Your Career Is Not A Life Sentence
"How disgraceful is the lawyer whose dying breath passes while at court, at an advanced age, pleading for unknown litigants and still seeking the approval of ignorant spectators."
— Seneca, On The Brevity of Life
As we end the month of July (7 months completed, 5 months to go!), this is a tough meditation to compare to trading.
Work wise, I have worked with people who wanted to retire as early as possible and others who were happy to work until state retirement age, which initially was 60 for women and 65 for men. Then that got changed to 65 for both men and women and has been pushed up a few times since! I can currently get my state pension when I hit 67 years of age, so the government are saving two years on my state pension payments!
I am in the privileged position of being able to work part time (3 days per week) which I combine with trading.
The full time trading pros can have a nice flexible trading lifestyle and may only need a few quality trades on the days when they trade. The beauty of this of course is that they can pick when they want to trade and are not slaves to an employer!
Having that nice balance of work and leisure time, is a great position to be in and it most certainly also means that you are not constantly working until you are carted off in a coffin, as they put it in today's meditation!
I think if you can have that balance of being employed and topping up your salary through trading, "Your career is not a life sentence."