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OP Here again:
Thanks for the responses.
I'm 53. Assuming I live until Im 93 thats 40 years I need to plan for. 40 years exposed to the long tail. Seems totally implausible given how bad we are at estimating risk. Given the volatility of our world its hard to imagine what will reliably be around in 40 years.
I quit work previously just to rest and recover from a very fun and stressful ~30 years working in tech. Before I quit I was a zombie and I had no plan but for brain to recover. I took 3 years off, travelled a lot, learned a lot, did lots of athletic type stuff. Once brain recovered I became a crazed enthusiastic learner, lots of math but reading and devouring knowledge. I'd often make a written plan for the month so projects wouldn't step on each other. Is a blast and I'd sometime overwork and need to veg out for a few days.
I've been at the new job a year. I considered it only because of covid, because recruiters kept calling. Seemed reasonable because I couldn't take college classes in person and international travel was so messed up. I took this new job because I thought I'd love it but I've really disliked it from the start. Problem is they're paying so much its just eye popping to me, is hard to walk away. Now with the analysis it looks like even if they doubled this new number it makes little difference to my long term outlook. Is there a name for when your investments grow to overwhelm your salary?
I did consider if there was something special that would be worth working for. A week, a month, a year. Really if we wanted something special today we'd have bought it - and we don't. Don't want a new car, or an embarrassingly expensive mountain bike. We don't want to eat at restaurants more often than we do. We've been talking for a decade about wanting a better hood and range in the kitchen but its tough to find anyone right now because covid. We're getting a tankless water heater so we can take a full hot jacuzzi bath for first time in 15 years (house originally had two water heaters.)
If I could snap my fingers I might like a cabin somewhere quiet away from tourists that has good access to mtb trails - and food. Kerala? Dolomites? Galicia? Pyrenees? I could buy that right now. What I can't casually buy are really top properties, and I can't 'afford' them even if I work another decade, the taxes and maintenance? Lost opportunity? I feel unreasonably fortunate, but then there's a whole 'nother level of lucrative that isn't available on my current path. Can't imagine what its like today for people that had 10x-100x my assets 10 years ago. Is healthy for me to know that at my current rate I'll never get 'there'.
I'm not read up on retirement literature but it looks like everyone's got a future asset band and once the obvious is handled (save, keep it in pants, don't be stupid) it seems the future is mostly controlled by outside factors (luck, economy). Is there a name for that?
I trained myself to focus and deliver on a paid job at the expense of everything else. The work was the thing for so long and I give it 100%. Now I'm finding that the work really isn't relevant to my future so why am I doing it? There is some difficulty getting my intuition to believe the logical argument, its like I'm a machine inside. I know I'm going to be using the new stuff I learned at the new job, I believe it will be useful in lots of places. I'm not going to be idle but I will be happy not having so many meetings and setting my own work schedule. The mountains are calling.
I'm going to checkout bogleheads, maybe they have a unique perspective that can help me tolerate planning against that long tail. My intuition doesn't believe fidelity planner and all the professionals that are telling me the future is fine.
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