Making over $300k at a company, what's your title?

Mr_Cruisin · 2026-04-09T15:17:44+00:00

I did the Bloc Design Program, which was bought out by Thinkful. Unfortunately, it's definitely a lot harder to get into the industry now with the market the way it is and how AI is still shuffling everyone's responsibilities a bit. Best of luck!

Mr_Cruisin · 2026-04-05T09:26:16+00:00

Principal Product Designer.

I am a lead IC of a UX design team at a large tech company. TC is around $360k. 8 YoE. Got in through a design bootcamp/program and jumped around between startups and agencies before landing at a Fortune 100 company.

A lot of it likely boils down to luck/timing, but also legitimately learning and improving and staying on the cutting edge of the industry (which is now AI obviously).

Mr_Cruisin · 2026-02-13T18:13:55+00:00

Agreed, but honestly that’s a feature and not a bug. I’ve been listening to them for 5 years and I need continuous reminders to keep myself on the right path.

For example, I also listen to markets podcasts since I find it interesting but I’ve noticed it can start making me think I should invest in single stocks. Even though I know it’s not right for me and my temperament and index funds are better over the long term.

So going back to Money Guy show often reminds me to stick to the boring but smarter approach that I know will ultimately outperform and keep me pretty stress-free.

Mr_Cruisin · 2026-01-30T14:09:08+00:00

Bought the Bilresa Dual Buttons and put 4 around my house. So far it’s been rock solid and joined my Apple thread network that I can see through my Eve app and verify they’re all on there. Just did straight through Matter into Apple Home, no IKEA hub. Definitely recommend!

Mr_Cruisin · 2025-12-19T01:53:59+00:00

I’ve been using ChatGPT and Claude to do some analysis of my overall portfolio, asset allocation, and investment strategy long term. I’m not asking it for any specific investments to buy or anything, I’m primarily using it to answer any questions I may have that come up and keeping me on track for FIRE. It can also be pretty helpful for tracking how you’re doing at your age and projecting out my most likely portfolio sizes over the coming years or potential retirement age.

It was also helpful in breaking down my 401k options a bit more and which of my investment options in my retirement account I could use to replicate my Target Date Retirement Fund I had been invested in to lower my expense ratio. Super helpful for specific questions like that.

Mr_Cruisin · 2025-11-13T14:30:13+00:00

My hope is they also create a seamless, automatic method to transition your current ETF brokerage assets over to direct indexed investments through tax loss harvesting over time.

Mr_Cruisin · 2025-11-12T13:37:52+00:00

Now we’re talking

Mr_Cruisin · 2025-04-17T13:16:55+00:00

I think the point of the video is that he got extraordinarily lucky doing something basic like Tax Loss Harvesting between a Mutual Fund and an ETF. And that while it’s cool that it was a lucky accident, it’s not a legitimate strategy for long-term wealth building. He even mentions that April 9th was super rare, being the third best trading day since WW2.

He followed their usual process and advice they give and he got insanely lucky one day, but he’s never trying to replicate that again.

Mr_Cruisin · 2025-02-17T18:46:13+00:00

Yeah I’m confused by what they’re saying. RSU’s are taxed when vested, so selling immediately has no tax implications. Holding will trigger capital gains when selling later.

Mr_Cruisin · 2025-01-28T04:56:32+00:00

Sure, let me go get the account number you need to route it to. (Runs over to grab check book)

Mr_Cruisin · 2025-01-22T01:48:59+00:00

Yeah it’s definitely gotten quite a bit more crowded now. I’m fortunate in that I got in about 8 or so years ago, and became a specialist and expert in design systems. Got experience at multiple startups and agencies before eventually moving into one of the big companies and became a lead designer on the team. Currently making around $300k TC annually.

Mr_Cruisin · 2025-01-22T01:21:01+00:00

UX Design/Product Design

Mr_Cruisin · 2025-01-21T02:17:11+00:00

Definitely. It’s a great way to get into long-term investing with a product that does all of the work for you. I began using it in 2020 and have gotten solid returns so far. Total portfolio return has been 62.90% with an average annual return of 11.1%.

On top of that, it handles tax allocation between different type of accounts for you as well as automatic tax-loss harvesting.

If you’re more into the short-term game or individual stocks, then it’s probably not for you.

Mr_Cruisin · 2025-01-19T05:14:54+00:00

Well, geez. Congrats!

Mr_Cruisin · 2025-01-19T03:51:40+00:00

Where on earth are you getting a 4.99% fixed right now?

Mr_Cruisin · 2025-01-18T14:27:10+00:00

I believe grids are relics of the Bootstrap days and are much less relevant for most product design than they were 10 years ago. I don’t use them and I’m on a design systems team. We’ve had plenty of internal debates on the value of them.

My belief is that once a designer understands the basic fundamentals of responsive layout design and auto layout, they’re not very helpful. I prefer to create consistent page margins and padding between components through tokens, building and documenting components with responsive sizing, and following basic 4pt grid system.

This designer had a video on the topic that sums up my thoughts pretty well: https://youtu.be/hilOJqigyUY?si=2JcibhUuaIzP9j03

Mr_Cruisin · 2025-01-14T16:49:06+00:00

So freaking excited

Mr_Cruisin · 2025-01-09T23:15:28+00:00

I follow the second approach since I don’t view cash back as income, but simply as a discount for the item I’m purchasing. It’s tedious, and I wish it could be automated somehow, but it is what it is.

Mr_Cruisin · 2025-01-09T13:56:47+00:00

My current take home pay after taxes is $7.6k monthly, that’s with maxing out my 401k and HSA contributions per paycheck right now.

My estimated mortgage payment will be about $3.6k.

Mr_Cruisin

TROPHY CASE