I struggled over the decision to quit my job for months. There were two main components to it: the financial and the psychology. The psychology of it was by far the hardest, but I will talk about the finances first.
Finances
I'm extremely fortunate that I'm in a strong financial position and can quit my job without having to worry about the decrease in income. I saved for a rainy day and invested well. In the vernacular of the FIRE movement, I am firmly in a position to CoastFIRE. My retirement is set; what I have now, plus 10 to 20 years growth will be enough to ensure a comfortable retirement. I can probably even LeanFIRE now at age 45, but I don't want to live that way. So I need just enough income to cover my expenses for the next 10 years. My expenses are about 90K annually, living in a high cost of living (HCOL) area. My wife's income can cover about 70K of that, so worse case, I will need to come up with 20K of income a year. A job with 50K salary would do that, or a good side hustle. Point being, while I will still need to work and hope I can earn close to what I did before, I don't NEED a high stress, high paying job like I had before. My savings provide a long 10-15 year runway for me to take a break from work, but I'm hoping to take less than a year off from working.
Psychology
Trying to get over my mental hang-ups about quitting a job was my biggest hurdle. I've never quit a job before without having another one lined up. That just isn't done, I thought. And what kind of example would I be setting for my kids if I just quit? Am I being dumb? What would people think/say? Will I be able to find another job at my age? Will I end up a bum mooching off my wife?
All these thoughts prevented me from quitting at first. It wasn't until some physical symptoms manifested that things became more real. My mental health was stretched to its limit, way past it actually, but mental health just doesn't seem as urgent or important, though it shouldn't be that way. My wife had already suggested months before that I quit and rest. But still, I tried to tough it out for another few months. Only when some alarming physical symptoms started appearing did I finally decided to pull the plug and quit my job.
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