How are you measuring your life?

I recently read an article on how life can be miserable at times even when one is raking in a million dollar paycheck.

I want to ask experienced professionals working in IB, PE, HF or any other industry in finance if they are satisfied with what they are doing in their jobs and how they manage to spend meaningful time with family? What job would they like to do other than what they are doing now if they are paid same salary for both jobs?
If I use Clayton Christenson's words, how are you measuring your life right now?


 
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You don't need to measure your life by some quantitative standard. Probably the only question you need to ask is "Am I happy?" If the answer is yes, then great, keep going. If the answer is no, and the reason for that no is that your job makes you unhappy, probably time to change jobs.

FWIW, I quit PE, took a big pay cut, and I'm pretty happy and satisfied with my life. It's not perfect (wish I was better at being social with my friends/family) but overall I'm good. I also have a friend who quit big law around the same time and took an even bigger pay cut to become a teacher, but it's not working out as well for him, so YMMV.

 
CHItizen:
You don't need to measure your life by some quantitative standard. Probably the only question you need to ask is "Am I happy?" If the answer is yes, then great, keep going. If the answer is no, and the reason for that no is that your job makes you unhappy, probably time to change jobs.

FWIW, I quit PE, took a big pay cut, and I'm pretty happy and satisfied with my life. It's not perfect (wish I was better at being social with my friends/family) but overall I'm good. I also have a friend who quit big law around the same time and took an even bigger pay cut to become a teacher, but it's not working out as well for him, so YMMV.

Where did you go from PE? If you've posted about this elsewhere, please feel free to just point me there. If you'd prefer PM, would love to chat about it.

 

I left with no idea what my next step was going to be (I had friends in similar spots take 3-9 months off with no problem getting jobs, so I felt comfortable doing so). Fortunately, PE pays well so I had savings and just chilled for a while - read, traveled, played video games. Wound up taking a strategy/corp dev role at a midsize company. I think the work is interesting but just as importantly my coworkers/bosses are smart and fun to be around, which certainly was not the case in PE.

 

fucks given on things i like / fucks given about things i dgaf about

I can get caught up and stressed about shit I don't actually care about (job, email from boss, drama). I like caring about what I'm passionate about. I don't mind worrying how well my small business is doing or how well my relationship is at the moment.

 

If I compare myself to all my former peers in high school from a financial and career perspective. They don't even come close to where I am at. But from their perspective, I am probably a strange and sad creature who don't go outside and spend all his time working. But my family will never worry about missing payments and I would be able to do whatever I want by the time I turn 30. So my measurement is how comfortably my mother is living.

Cash and cash equivalents: $138,311 Financial instruments and other inventory positions owned: $448,166
 

So many ways to approach this but ,in a nutshell, I answer the question by examining if I'm happy with:

Who I am Where I am and With with whom I am

...DO I like me, do I like where I am (how my life is going), and do I like who I spend time with.

This is about having freedom to do what you want with whom you want, when you want. If you can, I think your measure of your life would be pretty good. If not, you probably want to work on things to get to that point.

 

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