TheIncomparable What you are both doing is equivocating. "Financial independence" with "employment" and "fulfilling employment" with "earning your own money" and probably many others I haven't spotted.
No, I'm not. You have assumed that. I'm certainly aware that some people have "independent means". I actually know quite a few sons and daughters of what I would term as "locally wealthy businesspeople" ie not the sort to send their children to uni in the hope of meeting an earl but more the sort to keep them at home, fund their hobbies and hope they meet a similar son or daughter of friends, so they can graduate to a nice little house funded by both sets of parents and do a little part time work in the family business. In reality, what tends to happen is that the spoilt brats lose the family business, mortgage the house, split up and the daughter has to move back home with the ageing parents and try to find a divorcee that's managed to hang onto a house. I've known a couple of this type turn to crime to try and fund their lifestyle, being convicted of fraud. The problem seems to be that never mind employment, they have never developed many life skills.
I doubt very much you would find yourselves miserable if you were living on the proceeds of some very well invested shares years back, or the interest of an inheritance, and having to fill your days reading, using MN or volunteering.
Probably not but it is rather unfulfilling. The more successful ones I know in that position still went to uni with their peers, worked for a good 10 or 20 years and some got so into the swing of it, they continued working, while others retired early. I have to say that now I'm on ML, reading mumsnet is a really bad habit and if that's all I'd spent my life doing, I would consider it wasted. The discipline, the routine of working can be very fulfilling in itself.
Because paid work is not fulfilling, simply by dint of being paid. And you don't believe it is. Look how many posts it was before one of you stooped to sneer at people working in Tesco.
Now there you are wrong. I've travelled all over the world and met so many interesting people due to my career. I've felt really fulfilled when I've had an article published, it gives you a sort of glowing feeling when you have achieved something difficult by yourself. I've also worked in a supermarket as a checkout operator, when I was still at school, and it wasn't the worst job. I was pretty useless at that age, with that little experience of the world, and I can actually look back at the people you sneer at and admire their organisation, their management skills, the whole set up for what it was, and dealing with people like me who had never worked before! Definitely not something to sneer at although I went on to earn much more money and have much more responsibility.