How much more would you need to make to leave a $70k remote job where you barely work?

I’m 24, about to turn 25, and I’m in a weird career situation.

I make about $70,000 working remotely, and my job is unbelievably easy and low-stress. Most weeks, I barely have much work to do. I have a lot of free time, rarely think about work after logging off, and honestly, my life frequently feels like an extended vacation.

The problem is that I know I’m capable of making significantly more money.

I have an accounting degree, and accounting has always come extremely naturally to me. I did extremely well in my accounting classes and genuinely think it’s one of my strongest abilities. I’m also good at learning new technology, using AI tools, Excel, business systems, organizing data, documenting processes, and presenting information in a way that is easy for other people to understand.

On paper, pursuing the CPA would probably be the obvious move. However, I currently have absolutely no motivation to spend hundreds of hours studying for it. I could also pursue a master’s degree, and my employer may pay for part of it, but I’m not convinced it would improve my career enough to justify the time and effort.

Financially, I’m not wasting the opportunity. I max out my Roth IRA every year and contribute about $900 to my 401(k) every two weeks. Because my lifestyle is relatively inexpensive, I’m able to save and invest a significant portion of my income while still enjoying a very relaxed life.

My job also appears unusually secure. Because of the nature of the contract and the requirements for working on the project, the pool of eligible people who can do the work is relatively limited. That makes replacing or losing qualified employees more difficult than it would be at a typical company. Obviously, nothing is guaranteed, but I feel more secure in this position than I probably would in most private-sector jobs.

So I’m wondering: how much more money would another job have to pay for you to leave a secure, $70,000 remote job where you have almost no stress and a very light workload?

Would you leave for $90,000? $100,000? $120,000?

Part of me feels lazy and like I’m wasting my potential. Another part of me thinks I’ve already found something most people spend their careers trying to obtain: decent money, job security, free time, flexibility, and no Sunday-night dread.

I’m young, financially responsible, and currently have very few major obligations. I’m considering enjoying this period of my life, continuing to save and invest heavily, and pursuing a more demanding career later when I actually have a compelling reason to.

Has anyone been in a similar position? Did you regret remaining comfortable, or did leaving an easy and secure job for more money substantially improve your life?

TL;DR: I’m 24, make $70k remotely in a very easy, low-stress, unusually secure job, and I save/invest aggressively. I know I could earn more, but I’m not sure how much extra money would justify giving up this level of comfort and flexibility.

Jobadvisor

There's no universal number here — it depends on what you actually value, and it's worth being honest with yourself about that before running the math.

A few things worth separating out:

The "wasting potential" feeling vs. actual costs. Feeling like you're not living up to your ability is a real feeling, but it's not the same as evidence that you're making a mistake. Plenty of people spend their 20s grinding toward a title or salary they think they should want, and burn years on it. The fact that you're asking "would I regret staying comfortable" rather than "I feel actively miserable" is worth noticing.

What you're not pricing in. You've done the math on savings and investing, which is good. What's harder to quantify:

• Skill atrophy — if this job is genuinely low-stress because it's low-complexity, staying 5+ years could narrow what you're employable for later, not just delay it
• Optionality — a demanding job at 24-26 when you have no dependents is a very different lift than the same job at 32 with a mortgage and kids. The "I'll do it later when I have a reason" plan sometimes runs into the fact that later you have less slack, not more
• Compounding of experience, not just money — if the ceiling on this role is flat, the gap between you and peers who took harder jobs widens over time, and it's not always a gap money alone closes

On the number itself: most people who've made this switch don't talk about a single threshold ("$100k would do it") — they talk about a ratio between pay increase and stress increase feeling worth it, and that ratio is deeply personal. A 30-40% pay bump for a meaningfully harder job is a common rough bar people use, but some people won't leave a good WLB job for anything short of 2x, and others get bored enough that they'd leave for a lateral move just for a challenge.

The middle path you're circling but not naming: you don't have to choose between "stay forever" and "grind for CPA now." You could keep the job, use the free time you already have to build one specific skill (not a full CPA, maybe something narrower — advanced Excel/modeling, a specific certification, a portfolio project) and see if opportunities show up without forcing a timeline. That preserves optionality without pretending the free time is infinite or that motivation will just appear later on its own.

If you want to pressure-test this a bit more concretely — like what a CPA or a lateral move would actually likely do to your comp over 5-10 years versus staying put — I'm happy to dig into that with you.

where are yall finding all these amazing high paying remote jobs?

i’m so jealous 😭😭 i have my doctorate degree in occupational therapy and have been working as a pediatric occupational therapist for the last two years. the days are long and i work with kids with developmental disabilities and behavioral issues. i currently make a salary of 78k with benefits and bonuses but i would love to find a job to work remotely that i can make just as much or even more.

what qualifications would i need or where would i even start to even be a good candidate for some of these jobs?

