Millennials have been coined the “job-hopping generation,” and I’ve contributed to that stereotype. I started my career at 22 and have job-hopped almost every year since. For many of those years, I was young and restless, and there was another part of me looking for more fulfilling work and pay that reflected what I was worth.
In some ways, changing jobs set back my retirement savings. There are things I wish I’d learned earlier, like how to start retirement planning, the importance of developing high-demand skills, and the art of negotiating benefits. But it has also helped me improve my earnings. Once “lifestyle creep”—when your income increases and your spending habits do, too—stopped getting the best of me, earning more meant I could save more for retirement.
