[Marcus316]

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).