Why do you work?

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Do people love their careers? Or their spouses love their careers? Do you work to accomplish or contribute to society? Do you work to not be bored? Or is it about the money? Do you work to pay off debts?

Have you ever considered not working and living very frugally like the early retirement people? Do you have enough to retire now and choose not to? Or have you changed careers and taken a substantial paycut because you didn't like what you did? Do you like what you do now?

Do you work to live? Or live to work?

[disneysteve]

I work to live. I work to pay the bills. As soon as I have enough money put away to be able to support myself in the lifestyle to which I've become accustomed, I will happily stop working. If someone handed me a couple million dollars tomorrow, I'd quit on the spot.

I do enjoy what I do, but I enjoy my time away from work a whole lot more.

[bjl584]

Interesting question.

I guess I work so that I can achieve a goal one day of not having to work anymore.

[ua_guy]

Do people love their careers? Or their spouses love their careers? Do you work to accomplish or contribute to society? Do you work to not be bored? Or is it about the money? Do you work to pay off debts?

Have you ever considered not working and living very frugally like the early retirement people? Do you have enough to retire now and choose not to? Or have you changed careers and taken a substantial paycut because you didn't like what you did? Do you like what you do now?

Do you work to live? Or live to work?

Trying to hit all the questions...

Do I love my career?
No, but I'm proficient at it.

Does my spouse love his career?
No, but he's good at his too.

Do I work to accomplish or contribute to society?
Incidentally, but service is also in my nature. My employer provides for the health needs of the underserved, and all the work we do is focused on that goal. It means something to me.

Do you work to not be bored?
In part, yes. If I wasn't working, I'd have no problem entertaining myself for a long time, however, the structure of getting up and going to go do something (work) every day is important to my well-being. I worry that if I didn't have that and was left to my own devices, if I'd become depressed or lazy, or, maybe I'd come up with something totally awesome in all my free time. Who knows.

Is it about money?
Yes. If I wasn't paid, it's unlikely I'd stick around. See next question.

Do I work to pay off debt?
Yes, the core responsibility is to pay for our home, and I like to have fun/nice things, so I might have a car loan I'm working on too. That, and if you consider retirement a future debt, I'm saving for that too

Have you ever considered not working and living very frugally like the early retirement people?
Yes. What I've determined is that a) To quit now poses too great a threat to financial stability in my plan for retirement. In the model of compounding interest, time is an important component. The more I save now, theoretically the better off I'll be, and to do that, I need income far above and beyond that which covers my basic needs. b) To quit now means giving up a quality of life that I don't actually want to give up right now.

Do you have enough to retire now and choose not to?
Probably not. But I still have a good portion of my working life ahead of me, so the hardest gap to bridge is time. I'm off to a great start in terms of saving, but if I had to divide it over the next 40 years, it's probably (definitely) not enough. Of course there's no guarantee that I'll be around for any span of time, but that goes back to my willingness to work to enjoy my youth while I still have it (while being somewhat cautious, and planning for the future).

Or have you changed careers and taken a substantial paycut because you didn't like what you did?
Thinking/thought about it. It's definitely easier when you have a spouse who can pick up the slack. But what I'm finding is that the grass isn't always greener; the allure of changing careers to something simpler, more fun, comes with a lot of stress too.

Do you work to live? Or live to work?
Yes. What I do provides me the resources I need to play and enjoy life outside of work, but there's a catch, because if I give up work, a lot of the play and enjoyment (and retirement, future opportunity) disappears. So it's a lot of both concepts.

[Fishindude77]

Well, unless you are a lotto winner, have been gifted a large sum of money, or choose to live within the welfare system ... all of us have to work enough to at least provide basic food and shelter. Not working for most, isn't an option.

I chose to stick my neck out and go the self employment route many years ago, which has worked out well. My work has covered a wide range of responsibilities, has been horribly stressful at times, very rewarding at times, profitable, costly a few times, fun, risky, challenging, etc., but overall a great life experience. At this point I would have a difficult time working for the other guy.

Life is a whole lot more pleasant if you enjoy your work. There are 168 hours each week and for most folks, work consumes at least 40 hours of that time for our entire adulthood, so no point in doing something you are miserable at.

[97guns]

When I was working it was purely for the money for living and saving for 1 purpose and that was to achieve an early retirement, I hated going to sleep and waking up early, I still do it now and its not a "chore" now but enjoyable.

