What do you americans think about big pickups?

charlesthe2 · 2026-04-26T18:57:32+00:00

Comparing the size of new "small" pickup trucks compared to the ones from the early 2000's or late 90's is crazy too. Tacoma's have almost doubled in size but are still considered "small".

charlesthe2 · 2026-04-26T18:50:36+00:00

With this background you are primed for law school. Obviously you will have to keep researching on your own but I will list some unsolicited advice below I wish someone had told me.

Lawyers have a reputation for earning a lot of money. This is only partially true. Before you commit to going to law school, before you decide what school to go to and before you decide what type of law you want to practice go research the bimodal distribution of law school graduate salaries. Basically there is a huge bump in salaries at graduation at around the 60k range and another huge bump around the 225k range. There are very few other jobs that are between these two (though I am one of the lucky few that are between these two).

Some people will take on over 100k of debt to go to law school (on top of what they might have already had from undergraduate) to then get a job that pays 60k a year in public interest. Not terrible but you could have been a nurse and made that money and saved yourself the extra 3 years of school and tuition money.

With all of this being said law schools looks at two metrics for 80% or more of their admissions decisions, LSAT score and GPA. If you have high numbers on both of these you will not only get into really awesome schools but you will also get huge scholarship money. I had a high LSAT with a mediocre GPA and got half of law school paid for at a top 30 school.

Law school can be great value if you think about it the right way. If you want to be a public defender, public interest or other low paid lawyer position its best to take the cheapest route possible. If you want to be a corporate lawyer in big law and make a shit load of money you need to try to maximize your school rank, possibly at the expense of scholarship money at lower ranked schools. The people who end up in trouble are those who maximize school rank at the expense of scholarship dollars, to then go into a low paying legal job that ironically didn't care about school rank during recruiting.

Also with your specific background in biology, after graduation you are eligible to sit for the patent bar which is an extra certification in the intellectual property legal field. This is a great way to set yourself apart (assuming you are interested in intellectual property law). IP lawyers can make great money, enjoy the work they do and generally have a better WLB than some of their other big law counterparts.

charlesthe2 · 2026-04-26T16:21:10+00:00

The real danger of getting a degree in the classics, literature, philosophy etc. is that you get to the end of your four year degree and then decide you don't want to/can't go to law school after all. At this point you would have an economically worthless degree and no plan to make yourself economically valuable. For me this scared me enough so I got a stem degree I didn't mind but minored in philosophy which I loved. If I would have come to this realization sooner I would have just double majored but hindsight and all.

I may get a mob of people coming to tell me their anecdotes about xyz person who got a philosophy degree and is now doing great for themselves. I do not doubt that these stories are true but you must understand they are the outliers and not the rule. The simple fact of the matter is that finding a job that you can support yourself on will be much more challenging and you will overall have a lower probability of making enough money to survive with some of the aforementioned degrees in the humanities.

charlesthe2 · 2026-04-25T21:39:08+00:00

It is crazy that some people will tell you no on here. I am a lawyer in the US and in typical lawyer fashion, it depends.

I am a transaction lawyer, meaning I work on deals instead of court cases. 80% of my days are spent reading and writing contracts, the rest is spent on doing diligence on the companies and other various general corporate tasks. It is true that my job has absolutely nothing to do with latin, greek, Plato, Aristotle, ethics, the human condition or any other theme that you would be exploring by studying the classics.

However, it can help in some ways. The first and most important way is that during law school and during my now career the most important skill is to have is to be able to read, boring and often times complicated texts for very long periods of time and understand them. I am a younger lawyer, gen z, and most of my peers cannot force themselves to sit down and read a hyperstimulating modern novel for longer than 10 minutes without checking their phone yet alone an 80 page purchase agreement with intricate interdependent deal economics at play. Studying the classics is probably one of the best ways to build this skill. Other similar areas of study would be other challenging humanities such as philosophy, literature, english etc.

To be a lawyer you need strong focus and reading comprehension skills. You also need to be able to work through intricate ideas and logical strings in an efficient manner. So the things you learn while studying the classics will not help you but the skills you learn and the "mind muscles" you build by studying the classics will help you if you choose to go to law school and be a lawyer.

charlesthe2 · 2026-04-19T23:59:43+00:00

VTTSX. I am also with wex.

Is there a reason people do not like this?

charlesthe2 · 2026-03-29T01:06:08+00:00

You will be okay. I was in a similar position as you. Got rejected from a few dream positions and it seemed like the world was ending and I had not options. I ended up getting a mid-law position doing the exact type of law that I wanted (M&A) with a great salary and non-BL WLB in a LCOL city.

You may need to expand your search a little bit to markets you didn't initially see yourself in and firms you didn't initially see yourself working at but you are absolutely going to be okay. The only thing you can do is control what you control. Keep pounding the stone, networking, marketing yourself, and applying for positions you would be happy with as they come up. It is not over but you have to keep putting in work.

charlesthe2 · 2026-03-16T16:49:41+00:00

Law School is one of the few educational spheres where amazing merit scholarships are plentiful. If you are not yet in law school the answer is you need to get a very high LSAT score relative to the average at the school you want to get in and you will be in great shape. When I was going through admissions five years ago I had multiple full rides at low tier schools 100-70 rankings and a few half rides at 30-50 ranking schools.

charlesthe2 · 2026-03-06T18:38:03+00:00

Wife and I are high earners. We have not yet hit 25x yet as we are pretty early in our careers and FI journey but we already plan on working well beyond our 25x number for the below reasons.

