@theultmatecad @Desaint @Antelope @Typo-MAGAshiv

Concur.

I have FU money and I also have a job.

When I say that I have FU money I don't mean that I'm rich. I'm not rich. However, after a few decades of living below our means my wife and I are at a point where we don't have to work. The house and cars are paid for. I have a credit card because you can't operate in my world without one, but I pay it off every month (I use it like a debit card that gives me sky miles). My military retirement pay is enough to cover all of our expenses and then some, and most of the monthly bills are autopaid from the same account, so no only don't I concern myself with bills; I rarely even see them. We have a giant solar array on the roof and house batteries in the basement, so we make most of our own electricity. That system ran us about $40,000: we paid for it in cash. We also have the equivalent of about two years of my pension in readily available form. To top it off; my wife and I are fairly minimalist.

Believe me when I say that neither of us have jobs because we need the money.

However... I like having money. The money we make at our jobs gives us freedom to do things we like (such as travel when the mood strikes), and it allows us to experiment with different things and activities without having to wonder where the money will come from. It allows us to help others. If something piques our interest we can try it. If we like it we can keep doing it... if we don't we can drop it without any change to our lives other than knowing that we've had a new experience, and that some spreadsheet we barely pay attention to has slightly different numbers on it.

I'll give a couple of examples:

We like to hike and we like to travel abroad and my wife likes some BBC shows, so last year we decided - almost on a whim - to take a hiking tour in the region of the UK where her shows are set. Between the sky miles and hotel points and airport parking points I get from my job, the cost was minimal. It was great. "Success."

My wife and I tried Stand Up Paddleboading (SUP), and we really enjoyed it. We bought two boards, but because they're hard to transport we got the inflatable kind after talking to people who had them.

When we used them we decided that they are not viable substitutes for rigid boards, so we don't use them. We're out a few hundred dollars. "Failure."

/shrugs

But I do what I do because I like to do it. I'd probably do it for free as long as I didn't have to cover the travel expenses. That said, I'm not going to put up with a lot of crap at work because I don't have to. And when I'm not traveling my time is my own. What do I do with that time?

Whatever I feel like doing. That means that I get to spend and hour or two (or more) working out every day. I read things that interest or amuse me. I spend time with my dad. I sit at an outdoor cafe and drink overpriced coffee while I watch the cars go by. I'm teaching algebra to my grand-neice. Some of those things are "work" (as Typo noted), but I don't get paid to do them.

If the program manager told me that I had to start punching a clock I'd tell him to pound sand and make him choose between firing me or backing down. He'd be crazy to push it because I'm fantastic at what I do and he knows it.

I'll reiterate what Typo said about anything becoming boring if you do it enough, although I would substitute "routine" for "boring." Most of us veterans could tell stories about doing things that most people only see in movies... and how those things became "normal." But whether a person finds joy or satisfaction in life is less dependent on one's circumstances than on one's attitude.

Some guys are as happy as clams living in a single-wide with a plump with and three goofy kids... other guys are miserable on their yachts because the Dom Perignon is a little flat.

Money can't buy happiness (although it can make misery a lot more comfortable). What it does buy is options and financial peace of mind. I haven't lain awake at night worrying about money for a very long time, and the fact that we're stacking cash to the tune of thousands of dollars a month because we choose to work (doing things we enjoy) is icing on the cake.