Salary Comparison in Your 40s: How Index Fund Investing Cured My Promotion Envy

My Peer Got Promoted to Director, and Nothing Happened to Me

A former peer of mine got promoted to director.

I saw the name on a company-wide personnel announcement email and thought, “Oh wow, really?” Part of me genuinely wanted to say congratulations. Another part felt a small, sharp sting. Both existed at the same time.

Once you hit your 40s, this kind of news becomes a regular occurrence. Peers climb the ladder. Someone transferred from the parent company sits at the desk next to yours, clearly earning more than you. Even though you’re doing similar work, they’re on a different pay scale because of where they came from. You can just feel these things in the air.

Other people’s salaries — honestly, there was a period when I was obsessed with comparing.

In your 20s, you don’t care because “there’s still time.” In your 30s, you think “I can still catch up.” But in your 40s, the gaps start to solidify. OECD data on average wages confirms that Japan’s salary growth has been essentially flat for decades — which means the promotion ladder is one of the few ways to get a real raise. Titles, salaries — you start to vaguely realize that reversing the difference might not be possible anymore.

That “vaguely” is what quietly eats at you.

When I Broke Down “Envy,” There Was Nothing Inside

But there’s one thing I’ve realized over the past few years.

I look at my peer who’s now a director and feel “envious.” But when I actually break down what I’m envious of, it turns out it’s only the salary part. Not a single thing beyond the money makes me jealous.

Because honestly, their daily lives look exhausting. Higher title means more meetings. Time gets eaten up by managing subordinates. Upper management pressures them for numbers. Their own actual work gets pushed to late evenings. Most of all, the working hours are completely different. Compared to me, I think they’re putting in 30 to 40 extra hours of overtime per month.

Annualized, that’s roughly 400 hours. About 20 extra full days spent at the office.

So what am I doing with those 20 days? Eating dinner with my daughter, splitting housework with my wife, and occasionally watching Netflix alone with a beer. At 9 PM when they’re still making presentations at the office, I’m helping my daughter with her homework.

If someone told me to swap places, I couldn’t. And I wouldn’t want to.

When I realized that, about half of the envy just dissolved. What remained was a simple feeling: “I’m only jealous of the number.” Well, I’ve gotten used to that.

Routine Overtime Means Someone Is Being Sacrificed

This is entirely my personal opinion, but I believe overtime is wrong. Especially for dual-income families raising kids.

When one partner starts working late every day, the burden inevitably shifts to the other. To the wife, to the kids, or both. A day or two of “Sorry, can you handle things tonight?” is fine. But the moment it becomes every single day, the balance is broken.

A state where overtime is “normal” is a system that can only function by sacrificing someone in the family. This is especially true for dual-income households.

Before my daughter was born, I used to work until midnight, catch the last train home, and think “I really gave it my all today.” That wasn’t giving it my all. I simply had nothing else to protect. I see that now. In fact, it was burning out from that exact overwork that forced me off the promotion track — and ironically pushed me toward investing.

Climbing the Ladder Breaks Dual-Income Life

If I had been on the fast track for promotion, I think we would have given up the dual-income arrangement.

Almost no one around me is managing a director-level role while both partners work full-time. The few who do either have a partner with very flexible work arrangements, or they have full support from parents. Both spouses going full-throttle in demanding careers? I’ve honestly never seen it work.

And if one partner stops working, what happens? My wife’s income disappears. Even if a promotion bumps my salary up a bit, household take-home pay would likely drop.

Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose?

When you look at the total picture, our current balance makes more sense. This isn’t sour grapes. Probably. About 80% sure.

”I’ll Do My Best” and “I’m Heading Out”

Still, as long as you’re in a company, the higher-ups will push you to “aim higher.”

My template response to this is, “Yes, I’ll do my best.” I say I’ll do my best while making absolutely zero effort to signal that I’m willing to sacrifice myself. I avoid overtime as much as possible. I don’t volunteer for impossible projects. I can’t quite articulate it, but it feels like I’ve been swimming at just the right depth for a long time.

