Algebra of Wealth

 One of my father's pearls of wisdom that he passed down to me was "happiness is a well paying job."  I followed his advice and became an accountant.  

On the other hand, I convinced my college roommate Scott to follow his passion (painting) instead of becoming a high earning dentist.  Thus, I knew different than to follow my father's advice...but, I did.

Some time ago, on Michael Smerconish's Saturday morning show on CNN, he interviewed Scott Gallaway, a professor at NYU's Stern School of Business.  He recently wrote a book called Algebra of Wealth.

In the book, Gallaway's focus for young people is “primarily about earning an income — and you’re going to need a decent amount of it.”  Of course, each of us must decide how much of an income is enough.  What life style do we want?

Gallaway writes that you should follow your talent more so than your passion and increase your earning potential where you can. Achieving financial freedom will help eliminate economic anxiety (not earning enough to support your chosen life style).  To him, economic anxiety is our number one problem.

As an example of stupidity in our choices, Gallaway points to the huge amount of people who want to be actors, an industry where almost 99% of whose members earn very little.  Former roommates Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall once had to work at menial jobs to support their ambition to become actors.  Whatever happened to them?

Similar to acting, Scott's chosen field of art is one where it is also difficult to make a living.  I believe he suffered from economic anxiety his whole life.  But, I don't think he regretted his decision to pursue his passion.

Me on the other hand, I followed my father's and Gallaway's advice and I regret doing so.  I wish I had followed my passion, like I advised Scott to do.

In my forty year experience working, my job satisfaction had little to do with the work I was doing.  It had everything to do with the people I was working with.  Did we like, respect and treat each other well...or not?