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PM Manager, early 40s, married and ENM (Ethical Non Monogamous) AMA
So I spent past 20+ years in fintech, started out in consulting, then on a couple big broker dealers and ended up with a major hedge fund. Had a decent run. Money was good and steady. It wasn't overnight IPO style money but TC climbed steadily from 5 digits to 500K over 15 years. I was able to leverage it to buy properties (a couple in Manhattan + primary residence in the burbs), and helped wife start her business. About 5-6 years ago wife's business started taking off and the business income started catching up and surpassing my W2. As of 2019 she made about 3x what I made at my corporate job while my TC had plateaued and hovered around 500K for a few years. The money was great but we found ourselves constantly juggling work / family but never had time to actually enjoy life. I was doing 2 jobs at once - the regular 8 to 6 from my day job and then helping her deal with HR / Admin / Operations / IT issues at our own business, and being stressed out all the time. 2020 comes around and the fund I was at faced redemption and was starting layoffs. Having been contemplating a break for while I hinted to my boss that I wouldn't mind being put on the list. Sure enough I was given a very generous package to part ways. So for the past 6 months I've been helping out with the family biz, building out the operations team and automating the a lot of processes. We've been able to increase margins and sales 10% YoY. Profit set is to grow 20% this year despite having to shut down for 3 months due to COVID. Financially, forgoing my corporate job has not impacted our income at all, and may even pay more dividends for the family biz. Although this is something I had always thought about doing for a while - leaving finance to help grow the biz we started, I can't help but wonder about other potentials are out there. I feel like I am sacrificing my career to help with the family business, but selling my 60 hours a week for 1/3 or 1/4 of the income and letting my other half handle the stress all by herself just seems selfish and wrong. I've had numerous of calls from recruiters but haven't pursued anything. I'm in my mid 40s and I know if I don't get back into fintech action I will be stale and a lot less valuable very soon. So much exciting stuff going on with data and cloud computing in finance just feels wrong to sit on the side lines to do something else. What would you do? I see several options 1. Get back into the job market. Wife would hate it and we may face serious marriage problems. 2. Continue doing what I'm doing - grow the family biz and see where this leads us. This was my original plan and something I've fantasized doing for years, but now I am in it it just feels grass is greener on the other side? 3. Sell her business and I go back to corporate america - brought it up a couple times she doesn't like the idea.
Well from your wife's responses it sounds like there's really only one option
I’m in a similar situation except we have not made any sales yet. But I don’t miss corporate life at all. If I were in your shoes, I’d rather think about how to expand the family biz and never look back at the job market.
Sounds like you hit the jackpot. The family business is freedom, working for yourself. Never give that up to work for the man. Very easy decision
My short take: talk through all the options together with your wife and have her opinion count for a full 50%. You’ll ultimately be unhappy pursuing any other path forward. Also, sounds like you’re in a great situation overall. Remember to pause and celebrate that with her before too quickly going into FOMO mode.