Passion Poverty Career: Don’t Let Your Kids Fall Into One

One of the reasons I accepted Portfolio Penguin’s book deal in 2019 was to demonstrate to my kids the importance of work. Not working sets a bad example if you are a FIRE parent.

If I spent two and a half years ideating, writing, editing, and marketing a book they could eventually find in a bookstore, hopefully they’d take their own academics seriously too. Little did I know I was signing up for a passion poverty career.

By writing a book, I could create something tangible my kids could see and hold. A finished product that connected the dots between years of school, discipline, and effort. Something real.

But then I realized something that made me a little sad.

Writing Books Is A Passion Poverty Career (PPC)

Despite writing two national bestsellers in Millionaire Milestones and Buy This Not That, by income standards I would be considered low income if writing books were my only source.

Making a livable wage as a professional writer is extremely difficult. Most writers do it on the side, the same way most actors wait tables while waiting for their break.

Even authors whose books reach the top 0.3% of all books sold in a given year rarely clear $100,000 a year from writing alone, thanks to how advances and royalties are structured. It’s a tough business.

But most writers aren’t in it for the money. We write because we have something to say, something that might delight a reader or solve a real problem in their life. This is why I’m writing my third book with Portfolio Penguin, Your Children Will Be OK, out in Fall 2027.

I could not support a family of four in San Francisco on book income alone. We would have to downsize to a one or two bedroom apartment, even with both children in public school. No more food delivery. No more weekly date nights. Vacations would consist almost entirely of staycations. At least I would be able to qualify for low-income housing.

If you don’t believe me, The New Yorker once profiled a New York Times bestselling author earning only $49,000 a year. That number should humble every aspiring writer.

The median income earned by authors is roughly $10,000 a year. By the time my kids graduate college in 14 to 17 years, the median rent for a two bedroom apartment in San Francisco could easily be $10,000 a month compared to ~$6,200 today. To spend a fortune on college tuition and then try to make it as a writer is likely a negative return on education endeavor.

A Bittersweet Discovery On The Sofa

One morning after dropping the kids off at school, I came home and settled onto the sofa to write. Tucked into the crevice of a sofa cushion was a small stack of papers, so I pulled them out.

There I found a hand-drawn cover that read: “the rabbit Seal and Lamb book!”

My heart melted as a proud father. I immediately showed my wife. She assumed it was our son, who has been on a kick writing chapters of random fantasy fiction.

But looking more closely, she realized it was our six-year-old daughter’s handwriting. When we picked the kids up that afternoon, our daughter confirmed it. Every word spelled correctly. An exclamation point at the end, full of enthusiasm.

As a parent, nothing makes me happier than watching my kids discover a love of learning on their own. I firmly believe that if you can learn to speak, write, and read well, your entire world opens up. Doors appear that you didn’t even know existed.

But then reality set in.

Children have a tendency to follow their parents into similar fields, hobbies, and callings. Sometimes this is a gift. Sometimes it is a quiet curse dressed up as inspiration.

Archie Manning was a gifted NFL quarterback. His sons Peyton and Eli both won Super Bowls. His grandson now has the potential to join the NFL as well. Three generations of football. At some point you have to ask: is this passion or gravity?

Goldie Hawn built one of the most charming careers in Hollywood across four decades, and her daughter Kate Hudson followed her almost step for step.

In music, few inheritances are more complicated than Miley Cyrus and her father Billy Ray Cyrus. But perhaps the more instructive example is Natalie Cole, who followed her legendary father Nat King Cole into jazz and pop.

Even in finance and business, the pattern holds. The Pritzker family, the Waltons, the Murdochs, the Johnsons (Fidelity), the Koch brothers’ children. Wealth and professional identity pass from generation to generation with remarkable consistency, whether through explicit grooming or simple osmosis.

Parents Are Role Models After All

The research backs this up. Studies show that children are significantly more likely to enter the same profession as a parent, not just because of nepotism or access, though those are real factors, but because of early and repeated exposure.

What feels normal to a child becomes aspirational. What a parent speaks about at the dinner table becomes interesting. And what a parent struggles with and perseveres through teaches a child more than any classroom lesson.

Which brought me back to my daughter’s rabbit seal and lamb book tucked inside the sofa cushion, and a knot forming in my stomach.

If she follows me into writing, I will be proud and heartbroken at the same time.

In an age where AI is destroying creativity and knowledge work, without my help, my daughter and son will likely enter the permanent underclass if they pursue careers as writers.

The Most Lucrative Careers To Encourage Your Children To Explore

If writing is a passion poverty career at one end of the income spectrum, it helps to know what sits at the other end. Not to crush your child’s dreams, but to give them full information. The best gift you can give a young person is an honest map of the territory.

