Fellow Financially Mustachioed Men and Women:
I have reached a weird stage in my journey to FI, and I'm hoping for some advice from the community about how to proceed.
Since starting in earnest on the path to FI about 1.5 years ago (although I only found the online FI community and realized I wasn't a crazy weirdo, or at least, not an uncommonly crazy weirdo), I have managed to pay off over $100K in student loans and build a net worth of about $120K. About $80K of that is in non-retirement accounts, which would fund (without accounting for earnings in the interim) about 3 years of my current budget. A bit on the high side, but Chicago is not a super-cheap place to live.
That is possible due to a combination of frugal living (duh) and a high income from the fancypants law firm (double duh). It is the second thing that is really giving me trouble. Quite simply (and without calling anyone out, if they happen to link me to this post!), I loath it. I have insanely high stress levels every day. I get debilitating migraines at least twice a week, I frequently find myself looking over the edge of simply walking away and never returning, and often feel both extremely overworked and still unable to finish what I need to do in a day. I know it is irrational, but sometimes when the work load gets too high, I literally have to leave the office and walk around outside for ten minutes or so, just to stop from literally slugging someone, or throwing a monitor across my office, or some equally stupid thing. Put simply, I know that I cannot do this long term, and actually set a goal to quit six months after I paid off my student loans. That would've been about two months ago, but I'm still here. I thought the stress would improve after that, but it hasn't -- if anything, it's gotten worse, so I need to make a final decision.
I feel that I have F' This (or as jlcollinsnh puts it, F' You) money, in that I could, this very day, walk away and have three years to figure out how not to die of starvation and lack of shelter. However, that money increases at a 5 figure clip per month due to the aforementioned frugality and fancypants-stressinducing law firm dollars. There's also a bonus (likely coming in February) of about $25K after taxes, if I hit my target hours, which is currently true, but unlikely to remain so if I want to have any semblance of family time during the holidays. If I do stay for that, I will have to stay through the end of March, since we will be representing a client a trial starting at the end of January, and it would be unethical (although not illegal) to quit the day the bonus hit my checking account. I could pick up freelancing project-based work at a clip of something like $25-$30 per hour pretty easily, and basically as much of it as I want, and do some other side gigs to help pay the bills (real estate closings, for which I've just taken a course paid for by my current firm, come to mind), so it wouldn't be as if I would go from high income to zero income -- I think I could actually hit my budget numbers fairly easily, and do so working 9 to 5, instead of 8 to 7.
So my question is this: knowing everything I have written above (and with the ability to ask anything else you might want to know -- I'm an open book) should I just walk today? Should I prioritize my mental health (which I literally feel being chipped away on a daily basis), or should I just put my nose to the grindstone, stick it out until the end of March 2018 and walk away with three more years of freedom, and move into freelancing (or a second career altogether) at that point? Or should I just say fuck it, wait for the next time someone pushes me out over my line, and just walk away, since
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/06/08/happiness-is-the-only-logical-pursuit/?