Count the cost first

The offer looks good on paper. More money, a better title, the promotion you've eyed for a year. Then read the fine print the recruiter doesn't put in writing: the on-call weekends, the commute that eats your evenings, the boss everyone warns you about, the dinners you'll miss. The raise is real. So is everything it costs, and the cost rarely shows up in the number.

Epictetus made people total it up before they signed. Want to win at the Olympics? Fine — but first reckon what gets you there. "In each separate thing that you do consider the matters which come first, and those which follow after, and only then approach the thing itself" (Discourses 3.15, Oldfather). Don't be the one who leaps in glowing and quits in disgrace the moment the bill arrives, because you only ever looked at the prize.

This is the week's hardest application, and its center. Money is a preferred indifferent — worth pursuing, never worth your peace. So before you trade hours, sleep, and presence for a higher figure, run the real ledger. Sometimes the answer is yes; a bigger wage genuinely buys breathing room. Sometimes you'd be selling the good life to afford a nicer version of a worse one.

Either way, decide with the full price in front of you. Not just the part printed on the check.