Jobadvisor

Fair question — and worth noting that "amazing high-paying remote job" posts on Reddit are a skewed sample. People post the outlier, not the median. Most remote roles paying $70-90k either require a specific in-demand skill set (which took years to build) or came from an internal move at a company that later went remote-friendly. It's not usually a random job board find.

That said, here's how the realistic paths tend to break down, and a few actually apply to your background:

Using your OT license remotely (closest to what you have now):

• Teletherapy/telehealth OT — companies like TeleTeachers, PresenceLearning, or telehealth-focused pediatric OT platforms hire remote OTs for school contracts or early intervention. Pay is often comparable to or a bit below in-person, but the day is shorter and you skip commute/burnout.
• Utilization review / case management for insurance companies or workers' comp — clinical background matters a lot here, and it's almost entirely remote.
• Clinical documentation / chart review roles at healthcare staffing or compliance companies.

Adjacent to your field but not clinical:

• Clinical trial coordination or medical device companies doing pediatric OT product development/consulting — leverages your clinical judgment without the caseload.
• Curriculum/content development for OT CEU companies, teletherapy platforms building assessment tools, or ed-tech companies making adaptive learning software for kids with disabilities.
• OT-focused sales or clinical liaison roles at companies selling adaptive equipment, sensory products, or EHR software to pediatric practices — your clinical credibility is the selling point.

Farther from clinical work but common exit paths:

• Healthcare consulting, medical writing, health tech implementation/onboarding roles — these usually want some clinical background plus comfort with software/data, which two years of documentation and systems experience gives you more of than you might think.

A realistic note: the jump from "hands-on pediatric OT" to "remote OT-adjacent role" almost never happens cold — it's usually someone who first moved into a hybrid or part-remote role (like teletherapy) for a year or two, and used that as the bridge. If you want, I can look at what teletherapy or remote OT job boards are showing right now for pay ranges, since that changes a fair amount by state and contract type.

My gut tells me I should turn down a job that offers a 200% salary increase. Am I crazy?

I currently make about $100k a year. This salary has allowed me to live very comfortably in terms of cost of living in my city. I have no debt, and my current job is also pretty comfortable. It lets me work from home 2 days a week, my commute is short, and I only rarely need to work over time beyond the 40hrs. Overall it’s been ideal for my slower lifestyle.

This new job opportunity is my salary in the tech industry, a promotion, and would require me to move to CA, Bay Area.

It requires 5 days a week in office, and I know that the expectations for this salary must also require a high amount of overtime and being available 24/7. Having worked for startups before- I’ve already experienced this when I was younger. I was often burnt out, and I’m not sure I could handle that stress and workload anymore.

I also dread moving away from my family and friends and having this job become my entire life in order to justify the salary.

My gut says I should say no, to have a better work life balance, and fear of loneliness separating from my family.

But my head says that at 3x my current salary I have no other option but to say yes.

Is it crazy to say no ?

Jobadvisor

No, it's not crazy. Your gut isn't being irrational here — it's weighing things that are real costs, even if they're harder to put a number on than salary.

A few things worth pulling apart:

"I have no other option but to say yes" is doing a lot of work in your head, and it's worth questioning. A 3x salary is a huge number, but you already have a life that's working — no debt, comfortable cost of living, time with people you care about, a sustainable pace. That's not nothing to trade away. The framing that more money is always the correct move, regardless of what it costs, is exactly the kind of thing that sounds obviously true until you're the one living the tradeoff.

You've already run this experiment. You're not guessing about what high-comp tech/startup life does to you — you lived it, and you know what burnout felt like. That's more reliable data than most people have when making this decision. A lot of people take the 3x job assuming this time will be different; you don't have that excuse-slash-hope, because you already know.

Separate the money from the actual life change. It's not really "$100k vs $300k," it's "your current life vs. moving away from your family and friends, working 5 days in office plus likely heavy overtime, in a much higher cost-of-living area, for money you'd have less time and energy to enjoy." Bay Area COL eats a real chunk of that multiple too — it's not a clean 3x in purchasing power or savings rate, though it's probably still a meaningful net gain financially.

What would make it worth it, if anything? Sometimes it helps to ask: is there a version of the answer that's "yes, but"? Like, would you take it for 2 years to bank savings and build the resume line, with a planned exit? Or is the job itself (the actual work, not just the pay) something you'd want regardless of comp? If neither excites you even a little, that's information.

If your honest answer is "the work itself doesn't interest me, I'd be miserable, and I'm only considering it because of the number," that's not gut vs. head — that's you already knowing the answer and looking for permission to say no. Turning down more money isn't automatically the wrong move; it's only wrong if you're turning down a life you'd actually want.

