Hi, I wanted to share my experiences here, because of how close I came to making a huge mistake, and also how it illustrates the benefits of going your own way.

I'm coming up on 40, a bachelor with no kids and a reasonably high-paying job in IT. I've always been good at saving and investing money (having no wife or dependents helps a lot), and have accumulated a sizable nest egg. My job is fairly stressful, though, and I've been looking for ways to "reward" myself for my hard work by indulging in some luxury spending. After all, without kids to provide for, isn't that what money is for?

And a few months ago, I decided what kind of luxury spending I wanted: I was going to become a sugar daddy. I was never much good with women when I was younger, and now that I've gained confidence, women in their late thirties really aren't worth getting excited about. But this sounded like a great idea: a hot young woman waiting to spend evenings with me after I got home from the office. It's the ultimate luxury spending for a man with a time-intensive job, right?

I got into the sugar community, signed up for Seeking Arrangement, and learned all the rules. Sugar babies start at around $2000 cash allowance per month, plus the cost of dates and presents, so tack on another $500. $2500 a month? Sure, I can do that for a year, I thought! My stocks made almost that much last year, I could tap my investment accounts and hope the bull market continues!

And then, I realized what I was about to do. I was about to pay a *full-time salary*, $30,000 a year after taxes, to a girl whose "work" was going to consist of seeing me once a week, eating the dinner I bought her, and having sex. I would be handicapping my financial future and putting off retirement potentially by years, to support someone who openly did not respect me and would almost certainly date other men on the side. And men do this all the time. I saw posts about men who landed $100k jobs, and the very first thing they did before providing for their own futures was to become a sugar daddy. Femininity is such a scarce commodity in this day and age that just providing it once a week can guarantee a girl a middle-class lifestyle without work. And I was going to be the sucker paying for it, the punchline of a joke. I couldn't look myself in the mirror.

Well, instead of paying a sugar baby for fake affection, I'm paying *me*. I've decided to quit my stressful job and spend a year relaxing and travelling, living for myself. I've given notice and now all my time belongs to me! And I can do this, because I'm a bachelor. Imagine being an unhappily married man my age, like so many sugar daddies are. They do it because this is their last chance at exchanging money for happiness, even if it leads to divorce.

My best advice from this near-mistake is: don't get so caught up in your career that the stress of work drives you to make terrible decisions. The more work stress you experience, the more lavish pleasures you think you need to compensate.
As a bachelor, you don't *have* to spend every waking moment on the hamster wheel, producing never-ending streams of cash for other people. Produce as much as you need for yourself, and enjoy it. Freedom is a privilege so many men my age give up for so little.