You can make good money around here as an engineer, but you just have to find the right company. At this point in your life though (early 20's), $250k is obviously way more than you need. Right now, you by yourself probably only need 75k-80k to live reasonably well. Once you add a wife and kids, that's when the 200k+ income really helps.
Chemical Engineering has some of the highest salaries for all engineers, so I think you will be just fine
