Over the weekend, I read the NYT Magazine article about the rich and unhappy, which included a man who earned $1.2 million a year in Manhattan and hated his job:
“I feel like I’m wasting my life,” he told me. “When I die, is anyone going to care that I earned an extra percentage point of return? My work feels totally meaningless.” He recognized the incredible privilege of his pay and status, but his anguish seemed genuine. “If you spend 12 hours a day doing work you hate, at some point it doesn’t matter what your paycheck says,” he told me. There’s no magic salary at which a bad job becomes good. He had received an offer at a start-up, and he would have loved to take it, but it paid half as much, and he felt locked into a lifestyle that made this pay cut impossible. “My wife laughed when I told her about it,” he said.
Based on a short conversation in a class reunion, it’s easy to extrapolate endless stressful hours at work, a huge mortgage, fancy private school tuition, expensive vacations, and a high-maintenance spouse. Such a picture makes all of us not earning $1.2 million a year feel better about ourselves. But is he really that miserable?
I suspect it is more like the same situation a lot of people are in. They aren’t happy, but things aren’t bad enough to keep them from still doing the same thing. It’s easy to just say OMY (One More Year) because change is scary. I’d certainly rather be in that position while earning a million bucks a year, rather than earning $40k. He has a lot more optionality than most.
Ever since my post on , this following statistic has been stuck in my mind:
If you’re 40, you have a 10% chance of dying before even reaching 65.
What is your likelihood of dying within the next 20 years? I found some more mortality tables that are separate by gender. Here are the rough numbers, along with an edited screenshot of the source at the bottom.
- A male, age 30 has a 1 in 20 chance of dying in the next 20 years (age 50).
- A male, age 40 has a 1 in 10 chance of dying in the next 20 years (age 60).
- A male, age 50 has a 1 in 5 chance of dying in the next 20 years (age 70).
- A female, age 30 has a 1 in 35 chance of dying in the next 20 years (age 50).
- A female, age 40 has a 1 in 15 chance of dying in the next 20 years (age 60).
- A female, age 50 has a 1 in 7 chance of dying in the next 20 years (age 70).
I try to use these numbers to motivate myself and create a sense of urgency. I’m 40 years old now. There is a 1 in 10 chance that I won’t be old enough to see my daughters even finish college. The person profiled in this article is also probably around 40 years old (15-year reunion of business school). I’m sure there are plenty of 60-year-olds who say “60 isn’t old!” and it isn’t, but that is literally survivorship bias. We all know people who didn’t make it to 60, and these are the overall odds.
Time is your most precious resource. It doesn’t matter what your income is, you only have so much time. Therefore, you should spend it in a way that aligns with your values. Look for ways to get closer to that. If you can’t quit, do the same job with a better employer. Keep working, but switch to a different job within that field/skillset with more personal meaning. Saving more can mean you can get by working fewer hours. If you think you can retire but just can’t seem to pull the trigger, you need to directly confront those last few worries.
Are you unhappy with your situation and still in the same spot as a year ago? Try to find something psychological that will create a sense of urgency. I tell myself “Why am still wasting my time with [insert task]? 1 in 10.”
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