Personal Finance

I'm a 27-year-old high school dropout - here's how I still made $100k this past year

Rich Smith

Published: February 6, 2025 8:11 am

If you’re not afraid of a little NSFW language, and are in the mood to hear a Gen Z success story, then sit back and enjoy today’s tale (courtesy of Reddit) of how one high school dropout went from $0 to $135,000 in annual income in just nine years.

Our hero today, let’s call him “John,” dropped out of high school in 2016 to take care of his ailing grandparents. Even lacking a high school diploma, this young go-getter was able to land a medical secretary job paying $12 an hour. (In annual terms, that’s equivalent to about a $24,000 salary).

From there, a chance acquaintance alerted John to a job opportunity as an administrative assistant at an adult daycare facility, paying $15 an hour. (I.e. $30,000 a year). From there, yet another acquaintance introduced John to the sometimes rewarding field of sales.

Working partly on commission, partly on salary, and parlaying his personal skills into a successful career, John rose through the ranks at his store over time to become, first, his store’s No. 1 salesman, then an assistant manager, then the store manager, and eventually, “a district manager making 95k!”

And how long did it take for this to happen? Five years total.

But wait, this tale is only half done.

By 2022, with some management experience under his belt, John was ready for a career change. A former boss at his store introduced him to a brother, who was looking for someone to manage a luxury condominium complex. By now, John’s resume fit that bill. And at this new job, he performed so well (“I have fixed almost all of the major problems at the condo”) that he was recently able to negotiate a raise that will lift his 2025 salary to $135,000 a year.

What lessons can we learn from John’s tale? I see at least three:

Lesson 1: The federal minimum wage today is $7.25 per hour, and if you’re bagging groceries or flipping burgers for your first job, you might end up settling for that. But you don’t have to settle for minimum wage if you look in unusual places. John’s first job, $12 an hour, paid more than twice the federal minimum wage at the time ($5.15).

By thinking outside the box, and looking for his first job where others might not have thought to look, John landed this job, even lacking a high school diploma.

Lesson 2: Your first job shouldn’t be your last job, and you shouldn’t think of it that way. Getting a first job, any first job, can be tough. But it’s a necessary first step on the ladder to winning promotions, making connections, and learning skills that will qualify you to win new jobs that pay better, teach even more new skills, and may be more rewarding (both personally and financially).

Don’t turn down a first job because you don’t like the salary, unless you it’s your intention to work for that same salary for the rest of your life.

Lesson 3: There’s one problem with the “ladder” analogy to jobs. You may think of your first job as a first “rung” on a ladder, and plan to ascend that ladder through promotions over the years, winning raises as your route to a higher salary.

That can work. But it’s not the approach John took. His approach was more akin to a game of chutes and ladders. Notice the pattern. John started on one ladder, then chuted himself over to a different ladder, then slid once more to his sales job before starting to climb. After five years on that ladder, he sidestepped once more to the condo manager job that finally won him his coveted six-figure salary.

No one size fits all, and not everyone will be able to follow John’s (admittedly eccentric) path to success. But if there’s one even more important lesson I think we should all learn from his journey, it’s this:

Life dealt John a hard left turn right out of the gate. In fact, it came before he even left the gate of high school. But John embraced the challenge and turned it into motivation to find a job that would pay him enough to take care of his grandparents.

Here’s hoping that the next time life throws you a curveball, you’ll be able to look at it the same way John did, and hit it out of the park.