I know of one or two supported by a high earning wife. But it seems rare.

Widen your social circle

Underrated comment and great advice.

If all your friends and acquaintances look like you and don’t have differing perspectives, then you should totally widen your social circle.

Speak less, learn more. Ask questions.

Break out of the loop. Say no to the algorithm.

To be a little more helpful, I'll add that people DO take “quality of life” careers "without either inheriting or getting rich first".

Just ask your average gigging musician, writer, designer, and so on.

People who run "lifestyle" business and refuse to grow them outside a living income.

People who opted out of the rat race, from the start, or mid-career, and downsized, without being rich, to have more time with family, reduce stress, etc.

>Underrated comment and great advice.

useless swipe and naive advice, especially in this day and age. I can barely make friends who share my hobbies, what hope do I have in breaking the ice with someone completely different? I'm not going to specifically crash other meetups just to "expand my horizons".

>Speak less, learn more.

yes, that's why inroverts dont make as many friends, and are instead arguing with each other on Hacker News.

I started a video game company. We are making kingmakers now.

Best of luck with your upcoming release. It looks pretty fun. You seem to be getting some pretty decent buzz as well from a couple things I've seen elsewhere. You definitely have the hook down (modern guns versus medieval battles).

I think I'd be super happy with like, 10% of your buzz for my game's release (whenever that is, I'm only working on it part time), but it's a fairly small puzzle game (and still only programmer art at the moment) without a strong hook (it's just a sequel to an old free game of mine that did well in the past), so it has nowhere near as broad of an appeal, so it's to be expected.

What's your situation that allowed you to be able to go full time on the game?

I actually did a write up on this exact topic recently.

https://www.reddit.com/r/indiegames/comments/1bu3hlv/how_i_w...

Best of luck. I'm planning on doing the same in the near-ish future, without anywhere near as much buzz and no staff. I accept that I'll probably need to step back into industry if I don't make a huge splash. It's a rough industry.

I know someone who was a great EE and quit at about 30 to become a park ranger. He was even better at that and is still doing it 30 years later and he couldn't be happier. He always had a bohemian & ecological mindset so it didn't seem like a surprise when he made the shift.

Pretty much every faculty member at any university has chosen quality of life over getting rich. Most of them did not inherit or start out rich.

It's easy to find examples within a career though, if you find that relevant. I'm a (US) physician that chooses to work a federal government job rather than private / for-profit sector, making about half as much money in exchange for numerous QoL benefits.