No argument there. And no one is saying it makes economic sense to pursue it using traditional training scenarios. It's only working for those who've ended up having the requisite time via their prior bad decision-making!
You set yourself up perfectly for your second career!
I don't know if it'll be a second career, but I'm in a wildly different boat than many with the house and cars paid for, no kids to put through college, and a lingering idea that even if I have no current desire to go to the airlines (but do have "shiny jet syndrome, what pilot doesn't???! GRIN), that it may be time to figure out an exit strategy from IT... whether that's knocking back to part-time, or just leaving altogether for a year or so... just to go pile on some ratings. The industry is sucking up CFIs into the airlines, and they're looking for folks who can teach and stick around a while, which might fit well for where I'm "at" these days.
Tax season always brings out the spreadsheet twiddling for me, and so this weekend Karen and I did some twiddling (she likes paper, I like spreadsheets... ha... so we compared her paper to my spreadsheet after we worked them up separately) doing a "worst case analysis" of, "You quit your IT job tomorrow..." The freaky part was, it didn't come out that bad... in fact, we both calculated it at CURRENT expenses, which have things in there that we wouldn't need to do because they're driven by me being gone lots of time, and... well, the list is boring.
But the point is... some of that stuff naturally disappears if I were to quit, and we left it IN the budgets we did... and the budget actually squeaks by and works. With that stuff "gone" it easily works. (Helps that Karen just popped back up to Director level at her job, AND got a small raise, and is truly in the specialty she loves and it shows no signs of slowing down... she's a wound care nurse, and if there's one thing humans seem to do well, is injure themselves! GRIN...)
So "economic sense"
@LDJones ? Not a lick of it... OTHER than plowing through ratings without idle time in there to have to forget/re-do things, wouldn't happen. Personally, from the traditional fiscal sense, it would be an fiscal disaster of epic proportions for stuff like retirement and savings... but... a SURVIVABLE one as far as only a true "emergency" would ding into any investments we have. And what the heck have I been saving all these years for, if not to have options?
I should start a more detailed "Talk me out of this stupidity..." thread... but I haven't officially talked to anyone at work about making any sort of change. (Hell, nowadays they can probably find this thread if they even look for ten seconds, so maybe they'll find it, get "offended" I'm courting another suitor, and toss my butt to the street! Hahaha... doubt it, but hey, anything is possible... there's at least one other pilot at work who's not active here, but knows I like the place...)
I've thought about doing it the slow way... trying to cram things in nights and weekends, but the commute is just too far to the office plus doing that, and the hours of IT are just too ridiculous when big projects hit.
So it may just be "time" to go do it...
Interestingly THAT wasn't the hard decision to make... nor was it hard to do the math to decide if we'd starve to death (kinda already knew we wouldn't... haha...), the hard decision is picking an actual DATE to walk in and say, "I need to make a change and here's what I want to go do... if you guys want me here part time, great. If you don't want me here part-time, also fine. Want me as a consultant to do specific projects, also good. Want to toss my butt on the street right now, cool with that too."
I don't think from their perspective there's ever a good time for that conversation (always something going on, it never ends) and from my perspective I will probably drag it out a while for no good reason.
On a scale of "taking a year off" a additional month or two of paychecks in the bank, doesn't amount to a hill of beans... for our situation anyway. I know that's not normal for a lot of folks. And I'm still the old school type who keeps thinking to myself, "Ok maybe quit at end of April after we know exactly what happens on taxes... or end of May right as flying weather gets nice... or June... right before Oshkosh and use up all the vacation time left between now and then to do something..." Hahaha... excuses excuses.
There's other stuff I "need" to get done if I do this, also... some home projects, and some personal trips... that I just can't squeeze into the current paid vacation time, and I haven't really asked about unpaid vacation time or a significant amount of leave, but I don't get the impression it would go over too well with a couple of the personalities. Can't ever say for sure until you ask... but I doubt it.
Busting your butt for 20+ years at various jobs (sometimes three) to make sure the bills are paid plus more, sure does build up some interesting fears in your head about just walking out of a job. I don't think I've ever done that for a reason other than going to a better job, or the one time I got fired... and that firing led to everyone above me except a Director getting fired for doing it... so it was wrong. CTO was pretty ticked... but that's a story for another day.
Maybe I'll go start that thread... it's really weird to have an argument with yourself about whether you should walk into the office and "start the process of quitting" for no good reason other than "I have other things I want to go do"... it's downright weird to me... doesn't mesh well with 20+ years of "doing whatever I had to do...". Ha...
