Why I hate the weekends (2017)
Some possible solutions:<p>1) Ask for a 30 hour work week, or find a company that can offer this. Your salary should still be high enough to aim for a comfortable retirement at 65.<p>2) Adopt a more frugal lifestyle and increase your savings rate.<p>You need to save a few million dollars to retire with $40-$80k in investment income. It should be very possible to do this with a backend developer&#x27;s salary over a period of 10-15 years, and then you should be able to retire in your 30s or 40s. You should also aim to increase your salary by changing jobs every few years (or get a job at a FAANG.)<p>3) Build side projects or a startup and try to get some passive income (or an exit)<p>Write all your startup ideas down and keep looking for opportunities. It can be hard to build products in the evenings or weekends, especially if you&#x27;re already burnt out from your normal job. So this option works best when combined with part-time freelance work:<p>4) Become a freelancer and work part-time while you work on your own projects<p>Bonus: Move to a place with a very low cost of living.<p>Working 10-20 hours per week gives you a lot of free time and much longer weekends. But it also gives you a lot of time and energy to work on your own ideas.<p>Note that working 10 hours per week is a terrible idea if you just spend the rest of your time working on hobbies that don&#x27;t make any money. If you do that, then you won&#x27;t even be able to retire at 65, and you probably won&#x27;t be able to save money for emergencies. Only do this if you spend the rest of your time trying to build a business.<p>If you can&#x27;t get anything to work after ~10 years of trying, then you should still have plenty of time to go back to a full-time job and save for retirement.