, and what your not-employer-funded healthcare costs are.
Y"eah, the same reason we're going to have a trillionaire soon is why even if someones making a great salary, their 401k is inflating faster than they need to earn a living in a low cost of living area.
Absolutely absurd, but if you got the upswing between 2010-2020, you might be in an upper class while still living in lower class, meaning your 401k is all you need to survive on while the billionaires continue to pump the market as a defacto monetary instrument and leave the dollar for the poors.
Think of it like bitcoin, but instead of owning electronic worthless hashes, you own LLCs that own stocks and take out loans on behalf ot he LLC against those stocks.
Then you just trade those LLCs around as tokens of wealth.
Welcome to the great new oligarchy.
It's just yet another wealth transfer between classes. They can happen frequently and unpredictably, and usually but not always from workers to owners. If you happen to be in the class that benefits, you take the windfall.
Hacker news moment
I understand that salaries might have been stagnant and with wages not keeping with inflation it doesn't seem to make sense to continue working.
The stock market often aligns with inflation. After all if the companies growth is not beating inflation what exactly is the point really? But that also comes at the expense of not paying people their due worth and incrementing below inflation rate.
But past returns do not guarantee future results. Stock markets ebbs and flows. It will take a blip, not even a crash, to impact those retirement accounts.
IMO this is a risky idea especially if there are jobs available.
I feel the same. Investments are shooting up and wages stink.
UK has very high taxation now so working full time doesn’t bring in as much as a decent portfolio.
Are you assuming yearly wages not increasing to match/exceed inflation every year?
The logical point here doesn't make much sense to me otherwise.
My salary has not kept up with inflation over the last 15 years. The industry I am in, which is not related to tech, has undergone massive consolidation leading to 2-3% raises some years and no raises other years.
Cumulative inflation since 2019 has been 30%. More with these new numbers, I think.
What jobs have the wages gone up 30% in that same time period? I’m sure a few, but not many.
Hourly wage for all private sector workers is up +32% since Dec 2019 ($37.54 vs $28.38)[1]. For non-management workers +35% ($32.31 in May 2026 vs $23.85 in Dec 2019)[2].
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES0500000003
[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AHETPI
I'd say almost no one gets a 30%+ increase staying in the same company. There was a short period between 2019 and ~2022 when tech was hiring like crazy and you could just hop from job to job for huge increases every 6 months to a year.
The problem is that is now over, and so wages are back to being suppressed again.
In the tech industry? Absolutely they have not, and in fact have likely gone the other way.
Unless you're maybe one of the few specialists in deep learning, CUDA, etc.
There's been mass layoffs and downward pressure on compensation all over.
Also is having twice as much money (1x from interest and 1x from income) not a benefit?
Maybe you are the strawman consumer that skeptics point to in guaranteed basic income debates, who just stops working because they get a check.
The only thing I want to spend a bunch of extra money on is a nice property and making twice the money would not get me there in what I consider a reasonable amount of time. I'm also not interested in going on an extra two fancy vacations per year or a nicer car. I'm plenty content to read, cook, learn, and enjoy the arts.
You're still cutting your annual income in half though. That's pretty big no?
I have the same feelings as the original poster as I get further into middle age and have a good retirement nest egg - for me there are things more valuable - free time and the things I want to do with it but can't get paid to do - than making more income than I really need.
How much do you have saved?
I don't have a family, so it's manageable. If I had kids there is no way I could work part-time.
LCOL a good house might be 140k outright. Their costs are probably barely anything yearly against their returns.
The thing is at some point there is very little to gain. Once you have a nice place to live and don't need to sweat over daily expenses there isn't much that significantly improves life quality other than just having more time (that is working less) for yourself and your family.
Add high taxes to this and working is even less attractive when they take 50% from you. No wonder many highly qualified people decide to pass on that deal and just do the bare minimum which in OP case is nothing.
Equities rise and fall. Unless you fully cash out that stuff can materially drop and if you do materially cash out - it can inflate away.
Sorry to be a downer but there is no certainty on the future especially with the level of chaos being sown in the western world as a function of a few key people.
I would never, ever leave work regardless of the pay.
Regardless of your skill and reputation, time off can quickly put you below the bar for even getting a call-back, and you lose access to relevant lessons.
You'll be shocked at how irrelevant you become, and how quickly the retirement accounts will give up the gains of the last 3 years (particularly when this 2026 IPO summer terminates US equity markets).
The feeling of "What's the point" might have little to do with work, and more to do with (finally) losing faith in ambition. If so, don't worry: the best comes after we put aside dreams.