More than 400 seniors will be graduating this year. Each one has been given the same advice since they were kids: follow your dreams.

Since then, their dreams may have become more realistic. There are less future superheroes and more future artists, but the idea stays the same. A job should be enjoyable, even if it isn’t the most secure or highest paying career path.

That does not mean that you can blindly walk into a career without knowing what you’re sacrificing. $40,000 a year doesn’t sound so bad without factoring in the cost of housing, food, insurance and college loans.

According to the Social Security Board of Trustees, Social Security benefits will run out by 2033. So by the time people currently in high school are 65 and may need Social Security, they won’t have the support from the government that their parents and grandparents had. If they want to retire, they need a job that can get them the proper savings.

Even if working for the rest of your life sounds appealing, there are still issues with the quality of life people with low income have. Princeton researchers Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton created a survey asking various questions about fulfillment and well-being. What they found was that people who made less than $75,000 annually were considerably less likely to report highly on life evaluation.

I get that I am saying the exact opposite of everything people are taught. I thought that too. For a while I had wanted to work for a nonprofit organization. But I also wanted to eventually buy a house and put kids through college. I finally decided I wanted to go into the medical field where I could help people, make money and I could still volunteer if I wanted too.

I’m not saying people should give up on their dreams. They just need to look at other options. Dreams don’t disappear if you don’t major in them. Jobs were never supposed to be the fun part of life anyway. Find a job you can live off of and you can stand walking into everyday and do the things you love the other 128 hours a week.