Every day, I pick up my daughter from after-school care. It’s become routine, and I think the office has settled into the image of me as “the guy who leaves on time.” I’d like to believe they understand.

But honestly, I do feel bad for the people around me. There are people still working after I leave. Yet I think this guilt is something I need to let go of at some point.

Overtime being bad isn’t just about having kids or not. Single people shouldn’t have to work overtime either. It’s a broken system when the workload of parents leaving on time gets dumped on single colleagues. Everyone should be able to leave on time. No matter how much work is piling up.

I don’t know how long I can keep walking this tightrope. A time might come when I need to make a hard call. A job change, a different path. I don’t have the answer yet, but it’s always there in the back of my mind.

My Lifestyle Actually Isn’t Losing

Here’s the interesting part.

Even though I should be “losing” on salary, I barely feel any difference in actual lifestyle. I buy what I want. Our family travels often. When you look at household income, we might not be that far apart. And with the cushion of our assets, I might actually be living better.

I’m not on a spending spree or anything. But one thing changed after building assets: I started spending money on things that save time. Outsourcing house cleaning, hiring furniture assembly services. Not spending money to earn more money — spending money to buy time. I leave work on time, and I want to make the most of limited evening hours, so that’s where the money goes.

In other words, the only thing bothering me was the salary number, while my actual life wasn’t losing at all. When I noticed this disconnect, I had to laugh. All that frustration was just an emotional reaction to a number.

A higher salary does mean more cash coming in. I’ll honestly admit that’s enviable. But that’s about it. By the way, my anxiety about the future hasn’t gone away at all. Even with ¥50 million ($350K) saved, the anxiety persists. I think that’s a different disease entirely.

The View Changed Around ¥30 Million

I want to talk about the cure I found for “salary disease.”

For the old me, salary was the only scorecard. Higher salary = better at work = life is going well. A simple, cruel equation with no escape.

But after I started investing, steadily contributing every month, something shifted. I gained a second axis of measurement.

Salary is monthly earnings. Assets are accumulated total. These are two completely different numbers. Even if your salary isn’t particularly high, if you’re a dual-income household managing expenses and steadily investing in index funds, you can reach ¥50 million ($350K) in 8 years. That’s exactly what happened to me.

The view clearly changed around the ¥30 million ($200K) mark.

It felt like gaining an extra team member. Me, my wife, our assets. I started to see these three pillars each bringing in returns. Salary is just the first pillar.

And here’s the fascinating thing — amounts larger than my salary started fluctuating daily. Every morning at 4 AM, I check my portfolio and see swings bigger than the salary gap between me and my director-level peer. That’s what I started paying attention to, because that felt more real. The salary difference? A rounding error compared to the daily movement in unrealized gains.

When your dependency on salary decreases, seeing a peer’s promotion news becomes a simple “Oh, cool.” There’s still a small sting. It never reaches zero. I’m human. But I stopped carrying it into the night. By the next morning, it’s forgotten.

Flipping this around — if I had never started investing, salary would still be my only scoreboard, and I’d probably still be beating myself up every time a peer got promoted. When I think about it that way, the greatest return on investing wasn’t the investment gains. It was mental stability.

The Poison of Comparison Is the Same Whether It’s Salary or Assets

By the way, I don’t talk about my assets with anyone.

If someone asked me “How much are your assets?” and started comparing, I think that would sting too. In the end, comparison itself is the poison. Whether it’s salary or assets, the moment you line up someone else’s number next to yours, something starts to corrode.

So I don’t ask. I don’t tell. Writing about it on this blog feels like just the right distance.

Salary is one axis of measurement — not something worth sacrificing everything to maximize. As many in the FIRE community have discovered, it helps to have at least one pillar beyond your paycheck. For me, that was monthly index fund contributions — specifically, investing 62% of our dual-income take-home pay. Zero glamour. Nothing to brag about. But just having that one extra axis of measurement makes the “salary disease” of your 40s a whole lot easier to live with.

This article reflects personal experience and is for informational purposes only — not investment advice. All investment decisions are your own responsibility.