I’ve had a good life, and I expect to live for a few more decades (my parents both lived into their 90s, with my mon still alive). I got a good job out of college, got moved to the (progressive) SF bay area, met a wonderful woman who became my wife, and had three children — all of which are doing great.
I’ve had an interesting and well-paying career, which I recently walked away from. I’m now to the point where I need to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Some options:
- Work More — Since I’m not yet 65, I could conceptually work a few more years at a tech company. I’ve got good experience, and would end up with a well-paying position.
- Make Money, Other Options – I do other things that could make money — that don’t require me to be an employee of a company. Some modest things like: writing books, songs, etc. I also have a list of product ideas that could launch tech products/companies (which I could pass on to my children to drive). It’s interesting, I visited my mom recently (she’s in a nursing home) and told her that I had retired, and she said ‘You are smart. You should start a tech company and make lots of money. Your oldest brother should have been the one that created the personal computer.’ She’s not wrong, he’s also a smart guy…
- Enjoy – We have a good amount of money, and so could have fun traveling (even living) in other countries — for decades. Fun as this sounds, I do want to pass some money down to our children — so I don’t want to be too crazy about spending our money.
At the end of the day, I’ll do some combination of the options above — likely joining a tech company only if our spending flow is bigger than expected. One overlay is — I look young for my age. So, if we decided in 5 years that I need to get a job, I probably easily could — because they would think I’m younger than I really am.