The family business is still rocking along and paying me about $10,000/month (before taxes).
No, but I'd get a plan together to make myself happier, such as
1) Have my siblings buy me out of the business and end that headache. Partnerships rarely work out, and family dynamics make them even harder.
2) Put my legal and business smarts on the job market to find something closer to home with normal hours, like college administration, non-profit or government post.
If you are living on less than $50k/year, you can surely support yourself with a lower paying but more balanced job until your assets catch up and generate what you need, possibly only $1,250,000 or so plus some part time work. Good luck!
Update: I am about two and a half months into the new government gig and have not had a single moment of regret. Quitting my high paying job had the potential to be one of the best decisions or one of the worst of my life, and it has turned out to be a great decision so far. The work is more meaningful than what I was doing for a mega corp. Getting home at 5:15 versus 6:30-6:45 everyday has made a huge difference on my quality time spent with my DW and kiddos.
One unexpected result of taking the new gig is that I have not been as hard core about ER as I was before. I used to read this forum multiple times a day. Now I read it once a week, if that. My desire to retire in my 30s seems to have been a product of the really bad work environment and commute that I had. Now I am shooting for 40 when my government pension will be fully vested.
The family business is still rocking along and paying me about $10,000/month (before taxes). I am urging my siblings to hire someone to run and grow it for the three of us. Net worth (including house) has grown to 1.05M.
Thank you all that responded to my original post and helped me think through this decision.
Read (most) of this thread for the first time tonight...
It was easy to predict that 100% revenue from one customer was not a good idea.... and having the people run it wanting to coast is another sign that things will not work out... it is not surprising that someone else came along and stole the customer.... (you did not say that happened, so I could be wrong)....
I would have put some time into that firm... a NPV of that cash flow was over $1.5 mill.... so you let over 50% of your net worth go up in smoke...
I have no regrets. The biz income lasted long enough to nudge me out of the high paying corporate gig.
Here's an update:
The family business is in a death spiral. They lost nearly 100% of the account. I am no longer receiving distributions and my siblings guaranteed payments have been cut back to next to nothing as they try to find new accounts. ...
Interesting thread that I had to go back and read from the beginning. Something I'm not following - who determines the distributions and your "siblings guaranteed payments" (salaries?)? Was this based on some sort of formula when the business was created?
-ERD50
The guaranteed payments to my siblings (which we considered their salary) was spelled out in the operating agreement per a formula. It started out at 137k/year and went up or down (max of 8%) based on whether gross profit went up or down. The first year they grew gross profit by 6%. The bait and switch my siblings pulled was that their original amount was intended to pay them for all the effort they were going to put into diversifying. It was also largely set by our dad. Then they decided they only wanted a 40 hour work week and the single account was secure. Around the time we set up the business, my brother tried to switch from a formula to a percentage of gross profit. I wouldn't agree to it. He recently told me he didn't grow the company because I didn't agree to a pay structure that would incentivize him to grow it.
The distributions were split 1/3 to each of us.
Ultimately, I believe they didn't diversify because they were blinded by the amount of money they were making (altogether over $250k/year each) and they didn't want to put effort into something they knew I would own 1/3 of.
+1. I would add, why not rent a tiny apt. in the city? Spend weekends home, then drive to work, spend a night in the apt., drive home-rinse and repeat. T & Th in NYC, 3 nites at home plus weekends. (Many professional people travel away from home that much). For the difference in pay between current job and offered job, you could easily pull it off. Your commute would be cut big time with min. disruption of home life. Wouldn't have to do it forever, maybe another couple of years and then pull the trigger. You might even find a roommate to share the expenses.With such a large salary right now($200K/yr), why don't you just move closer to work? If you can knock the round trip commute down from 3 hours to 1 or less then that would be what i'd plan to do. If moving closer to work would result in a significantly higher cost of living then i'd probably go with the government job.