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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Eh past a certain income level there are major diminishing returns on actual happiness in terms of time spent.  Relentlessly grinding out climbing the ladder is a choice that comes with a cost.  Have fun being exhausted so you can afford marginally fancier things than you would otherwise own I guess.[/quote]

This is where my DH and I both landed. For us it helps that neither of us is enormously passionate about our work (we both have hobbies/interests outside our work we are passionate about, and we are really into parenting, but work is work). We make choices that allow us to work less (in my case -- I work 20-30 hours a week in a flexible contract position with a company I used to be full time with, where I'm an SME with no career trajectory past my current role) or to take on less responsibility (DH turned down a major promotion last year, recognizing the responsibility level would be too intense for his personality, and is now in a kind of 5 year plan to retire early from this career and shift to a different career altogether for better quality of life).  To facilitate this, we have made lifestyle choices that make it possible for us to cap our income at lower than you might expect for our education level and background, including living in a lower COL area and intentionally choosing a smaller fixer-upper when we technically could have afforded a larger updated house (which actually has turned out to be a great financial choice because our super low mortgage has enabled us to make good quality upgrades, and our home value has skyrocketed even though we bought for literally 50-60% of our neighbors who bought around the same time because we bought the smaller house with the old kitchen that was sitting on the market forever because the sellers didn't stage it and the house needed work).

Anyway, point is -- we are happy, our kids our happy. No one says on their death bed "I wish I'd spent more time at the office" and in the long run, I truly believe your kids would rather have your time than a bigger inheritance or even being full pay at an expensive private school. [/quote]

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