I read your post with interest

Irrespective of what my kids choose to do eventually, I think one of the most valuable things i can do as a parent is show the breadth of opportunity

My parents couldn't, and they are EXTREMELY risk averse. Even 20 years later my mother freaks out about us in spite of knowing we bought our house for cash, it's ridiculous

The day after the night i got hammered and resigned, my parents flipped, this is in spite of knowing the reason I quit is the guy I owed me 25-30k, which a decade ago was a huge sum for me, all my savings. They were panicked about me finding a job, periods of unemployment etc.

In 14 years I have never had a gap unless I wanted a break. I have always been willing to work, to take a day rate that if not what I wanted was still ok.

In contrast, my wife's father is a spark by trade. He has been self employed for 35-40 years. Her parents never blinked when either of their kids went self employed

It's all about what you know and how comfortable you are with risk

My brother make a bank. He literally saves billionaires cash. He would never leave a salaried job. He likes the security and he has a young family and a mortgage and is in a different situation to us.

I think unless you have some overwhelming desire to pursue medicine or professional sports, what you do at 18 or 21 ca m have little bearing on what you do at 40

A good friend is an architect who worked for Richard Rogers quite early on. He is very clever, an excellent designer but what he wants to be doing is real estate development and he has not done anything technically related to his profession is 15 years.

I've no idea what the next decade holds but I am pretty sure it will be interesting.

I'm not nearly as successful as many of the other contributors here, but I'll play too :).

Dad was a machinist. Mom a stay at home mom, then worked as a nurses aid at retirement homes after my brother and I were 10 or so. Both emigrated from post WW2 ravaged countries, arriving with no money, no support system, and not speaking english. They grew up dirt poor. I never had significant exposure to successful people or families until I started dating and started spending time with the parents of girls I was with. For whatever reason, my parents felt we were of a lesser class then average Canadians and shouldn't aspire to be like them. My mom's goal for me was to get a low key, stable union gig for $20/hr and a pension I could ride out until retirement. Both parents were against me going to University, saying it was a waste of time.

I went to University anyways, but was directionless. I was studying kinesiology because I found it interesting and thought I could get in to physiotherapy or something. Halfway through my degree, I took a year off to travel. I used the money I had saved for next year's tuition to fund the trip, burned through that, and maxed out my credit card to buy a ticket home. Got a job in construction to pay off the debt and save for school again, but really liked the job. I ended up taking an apprenticeship in carpentry, and starting a renovation business a year or so after finishing. I had zero business training, or aspiration to own a business, when I started.

It's not a glamorous industry, but, there is pretty decent money to be made if you go the self employed route. Working for someone else I would max out a salary of around $60,000 a year. Working for myself I can easily double that and do much more when I want to put the work in. It's not "fuck you money" but, there is still room for growth and I'm very optimistic about the next few years.

As for exposure for your kids, I would just be encouraging them to Branch out, pursue different interests, and not be afraid to work on their weaknesses to develop some resiliency. I think what people end up doing for work is less important then how intelligently and passionately they end up pursuing it.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

A few years ago I took a job that was a pretty big demotion within my company.

I had a global job that required early mornings with Europe and late evenings with Asia. I had a young daughter and found myself as the care manager of both parents (they lived in a facility but I did all finances, went to all dr aptms and managed all of the details).

A much lower level job that involved aspects of what I did opened up and I called the hiring manager and said- I can do this job in four days a week - would you be open to that?

It’s been three years and it’s been fabulous. I am learning more than I was in my old job. I volunteer at my daughter’s school, go on long bike rides and don’t get as annoyed if the Dr is running late. I’m in data analytics which is a great field and moving forward crazy fast. I also eat dinner with my family rather than alone in my office on the phone. I think I would have had a full blown crisis if I had not done this change. It has worked out way better than I expected.

I suspect, as i have said before, you are potentially well placed to do well in real estate redevelopment

By "Great" I assume you mean not so great as I can't imagine why someone would leave any job they thought was actually great. To me the greatest job would be one I get paid an amount I want, do something I want to do under conditions I want and enjoy. Find a job like that and you'll want to do it until you can't or they kick you out. I don't think many people find jobs like that though.

~Matt

That is more or less where I want to steer my business.

Right now I'm in a great niche of high end renovations. People dropping $250,000+ on a new kitchen type of projects. It is fun, and challenging, but I would love to eliminate the client entirely from the picture :-). Over the last few years, most of our savings have gone in to our home (first purchasing, then improving it) and with my wife on mat leave for the year we aren't building back our savings too quickly right now, so, I don't have much to pull from to get in to the game with.

However, in the near future my goal is to build wealth through property. It's what I know. Our market is pretty picked over after having a crazy 15 year run, but there is still money to be made in certain areas. 5 years ago, you could buy a house, slap a coat of paint on it and make $50,000 a few months later. Those days are over.

A good friend of mine (also a carpenter) sold his house and used the proceeds to put payments down on 3 lots and secure builders loans. He developed and sold two spec units, and will live in the third for a year, then simply rinse and repeat. Personally, I see myself doing something different. Our city is in a huge push for densification. There are a lot of older character houses being bought up, lifted, have a new storey built under and converted in to 3 or 4 plexes, often each unit selling for more then the cost of the original single house. I think that's a more attainable project for someone with my skill set. Not everyone can pull projects like that off well. I wont be competing with the dirt cheap developers building 100 box houses a year and hiring the cheapest, shittiest tradespeople they can find.

