3 ms·

Have you considered a different university? Somewhere where the cost of living is more in line with the salary? The big advantage of academia I general is in h

Have you considered a different university? Somewhere where the cost of living is more in line with the salary? The big advantage of academia I general is in how much free time you have. Classes are more-or-less only 6 months of the year, and there's very little prep work from year 2. Even 4 classes a day is only like half the day. In the business world you're looking at min of 40 hours a week (much, much more if you're scrabbling for income), maybe a couple weeks vacation a year (in which, trust me, the last thing you'll want yo do is research.) Sounds to me like you're already in a perfect gig for doing what you want to do, you just need to figure out how to make it work for you. Or switch to the next best thing, research + teaching.

throwaway21042 3y ago
Thank you for your input; I’m the OP. Based on reading the comments, I’ve realized that starting a full-fledged business may be counterproductive to my goals of wanting free time to pursue unfettered research due to the demands of starting a business with any hope of replacing my Silicon Valley researcher salary, due to the time investment necessary to start such a business. However, I’m interested in pursuing side ventures for making money, such as side projects. Even if they doesn’t generate enough profit for me to live on, it may be enough for me to eventually shift to a lecturer position without incurring too much financial hardship, which will also give me more time to do the type of research I want (especially during the summers). If I’m able to make even just $20,000/yr from a side project that doesn’t consume too much of my time, that would go a long way for me for reaching this goal.