I see you don't have kids. If you never have them, you can live like that forever. If you have them, I hope you save your post and look back on it and laugh.
I don't know... Obviously you do. As to whether I should laugh about it or not: That's a different discussion.
During that trip I have met lots of different types of people. Relevant to this discussion would be the ones travelling with their kids, and a grown up kid who was raised for a couple years on a sail boat (turned out to become the youngest surgical clinic manager in his home country, was also a lobbyist before that and now refused an even more prestigious job for the sakes of travelling for a while)
This is anecdotal evidence. True. But it is/was enough for me to question how we live, raise children, and the norms.
Obviously, I don't intend to keep going with only 20k a year. I'm finishing my degree soon. What I'm actually really questioning is anything beyond 40 hours a week. Maybe I'm young and hopeful, but I'm sure there are ways. Different ways. And they may even have better returns than what we are used to. I'm going to try at least.
I tend to agree with you about 40h/week for work. I have been pretty lucky in life and have never had to work more than 40 regular hours in a week (barring some reasonable on-call time, of course; nothing too exceptional). I have advanced to a point where my compensation is enough to pay for a decent lifestyle for myself, my wife and my two children. Now, my hope is that I can (over time) scale back my work hours rather than increase my compensation.
I don't travel much (I don't have much of an urge to), but I tend to live pretty leisurely, even with two young children, a house to pay for, a number of bills, etc. I don't have every luxury my friends have, but I tend to not need those things (and I do have the luxuries I want to have).
That all being said, I live in Canada and not the US, and some of the descriptions I hear about work-life south of the border gives me chills. I suppose we're not much better up here, really, but I'm happy to say I can personally get by without over-stressing my workload (and, of course, that's probably just because of my personal circumstances and whatever luck has befallen me).
During that trip I have met lots of different types of people. Relevant to this discussion would be the ones travelling with their kids, and a grown up kid who was raised for a couple years on a sail boat (turned out to become the youngest surgical clinic manager in his home country, was also a lobbyist before that and now refused an even more prestigious job for the sakes of travelling for a while)
This is anecdotal evidence. True. But it is/was enough for me to question how we live, raise children, and the norms.
Obviously, I don't intend to keep going with only 20k a year. I'm finishing my degree soon. What I'm actually really questioning is anything beyond 40 hours a week. Maybe I'm young and hopeful, but I'm sure there are ways. Different ways. And they may even have better returns than what we are used to. I'm going to try at least.