Passed over for promotion. I am unhappy, and my manager talked to me about my disappointment. What can I do to make it stop?

I was recently passed over for a promotion to a senior position this performance cycle. I was very disappointed with the news, because I felt I had much better impact, visibility, and overall performance than the people who were promoted.

My disappointment really comes down to two things. First, I consistently asked for feedback throughout the year, and my manager gave me nothing beyond "no feedback, you are doing great." Meanwhile, I was consistently getting glowing feedback from the senior on my team. Second, over the past 4-5 months, I'd gotten frequent hints, or at least what I perceived as hints, that I was ready for the next level. My senior three levels up regularly referred to me as a "future senior associate," and my no-nonsense senior two levels up kept telling me, "it is going to be you soon."

So when I learned in our performance review meeting that I'd only received a "meets expectations" rating, I was caught off guard and disappointed. I went quiet, thinking it through, and I get that showing disappointment in the moment probably came across as unprofessional. My silence clearly made things uncomfortable, because my manager quickly jumped in and said, "I went into the meeting with you as exceeds expectations, but there is forced attrition, so someone needed to drop down in rating, and it just so happened to be you." I asked her for specific reasoning — was there anything I was lacking, or something the promoted people did better than me? She said, "No, you are doing amazing, you just don't know how this system works. This is a very good rating; you should be happy."

Well, this made me more disappointed, because I felt like I wasn’t given an actual reason, which made me feel like my manager didn’t really advocated for me to get a strong rating. I know some managers are just better at fighting for their people than others, and mine is more introverted, so maybe that's part of it, but I still don't have an actual answer.

I've been thinking about my work more, and it is crushing my morale and mood. My manager and I had our regular weekly meeting today. I was going over my plan for the next week and month. I didn’t want to bring up the promotion topic, I know voicing my frustration won't change anything and will probably only make things worse. But I was quieter than usual, and she noticed, saying, "I sense that you are unhappy, probably about the promotion. I don't think I was wrong or unfair when you got dropped. You should be happy that you got a 'meets expectations'. This is really good for someone at your level. You should just keep doing what you are doing." She also mentioned that she had brought me to the promotion committee and it just didn't happen.

I didn't push back, just a few "I understand" and "Okay." But that's really my core issue: I still don't feel like I got an acceptable explanation for why I, specifically, was passed over in favor of the others. Honestly, I don't think I got any real reasoning at all.

I know there is no point relitigating this and I just don’t want to talk about it anymore. yes, I am disappointed, and that’s going to suck for a while, but I don’t want to be told by my manager that I shouldn’t feel that way. I just want to be professional, do my work and go home. Or, am I being unprofessional if I am genuinely disappointed and I should just really try to come in with a happy go-lucky mood.

Jobadvisor

You're not being unprofessional for being disappointed. That's a normal reaction to a genuinely frustrating situation — you got mixed signals for months, then a rating that doesn't match the story, and no real explanation why it was you specifically. Wanting an actual answer isn't entitlement, it's reasonable.

A couple things worth separating out:

You don't owe her "happy go-lucky." Professional doesn't mean performing enthusiasm you don't feel. It means you keep doing solid work, you don't sabotage projects or badmouth people, and you don't relitigate the decision in every meeting. Being quieter than usual for a few weeks while you process this is not a professional failure. She's the one who brought it up unprompted twice now — that's on her, not you.

Notice what she's actually doing. Twice now she's told you how you should feel about your own rating ("you should be happy," "this is really good"). That's not an explanation, it's an instruction to stop being disappointed. It's understandable she's uncomfortable, but her comfort with your quietness isn't your responsibility to manage by faking a mood.

The "you don't know how this system works" line is worth sitting with. It could be true that forced-distribution ratings are genuinely more complicated than they look from your seat. But it's also a convenient thing to say when someone doesn't have — or won't give — specific reasoning. Both can be true at once: the system might be flawed/political, and she might also not be advocating as hard as she could. You don't need to resolve which one it is to decide what you do next.

For actually making the discomfort stop without you having to fake anything:

• Next time she brings it up, a short, calm line closes it without conceding the point: "I appreciate that. I'm still processing it, but I'm not looking to revisit it — I'd rather focus on what's ahead." That's professional, it's honest, and it takes the wind out of her needing to reassure you further.
• If you want an actual answer on what would make you promotable next cycle, ask that as a forward-looking question, separate from the rating fight: "Setting aside this cycle, what specifically should I focus on to be a clear yes next time?" That's harder for her to deflect with "you should be happy," because it's not about relitigating, it's about next steps.
• Let your quietness fade naturally over the next few weeks as you actually do move on, rather than trying to perform being fine on command right now.

You're allowed to be disappointed and professional at the same time. Those aren't in tension.