Lest people start throwing daggers at me, I must insist that college teaching is also like wearing “golden handcuffs”. I am a non-tenure track instructor (the best you can usually get at a university with just a master’s degree, and if I was tenure track, then I would have to do tons of research with tons of publications), my current happieness largely depends on the longevity of my current (excellent) department head, and I make less money than my sister did when she was working at a Target supercenter (I don’t just teach the summer class because I love to teach, although I do love teaching most of the time).

Still, I think I would be a lot less happy with my life if I had to punch a clock in the business world, even if that meant making double my current salary.

What would I do? Surprisingly, I actually would like to do the same things – teach at a college level and write a book. I have a novel in mind that I haven’t been able to stick with. Mostly because I just don’t think I’m ready. I have the story, but the characters just haven’t quite revealed themselves to me yet. And the family part – that’s the whole reason you do it.

I live in a relatively cheap city because I like it and it just happens to be affordable. I bought a small house and drive a very used car because it’s all I could afford and still not live month to month.

I have a very nice pension plan which would allow me to retire at just about the same lifestyle (including insurance) in seven years. But pension plans change, so I’ve also been saving additional money so I can retire in seven years regardless of what happens.

I don’t know how to switch to part-time. The part-time jobs at my employer all pay much less per hour than I’m earning now, and taking one would greatly reduce my pension (due inflation, the last years count the most for pensions).

Another idea is to look for some other (more fun) higher-paying job so I can quit early and use my savings to hold me until my pension kicks in (14 years from now if I quit today).

I’ve thought of starting some kind of side business, but the ones I’ve thought of are time-consuming and not lucrative. Even my old favorite moonlight job has increased the pay only once in the past 15 years, so I don’t work there anymore.

So, I’m likely to stay with my current employer, at my lovely low-stress job (or another one) for the full seven years. I just make sure I have fun on my time off. Oh, I do get more and more vacation time each year, which I do take, so I do get a small amount of extra time to do as I like as time goes on! (So far I get off about 4 weeks of vacation plus about 2 weeks of holidays each year in addition to all weekends). So, I have a weird golden handcuffs thing going on.