It's interesting how often people ask what you do for a living when you first meet them.
I find that they ask "What do you do?" And so I tell them the things I do. Some show genuine interest in getting to know me and some follow up with some variation of "But money?!" The answer they get to that very much depends on my mood that day.
I actually rarely told people what my profession was unless I actually wanted to get to know them, because I'm one of those professionals where the moment people find out, people have A LOT of questions, and even more opinions.
I usually answered with "I'm a consultant", which was my side hustle. If they don't really care, that checks the "what do you do?" box well enough for them to move on most of the time. Sometimes they might want to know in what field, and rarely much more than that.
One doesn't need to be retired early to have a need for firm boundaries.
Lots of good points in here, thanks! I completely agree it depends on the situation, and that you really have no obligation to give more info than you want to. Showing confidence in your decisions always helps, too, as people tend to take their cues from how you present yourself. If you seem evasive they can see you as untrustworthy. I do believe it's important to have a story to tell about yourself--but that you 100% get to decide what to share in that story.
The "what do you do for a living" question always strikes me as really asking: "how do you contribute in a meaningful way to the world?" I try to start with "in my career I've done x, y, z" and then talk about the things I'm most proud of, transitioning from things I've done at work to "but what I'm really excited about right now is [fill in hobby/ side project/ volunteer work]."
Something simple that worked since I'm not even close to traditional retirement age: When I left my last job I changed my LinkedIn to self-employed as "_____ Strategist" and listed the things I most enjoyed from my career as my areas of expertise. People reach out every so often and it's kind of fun to have calls to share knowledge, to be honest. (And it's funny to me how just declaring myself an expert in what I like doing has random strangers reaching out about it. If I had realized this earlier and tried to make a business out of it, I probably could have avoided years of drudgery, ha!)
99% of the time it's absolutely not that profound of a question. That's why few people ever asked me any follow up questions when I said I was a consultant. "Consultant" means virtually nothing, if people cared, they would ask more, but they often don't. "So what do you do?" is more of a reflexive question than anything else, I even find myself automatically almost asking it when talking to new people and have to catch myself not to do it.
There's no bigger meaning to the question beyond the fact that we've all been conditioned to ask it, and don't have a ubiquitous alternative.
You're spot on about the importance of how you say things though. When I don't want to be questioned about something, I simply give off my "I don't owe you any explanation" vibe, and very few people will ask any follow up questions.
Even when I now say I'm "retired", if I don't want to explain, people get the message and they don't probe. They'll often say "but you're so young!" And if I don't feel like treating that as a question, then I don't. I just say "yep" and leave it at that.
On the very rare times that someone I don't care about is being pushy and insisting that they are entitled to explanations, I'll proffer "are you trying to ask me about my personal finances?" and that will almost always silence even the most entitled pain in the ass.
If I'm talking to someone I actually care about, I'll handle it very differently, but I'm extremely open with the people I care about.