I know you've had experience with property, but I think more-so in rentals? I would be interested in picking your brain.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

I have a friend who wants to do exactly what you are proposing in sydney; another crazy market

Either convert in to multiple apartments OR build from scratch

Like you he has one set of appropriate skills, as an architect, he has a friend who wants to partner. His issue is / has been zero effort to raise finance.

We are in the process of liquidating every thing. We made an error and it's probably going to cost us something but will not be the end of the world.

My intention is to go back in to property once we have straightened our selves out but with a slightly different approach.

I have way too much tied up in too few, zero liquidity and then it all went a bit Pete tong.......

I think if you can; find land, have contacts for work, find people who can invest for first few before going banks and you have the skills to both project manage, manage costs, avoid scope creep and escalating costs and can work to a schedule there is money in development

In the UK the best place for finding those properties is at auction and my brothers BIL has bought perhaps 5/6 one bed / studios that he has converted in to two bed properties.

There are some really interesting development ideas around affordable housing and I suspect that if you can make really well designed usable spaces at attractive prices there is great scope both for renting and / or selling.

You should have a look at the candy brothers. They started with a property..........so the story goes. Now they are probably the most serious high end high profile developers in the uk.

Interesting. Tell your friend to forget Sydney and come up here! Much more affordable!

I've thought about starting out with condos. Smaller investment, something I can do a few of in a year and work out kinks in the process. There are a lot of good sized, older apartments here and our rental market is red hot and not going down any time soon,and they aren't building any more land downtown...

It would be pretty easy and relatively painless to flip a few and see how the process goes.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

https://www.pocketliving.com/about/pocket

I stayed in a relatively new chain of hotels in London last month called the hub

The design was excellent. Really clever. Excellent use of space.

A good architect, good quality work and being a good land lord gets good tenants.

That's cool, and some of those pocket living quarters are similar to what I did with our basement suite, layout wise. It's only around 650 sqft (60 sq m), 2 bed, 1 bath, insuite laundry, but really well laid out, picked nice colours and smart furnishings and gets us $1600/mth in rent, more if we put it on AirBnB. It was really fun designing it myself, laying it all out, etc, and taking it from a disgusting, 70 year old asbestos covered shit hole basement to something functional, beautiful, and profitable, all by my own hand. Like you said, It gets above average rent for the area and attracts above average tenants.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

Your situation sounds similar to mine. I am mid 50s and left my good, well paying job of 25 years earlier this year. I reached a point where I really felt stagnant, and had enough of the 9-5 grind with commute thrown in. The opportunity for a year's severance (which will last about 3 years based on our spending levels) and qualification for subsidized "retirement" health insurance through my previous employer sealed the deal. We have no debt, paid off house, wife does not work, and one kid to get through college. After crunching the numbers using various financial calculators (eg Firecalc) with good results we looked good for FIRE (financial independence, retired early). So, far so good. Purposely did not make a big deal of retiring, keeping things as low key as possible with no big trips or celebrations planned. I figured that if I did that type of thing, i'd be setting myself up for a let down. Really the things i do now during the day are what i have usually done during work years except i have more time for them. I am very content with my basic routine of morning coffee, read the news, yoga, mediation, walk the dog, run/bike/swim, go to gym (steam room is god send), read, prep dinner, practice foreign language, etc. I also track spending closely to keep an eye of finances. Any trips have been local and it is really nice to take mid week trips without getting caught up in the weekend crunch of folks heading outdoors. I am sure we will take some big trips but now can plan those for the off season to avoid the crowds. If i do get restless short term work and/or volunteering are my list, but no regrets about leaving the 9-5.

yes. expressing "great" like this was intended to indicate it is only great in a superficial way. i get paid a lot, have a reasonable commute, can handle the stresses of the job, have a good reputation at the company .......but work long hours and just don't really enjoy working there that much. it is a company that has undergone a lot of org changes which has meant a the organization is a bit chaotic, new people overly desperate to be associated with anything successful and lots of self-promotion and others in leadership roles who don't really know the difference between leadership and organizational hierarchy.

Pharma R&D for me. Parents were smart but both left school at 15 and had the type of jobs you'd expect to go with that. Fortunate enough to go to university in the UK in the mid 80s when tuition was free and students got a means tested (on parents) grant towards living costs. PhD then working in the Pharma industry for 30 years (8 in UK, rest in US). Looking back i feel like i wasted my youth studying hard and working weekends (during my PhD studies) when i should have enjoyed being young a bit more. Too much of a rush to get that career started. i encourage my kids to look for a career doing what they really want to do and not focus on salary and job security which is probably a backlash to my current situation. They have the common sense to know that for many it is a trade off.

I did school, uni etc and then f***ed about travelling the world with a surfboard under my arm for many years until i ran out of road and credit at the end of my 20's and had to suddenly grow up. Then I started at the real bottom and bought a great big textbook on computers and got a job just as the dotcom boom and Y2K rush subsided. Then worked 60 hour weeks for 15 years getting smarter and more experience, but fatter and more unhappy. Last 10 years I work more freelance. Now I work 2 or 3 years in a job then when it sucks I leave and get a new one somewhere else. I am always working- always finish one on a Friday and start the next one on the Monday. No security other than my ability to do a good job at a needed niche skill.

Bottom line and back to the OP's question - yes, for sure - if your job is really really sucking then make a plan, be brave and leave it. Sometimes you have to take a step backwards or sideways. Sometimes it might not be brilliant and you have to make another move 6 months later, but you always learn new things meet new people and at least it's a different shitty job. If you can avoid a pay cut that is good as well :)

For the person who was looking to give their kid some direction

I saw this last week and it resonated with me. I never had a "dream", I have always worked continuously and none of my career was predictable. Almost every opportunity came out of left field.........