As noted elsewhere, that's not the trade-off being made (as we're assuming like-for-like work conditions, thus equal free time in both cases). But it's a fun e

As noted elsewhere, that's not the trade-off being made (as we're assuming like-for-like work conditions, thus equal free time in both cases). But it's a fun exercise in compound interest, so I'd recommend doing the math to discover how many years of extra retirement you get from working, say, a full year of 80 hour weeks, billed hourly at your current salary, at age 30. Once you've gotten past the steep part of the salary curve, that starts to look like a really good tradeoff. Put an extra, un-looked-for, quarter million into the market early in life, and you can essentially not worry any further about saving for retirement. That is, you can move forward spending every cent you earn (or only working as many months per year as necessary to cover expenses) and still retire as per usual at age 60.