you might feel different about this tradeoff when you're older (read: less easily in demand) or have family to support.

There is no such thing as having money to burn at the middle-class level unless you want to live on peanuts when you're in retirement.

To begin with, I'm not a person who 'burns' money - I'm sure I'd be in a different place if I was.

When I say 'enough money' I don't just mean enough money for current expenses. In my opinion, there really is an amount of money beyond which you're probably just adding a measure of unhappiness to your life, if you're making money your first-order objective.

You are correlating pursuing a higher salary with longer hours. That doesn't have to be the case. I quadrupled my income by just going freelance and I generally work 20-30 hours a week.

By focusing on money you can actually reduce your overall burden. In my humble opinion this far and away beats taking some low salary job just to get more time.

“I wish I had less money”. Said no one ever.

While you are busy not being concerned about money. I bet your employer is glad to be getting you cheaply.

A great many people raise families and live comfortable lives on less money than a somewhat below market dev salary. If you want to live in the middle of San Francisco or buy luxury goods then sure, you need to strive to earn a lot of money, but that doesn't describe most people.

Well, I guess I didn’t make it explicit that my being an “expert beginner” at 35 also meant that I was making a way below market salary and was (and I still am) way behind my retirement goals.

And with this being both my abs my wife’s second marriage didn’t do us any favors.

My base salary now is the same as it was pre-Covid pay cut and was more than enough to reach our short term needs and slowly meet our long term goals.

The RSUs+Bonus goes straight to long term goals - paying off the mortgage, cash flowing college for my son and saving for retirement.

I don’t care about leaving things behind - I care about not being 70 years old and broke. The best case outcome is that we both spend our last penny when we are on our death bed.