But, I enjoy what I do for a living, although after 46 years at it, I'd love to be training a replacement. I started when I was 23, and I'm 69 now. It has its stress moments, no two ways about it. The hours are sometimes long, and I am dependent on idiot bureaucrats and undependable public transportation (i.e. planes and trains). I happened to meet the requirements in the beginning and refined them to amplify job security. I met qualifications that my competition for the post couldn't match, including expertise in spotting counterfeit money of the USA and other countries, some going back 2500 years, spoken and written English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian, and at least one Scandinavian language. I even brought Catalan to the table (Dutch and Schwyzerdüütsch I learned while on the job). I'm heading back to Barcelona again on Friday, as a matter of fact.
Covid-19 forced me to reduce my schedule, but I adapted. After 46 years, and some respectable success, I am pretty much my own boss (though I have to answer to Dallas for everything eventually), make a decent amount of money, get to take as much vacation as I want to, have a great team under me here in Europe (all Europeans, working in their own countries), and my office is a continent. Every month I'm in France, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Switzerland, and every now and then places beyond (Scandinavia, Portugal, UK, Austria, whatever). I've been offered other jobs, some even promising more pay, but to hell with them. At 69, I'm gonna switch now? I was given a fair deal by the outfit I work for now. I'm not about to say, "thanks for the good times, but I'm leaving for greener pastures." No one can guarantee me those pastures really WILL be greener, and my needs are not such that I need to make a million dollars a year to satisfy them. I'm with Trevanian's fictional Beñat Le Cagot--to achieve balance, you either have to bring up your earning power to satisfy your yearnings, or you have to scale down your yearnings to equal that which you earn. I chose the latter solution, and feel I've achieved the balance I sought.
My sister knows a guy from her class who was super bright, but obsessed with money. He now has some monstrous villa in Beverly Hills, fancy houses elsewhere (I forget where), and so many expensive possessions, he doesn't remember them all. He is still obsessed with accumulating more money. To what end, I have no idea. He has a wife but no children. He does not enjoy himself. His net worth is probably in nine figures, and he's constantly worried that he might not have enough. He just buys and sells stuff. Houses, real estate, stock, I don't know what. No one works for him, he did it all on his own. Materially rich, every last tax dollar paid, and yet a poor slob for all that. I think he enjoys the brief thrill of making a profit on house he sells, but has no joy if all he can think of is "could I have gotten more for it?" He never achieved the balance. He has money. He has no fun. My job is interesting AND fun. It is said of my ilk that for us, retirement comes when the last nail is put in our coffin. I don't know if I want to go THAT far, but I have no interest at all in retiring so far. And do what?
*on edit: my wife and I encouraged our daughters to do what they really wanted to do, and worry about contentment, not money. Both of them found contentment, and one even got scads of money as a bonus--not because she invented the wheel, but works for an outfit that values her skills and work ethic extremely highly, and is willing to pay plenty to get her to stay. She makes several multiples of what I do. She is also generous with her new-found wealth. She stood her sister to a bachelorette party--with 15 girlfriends at a rented house in the Turks and Caicos Islands!! She invited my wife and me to a Rolling Stones concert in Stuttgart with seats three rows back from the stage, something like €500 a seat. Nothing we would ever dream of doing, but she enjoys it, and is extremely loose with her generosity to family and friends. She even offered to reimburse me for the money I spent on her US college career, without which she would be nowhere (she says--don't believe it!). I said no, I was glad to do it, and would have been so if she had decided to become an underpaid social worker like my wife. I blew the whole cash distribution from my inheritance on my daughters' American educations, and I don't regret a cent of it. Some investments may not bring in a dime, but can turn out to be well-placed, all the same. Sometimes the greatest wealth is of a nature that cannot be taxed.
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