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I did - seriously. Think about it: Single, living in Pittsburgh (reasonable CoL area). I had a cute apartment that I enjoyed coming home to, went running in gorgeous parks or cycling in lovely outlying hills almost every day, worked my butt off at a job that was challenging as hell that I enjoyed, and was putting away enough in savings that it was clear I was on a good trajectory for long-term FI. It was great. Oh, and the better kicker: I was even happier in grad school when I was earning $24k/year. One of the happiest times of my life. That doesn't apply to everyone's grad school experience, but for me, it was awesome. Lived in a shitty apartment above central square in one of the more expensive regions of the country (hi, Cambridge, still love you but glad I don't have to deal with your housing market). My roommates and officemates at work have become life-long friends. I will indeed tell you that having 2M in the bank has been a much smaller factor in my happiness than almost anything else, particularly the effect of the people in my life. My day-to-day happiness is much more affected by whether I got a good night's sleep, whether my children are healthy, whether my wife and I are communicating well, whether I'm healthy and able to do the things I like or whether I've once again managed to injure myself pretending I'm 24 instead of 42. :-) (I'm not unsympathetic to the desire for FI, btw -- quite the opposite. But I've noticed that I want it primarily in a theoretical way, for the comfort in knowing I could quit, not because I actually want to quit. Yes, I'm lucky that I have .. multiple .. jobs that I absolutely love, but I've also chosen to accept a 66% paycut to work in a job I love instead of blasting to FI in industry, and I'm good with that. Sometimes it annoys me and I go do some consulting or bitcoin mining to help make up the difference. :-) |