you are misleading about bonus

You make "getting 300k bonus in February" sounds like a piece of cake in financial services field. That's not true at all. I am in finance, and know a lot of peeple in this field (top and non-top MBAs, PhDs, you name it). Most of them making $70k - $120K, with 5% to 30% bonus, depending on how good and how lucky you are. With a very good MBA and 5+ years of experience, it's normal that you'll make $80K plus 15% bonus. Only those very outstanding people (those people probably won't be in our social circle) can get half a million a year (base+bonus). For me, I only see the executives in medium-size commercial banks make that kind of money). Of course, Wall street i-bankers can make that kind of money too, but I don't know one single big-shot i-banker myself.