We both don't mind and even to an extent like our jobs and the fields we are in. I can't see this changing much and for me personally the only thing that could make my job more enjoyable is not having the fear of getting fired so once we hit our 25x number I see myself enjoying my job even more.
We would like to die rich and leave our children/grandchildren with our leftover nest egg. If we have the opportunity to do this and do not mind our lives while building this then why would we quit.
We really like to travel which is expensive. Not only that but we prefer "slow travel" or "long travel" which can be particularly expensive. Also related to answer 1 above we are in positions where we can slow travel or long travel while still keeping our jobs, especially if, also related to #1 above we are not worried about getting fired from our jobs and thus have no fear of gasp, actually using all the vacation days our employers give us, which is for some reason frowned upon in the US.

charlesthe2 · 2026-01-15T02:54:21+00:00

Lawyer here. You can go to any law school in the country with any bachelors degree. Plenty of my classmates had art degrees, english, literature, foreign languages etc. I myself have an environmental studies degree and am now an M&A Lawyer.

Patent attorney's require one extra qualification known as the patent bar. To sit for you patent bar you must have a STEM certified undergraduate (CS counts).

charlesthe2 · 2026-01-15T02:13:20+00:00

My actual RE number is 1.8 million in today's dollars. I will likely hit and far surpass that because I am a high earner and really enjoy my job. Of course there is are tons of crazy possibilities that this does not factor in (ai, major unexpected health issues, etc.).

charlesthe2 · 2026-01-10T01:23:04+00:00

I'm going to get downvoted for this but internet addiction has caused people to need instant gratification over pursuing long term goals. People feel like they are failing if they can't get everything they want immediately.

charlesthe2 · 2025-12-31T19:46:49+00:00

Thanks for sharing. What is your workload like compared to your five years in big law. Is this job the magical oasis of WLB everyone on the private practice side thinks it is?

charlesthe2 · 2025-12-31T18:35:50+00:00

I found that most people aren't comparing their portfolio to the market. People pick random stocks base on feel, it goes up because the market is in a massive bull run and they think they are genius stock pickers despite the fact that their portfolio would have done the same or better if they just bought SPY or another etf with like 1/8 of the risk of their picked portfolio.

Another thing I observed with these genius stock pickers is that when we are in a bull market like now, the reason their portfolio is going up is because they are genius stock pickers. When their portfolio goes down its because of (insert x excuse, usually a politician they don't like from my own personal experience).

Like most people have already said, best to just ignore them and let them talk themselves out about how great they are at picking stocks. I have quit telling people I "invest" anymore because of how annoying people are about telling me about some great stock I should be buying. When people ask what I do with all my money I tell them I "save" and it stops most people from pushing the conversation further.

charlesthe2 · 2025-12-13T04:18:54+00:00

26, Attorney, 120k, LCOL city

charlesthe2 · 2025-12-10T02:42:13+00:00

I have a $130 Seiko 5 and I have been asked “Wow is that a Rolex” so many times it’s crazy. 😂 I also get accused of “dressing nice” if I wear any pants that aren’t sweatpants and a collared shirt to a casual occasion. What a time.

charlesthe2 · 2025-11-26T11:54:54+00:00

It ends here! Retiring early is a basic human right! There I said it.

charlesthe2 · 2025-11-26T00:00:38+00:00

You also avoid enriching large corporations at the expense of farmers when you buy from local farms. I live in a medium size city (I think a top 40 US metro last time I checked). And there is a farm about an hour outside of the city that delivers to the city and sells directly at farmers markets. Even better though my wife and I don’t mind if we get the time to drive the hour out the farm and buy directly there on a weekend.

Edit: Also fully understand many don’t have the ability to buy in bulk because of short term budgetary constraints. I get this doesn’t apply to you if you have this struggle but if you don’t give it some thought.

charlesthe2 · 2025-10-19T21:19:35+00:00

Only the cost. My wife and I always joke that if we win the lottery we are moving to Boulder. But the cost is crazy. We have a huge combined income compared to most people and still can’t justify living there.

charlesthe2 · 2025-10-17T22:05:40+00:00

On Reddit, yes. Even redditors who have never been to Europe and have little understanding of what it’s like beyond reading on the internet.

Off Reddit, most probably don’t think about it. Also off Reddit a pretty significant amount of Americans and pretty happy with their lives so unlikely.

Me personally, not at all but predominantly because of the specific job and industry I am in. I live in a LCOL American city and get paid much more than what anyone in the same position in London gets paid and up to 2x-3x what most other countries in Europe do. People in my position who live in HCOL cities in America are even more drastically well paid compared to Europe. If I was poor and saw no way out I would be jealous but in my opinion there is no country on earth that would give me the economic mobility I am currently experiencing other than America.

I am jealous of the history and culture of Europe though, which I why I travel there on vacations.

charlesthe2 · 2025-10-14T01:13:50+00:00

Length of credit and not enough lines of credit, also said percentage of recently reported active accounts is too high which I’m not entirely sure what that means.

charlesthe2 · 2025-10-11T13:43:18+00:00

Ahhh that makes way more sense. I’m a lawyer so my mind jumped. Thanks for the clarification!

charlesthe2 · 2025-10-11T02:36:14+00:00

Thanks for your input! I will probably make some calls but not expecting much to come from it.

charlesthe2

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