I recently ran into a guy I vaguely knew at school, and hadn’t seen in person for 50 years.
I knew from snippets I’d read in the business pages over the years how rich and successful he was. I had a FaceTime during Covid-19 with him and some other school friends from long ago. He was spending the pandemic flying in his private jet from tropical resort to tropical resort.
“I’m hoping maybe I’ll meet some dolly bird and get married again,” he said mournfully, lapsing into the language of an earlier age. He looked sad and unhappy living the dream, as he technically was.
It turned out that for decades he’d been reading my stuff in newspapers and magazines. “I loved your article about Michael Jackson when you were working with him on that book,” he said. “And there was that really interesting thing you wrote about the richest city in China. And I shed actual tears when you wrote about your poor wife dying.”
It was gratifying to know someone actually remembered all these oddball adventures, tragedies and much else that I’d had, but almost a bit disturbing.
“I’ll tell you something, mate. I’d trade what I’ve got for the life you’ve had,” he said. “Making money is easy when you know how, but it’s bloody boring. And you don’t know who your friends are because people only want to know you because you’re wealthy.”
“It has been fantastic,” I replied, “But I don’t have any money. I keep working because I love it, but if I stopped, or if health problems stopped me, I wouldn’t have much in reserve to pay the bills. I’d survive, but only at a pinch.”
“Trust me, being rich is overrated,” he said as we parted. “I’m still envious.”
Financially, my old school pal had been living it large. But emotionally, his dream life was not doing it for him.
We were speaking as the lucky ones, of course. Thousands of people in the UK are having to work into their seventies because they cannot afford to retire.
For young people, when so many career options are threatened by AI, the idea of getting your dream job – or any job – seems less likely than ever. So much, then, for wanting to be an astronaut, work with animals, play for Liverpool, make millions as an “influencer”. Many are, understandably, showing signs of prioritising financial security over personal fulfilment.
Luck has a habit of disguising itself as wisdom. But from my end of the telescope, I do have some hopefully worthwhile advice. I’ve mostly done what I always dreamed I would – writing. And I don’t continue working past the age of 70 purely for the money, even though I need it if I’m not to live an abstemious pensioner’s life. I enjoy working.
I am the poorest by far of all my contemporaries, who’ve almost all retired comfortably, but many say they envy me. I know from multiple rich friends of my age that pursuing wealth too relentlessly is sterile and unsatisfying.
Making your work the centre of your life to the detriment of everything else is also a bad idea. Sure, Sigmund Freud believed work and sex are the two fundamental human drives. But you need more in the mix. Family, friends, plans, and, of course, money.
Yes, that stuff. As my grandmother used to say, money doesn’t make you happy; however, it does help you suffer in comfort.
So have dreams, and pursue them, but don’t dismiss money as being beneath you, or too bourgeois or suburban to worry about – as I have repeatedly. Don’t live above your means (not too far, anyway) as I have. And don’t ignore pensions as boring – they are incredibly boring, but less so when they are giving you a small but reliable backup income. Through no real ability on my part, I have a handful of decent ones.
I’d also advise to pursue your passion with a plan, and be realistic about your chance of success. Have a Plan B and a Plan C ready to go if Plan A doesn’t materialise.
If I’m being honest, my supposedly brilliant dream career hasn’t been everything I hoped. To coin a phrase, I’m among the best in my price range. In football terms, I’ve wobbled between the bottom end of the Premiership and the lower half of the Championship. I’m the Luton Town of my world, not the Arsenal.
I feel I’ve let myself down by not getting a novel published, something for people to enjoy – and perhaps for my kids to make money from – after I’m dead. I have an absolute belter I’m thinking of starting, but even if I do, it’s almost certain I’ll have to self-publish it, because no publisher is going to be interested in a novel by an old, straight, British white man who’s not even on the telly.
I could feel bitter and twisted about this. Seeing TV personalities sell millions of books they often didn’t even write is irksome. But I try not to be. The good news is that thanks to technology, it’s easier than ever to do what you dream of, and do it from anywhere. It’s highly unlikely that you’ll succeed to the extent you hoped – almost nobody does. But you will still scratch whatever itch it is you have.
Many dreams are actually better as hobbies. Your – and my – self-published novel probably won’t become a bestseller. Even your friends, who loyally buy it, likely won’t read it. But you will still be proud of it.
A friend of ours is a cleaner from the Philippines. A devout Christian, she has a hard life with little financial reward. But thanks to her faith, she’s always been relentlessly cheerful and optimistic. And now, in her sixties, she’s become a YouTube star, singing loud, joyous American favourites very nearly in tune. She has 250,000 followers back home and abroad, which brings her a few dollars. And it’s clear that her 15 minutes of fame has made her happy and fulfilled.
I know many other examples of the same, tech-enabled phenomenon – from unpublished writers now happy to self-publish and sell a few copies, to actors happy doing amdrams or extra roles, to part-time entrepreneurs. As one experienced career coach wrote recently: “Ordinary people create extraordinary things with a determination to ‘follow their dream’. Amazing things do happen. But don’t give up the day job first.”
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I sometimes wonder whether, if I suddenly hit the jackpot and came into the kind of cash many of my contemporaries have stashed away, would I carry on working?
The chances are that I would, yes. I treasure typing away on a deadline in my shed at the bottom of the garden on some topic in the news and knowing it will be published. It’s probably more stressful than is good for me. But the sense of still being involved, albeit tangentially, in current events is precious.
I’d actually quite like to die in the saddle, with my head slumped over my keyboard and my nose on the Z, producing thousands of pages of Zzzzs. Not for a while, thanks, but one day.
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