Career and Kids

If money were no option

by mike on December 22nd, 2006

I was talking to a friend of mine that is at a point of his life where he is changing careers in his young 30s and trying to figure out what he wants to do now.

He is in a situation where he will probably have a steady stream of income for the foreseeable future and if everything goes right could probably come close, if not actually be enough, to meet all of his real financial needs.

He seems a little directionless and is cautiously exploring his options.

As we were talking, I kept trying to imagine what I would want to do if money could be removed, or at least greatly ignored. McDonalds? Working in a bookstore? Starting my own company? Stay programming? Any job that let me travel a lot?

There are just way too many options for somebody in his young 30s needing to pick a new career to think about. When you are 20, you can pretty much pick anything because you know you have the opportunity to switch later. When you get in your upper 40s, you can start to tell yourself to stick it out until you can retire.

In some ways I am glad that I don’t have to make that decision. We need all of the money that I make if we ever actually plan on retiring and any career decisions that I make have to be carefully weighed against that financial balance.

But, if I won some magic lottery where they matched my current salary plus inflation raises for the rest of my life, what would I do?

I think my ideal would be some kind of part time job in some small retail store. Something like a bookstore or even most stores in the mall, probably.

That would get me out of the house and interacting with people enough to keep me from going crazy, but also let me have plenty of free time.

That magic lottery is probably never going to happen, but it is still a somewhat useful exercise. Whatever that dream job is just might be what you should aim your retirement plan at. If you plan on being CEO for a major company until you die at 85 your savings plans are probably going to be different than somebody that wants to sit on a beach starting at 45. I think I probably fall somewhere in between.

Saving money is an important part of getting ready for retirement, but have you started thinking about what you actually want to do when you retire?

Tags: career, retirement, switching careers

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