I love having postdocs too, but what after that? I run out of postdocs. At some point people are going to stop considering you for math postdocs because you've

I love having postdocs too, but what after that? I run out of postdocs. At some point people are going to stop considering you for math postdocs because you've been out of the PhD too long. And while it's great to make 40-50K and think about math all the time, the cost in stability of moving a family around every two years is ridiculous and unsustainable. Ok, now you've moved your family around for 6 years or done the long-distance thing and no one will hire you for a postdoc anymore and no one will hire you for a faculty job. What then? Perma-adjuncthood. Now you get to go back to 30k a year and still have no job security, and less time for research. So what was the point of that sacrifice? If you want to do research in a field like math and you can't get a professorship, you need to have an outside income that still allows 30 hours a week to think. If you want to do research in math and you can get a professorship, you need to protect your time fiercely even if you're at a research school and you're close to doomed if you are teaching 3-3 or 4-4. (I've seen some people do it.) So that dream of working on things that interest you with very little oversight is temporary pretty much no matter what.