Here are the careers with the strongest compensation, both at entry level and at mid-career, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data and compensation surveys from sources like Glassdoor, Levels.fyi, and the Association of American Medical Colleges:

A few observations worth noting:

First, notice what is not on this list. Journalism. Teaching. Social work. Writing. The arts. These are meaningful careers our society depends on, yet the market pays them as if they’re optional. Your children deserve to know this before they commit four years and six figures of tuition to pursuing one.

Second, tech alone is no longer enough. Software engineering and data science are rare fields where a four-year degree can get you a six-figure salary right away. But AI is quickly commoditizing coding. The people who will win the next 20 years are those who understand both technology and money. Learn to build, but also learn to be a competent investor as well.

Third, field selection matters, but firm selection matters just as much. A financial advisor at a small regional firm and a wealth manager at a top private bank are technically in the same profession, but their pay can differ by 5X or more. Maybe working as a Director of Research for a $5 billion RIA is not that lucrative after all. The same goes for a lawyer at a mid-size firm versus a Big Law partner. Teach your children to think not just about what they want to do, but where they want to do it.

The goal is not to raise a child who chases money above all else. The goal is to raise a child who understands the financial consequences of their choices before they make them, while they still have time to course correct. That is not pressure. That is love with full information.

Pivot To Demonstrating Lucrative Work

If you want to improve your children’s chances of becoming financially independent, it helps to demonstrate a diversified professional skill set at home. Not a fake one. A real one.

It’s hard to demonstrate being a banker, consultant, lawyer, doctor, or entrepreneur if you’re not one. These are the professions that make the most money. But there is one profession any of us can demonstrate authentically at home, and that is the profession of being an investor.

If you are reading this site, you already have some form of investments. A stock portfolio. A rental property. A venture capital allocation. A retirement account. That makes you an investor, regardless of what your day job is.

So the next time your child asks how your day was, instead of defaulting to the vague answer most of us give, you can talk about what the market did and why. What economic news moved a sector. What decision you made and what your reasoning was.

The goal is to make investing feel as normal and natural as talking about school or sports or the weather. So that by the time your kids are 18, terms like PE multiples, bear markets, dollar cost averaging, corrections, and growth versus value stocks are just part of their everyday vocabulary, because they heard them over dinner for years.

My Father’s Influence On Me In Investing

The reason I got into the stock market at all was because of one morning at the breakfast table. I was in the 10th grade, earning $4.25 an hour at McDonald’s and the same at a temp agency moving furniture and folding envelopes. Even then, I felt like $34 wasn’t a lot of money after an 8-hour shift.

When I saw my father reading ticker symbols at the back of the newspaper one morning, I asked him what they meant. He explained the basics, and we followed a handful of stocks together over the next month to see what happened.

That single conversation changed the trajectory of my entire financial life. It led to studying economics at William and Mary, applying to investment banking jobs at a career fair in Washington DC, landing at Goldman Sachs and then Credit Suisse, saving aggressively for 13 years, kickstarting the modern-day FIRE movement in 2009, and eventually leaving in 2012 to be free.

One breakfast table conversation. That’s all it took to pique my interest.

Who wouldn’t prefer to have money make money for them versus slaving away behind a hot stove at McDonald’s for minimum wage?

A Parent’s Job Is To Introduce

A parent’s job is to introduce children to as many things as possible and hope that one or two of them stick deeply enough that the child takes over from there on their own intrinsic interest. You cannot force that spark. But you can create the conditions for it.

So from now on, when I pick the kids up from school or sit down for dinner, I will talk about economics, stock markets, and rental properties before I talk about the book I’m working on. Investing will become as natural a dinner table topic as homework and friendships.

If your own career isn’t in one of the classic high-earning fields, lean into your identity as an investor. Manage your own money rather than outsourcing it entirely. Do your own taxes, or at least understand them deeply enough to ask good questions. The more engaged you are with your own financial life, the more your children will absorb by proximity.

And maybe, just maybe, that will be a better inheritance than any trust fund.

Because when your six-year-old daughter is already writing and stapling her own books at home, you realize the footsteps are already being laid. A passion poverty career may be in her future. The only question is which path you help her see most clearly.

Questions for Readers

Would you encourage your children to follow in your professional footsteps? Why or why not?

If your child showed real talent in a low-paying field, would you nudge them toward something more lucrative or let passion lead? Where is the line between guidance and pressure?

What did your parents do for a living, and did it influence your own career choice more than you’d like to admit?

Track Your Wealth Like A Real Investor

The easiest way to start talking like an investor at dinner is to actually know your numbers. I’ve used Empower’s free financial dashboard since 2012 to track my net worth, cash flow, and investment fees in one place. It’s hard to explain asset allocation to a 10-year-old when you don’t know your own.

If you link $100,000 or more in investable assets, Empower will also give you a free financial consultation with one of their professionals. Think of it as a second opinion on whether your portfolio is set up to fund the life you want, and the life your kids might want later.