I never worked for love of the job or to contribute to society but I did enjoy 1 job very much and if I had not been laid off from it I might still be working there. I was laid off from my most recent job as well and that induced me to seek retirement at that time, luckily the cards fell perfectly into place and I've been a happy retiree for the past 6 years. The thought of boredom from retirement never entered my mind and I have not experienced 1 day of it yet.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

I wonder if most people who come to a savings forum aren't working for the pursuit of work but to do other things. They work for purpose.

[disneysteve]

I wonder if most people who come to a savings forum aren't working for the pursuit of work but to do other things. They work for purpose.

I'm not sure what you mean by "working for the pursuit of work".

[ua_guy]

I wonder if most people who come to a savings forum aren't working for the pursuit of work but to do other things. They work for purpose.

I think it's a mix on here, at least that's what I sense. There are people who just work for income but want to manage the resources they have as best as they can. Other people that come here for tips and advice so they can accomplish a goal like early retirement or finance a lifestyle that involves minimal work.

[cypher1]

Do people love their careers? Or their spouses love their careers? Do you work to accomplish or contribute to society? Do you work to not be bored? Or is it about the money? Do you work to pay off debts?

Have you ever considered not working and living very frugally like the early retirement people? Do you have enough to retire now and choose not to? Or have you changed careers and taken a substantial paycut because you didn't like what you did? Do you like what you do now?

Do you work to live? Or live to work?

Simple answer for me, I work to sustain a comfortable lifestyle while maintaining a reasonable EF and contributing to retirement. My needs+wants=balanced lifestyle (for me at least). I may not be doing my "dream" job but I enjoy what I do, and get paid pretty decent at it. While I'm all about the money, I've also realized more money won't equate to greater happiness. In other words I work for peace of mind.

I definitely work to not be bored, and always finding projects to work on at home, as it's something I actually enjoy. And no, my job doesn't contribute to society. I'm a selfish person, focusing on myself first.

While I'm slowly upgrading areas of my home (kitchen new focus), one goal I could see renting out the home,and downgrading to an apartment. While selling most of my stuff and putting the rest in storage. I'd still manage the house myself, but focus would be on simplifying lifestyle and allowing me to save more aggressively for my wants of traveling. This is more of a thought than an actual outline at the moment.

[disneysteve]

my job doesn't contribute to society.

I'm curious what jobs people would consider as not contributing to society. I would think most everything in some way benefits others.

[cypher1]

I'm curious what jobs people would consider as not contributing to society. I would think most everything in some way benefits others.

Every job has a glorified title, so I just tell people I'm a storage engineer in tech support.

[Singuy]

Do I love my career?
Not really, I find that being a RPH is pretty boring. I would much rather be a youtube star or a helicopter pilot for a hospital.


Does my spouse love his career?
She rather open up a pet shop, so no she doesn't like hers either.

Do I work to accomplish or contribute to society?
Even though both of us are contributing to society, we don't work for this purpose.

Do you work to not be bored?
Work is more boring than my regular life, so no.

Is it about money?
Absolutely!!!

Do I work to pay off debt?
As of right now, not really. We have no more debt. The rest is just to maintain our lifestyle.

Have you ever considered not working and living very frugally like the early retirement people?

No, our current lifestyle is too expensive so we are talking about a whole overhaul of our current life.


Do you have enough to retire now and choose not to?

Our current net worth is almost 1mil
We can definitely retire, travel on money we gain from interest and be apart of the small house movement but as Aerial said in The Little Mermaid..."I want Mooooorrrrre".

I don't want move out of my school zone, and don't want to travel frugally. Also without any kind of income, the money in the bank will eventually become nothing due to inflation. We are talking about retiring at 32 here..which is way too early.

Or have you changed careers and taken a substantial paycut because you didn't like what you did?
Work is work and I have to be realistic. Life is just not about me. If job A pays way more than job B, but I'll have more fun with Job B at the expense of my families' lifestyle(like moving to a worst school zone or not able to pay for _____ lessons for my child), there's no way I'll do that.

Do you work to live? Or live to work?
I work to live because my job is kind of lame.

[Singuy]

I'm curious what jobs people would consider as not contributing to society. I would think most everything in some way benefits others.

Maybe it's a job that contributes in a negative way...like drug dealing to children, sex trafficking, and selling weapons to terrorists.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

I'm not sure what you mean by "working for the pursuit of work".

I guess that people here aren't necessarily working because they love it and can't imagine retiring or doing something else. Even if they had enough money to retire working is their life.