Even though your goal may be financial freedom, the journey to get there is going to involve some sort of work career. Find the right job, mix with frugality, avoid big mistakes, and you’ll be golden. But how do you find that right job?

I’ve previously shared this Venn diagram by Bud Caddell:

I also just ran across essentially the same concept but explained eloquently with words by author Jim Collins (via Farnam Street):

1) What are you deeply passionate about?
2) What are you are genetically encoded for — what activities do you feel just “made to do”?
3) What makes economic sense — what can you make a living at?

Those fortunate enough to find or create a practical intersection of the three circles have the basis for a great work life.

Think of the three circles as a personal guidance mechanism. As you navigate the twists and turns of a chaotic world, it acts like a compass. Am I on target? Do I need to adjust left, up, down, right? If you make an inventory of your activities today, what percentage of your time falls outside the three circles?

It can be very hard to find the intersection of all three, and no job will feel like that every day. But they aren’t yes or no questions. Instead, use these three factors as a guide to see if and how you are drifting away from your ideal job.

You might be doing something that you are good at, but you don’t really like. But is it simply unchallenging or does it eat away at your soul?

You might be doing something that makes good money, but you dread going to work every day. But can you change any of the offending aspects? (Switch managers, switch cities, switch departments?)

You may be doing something you’re passionate about, but nobody will pay you enough money to do it. Some people are okay with working forever and just getting by, given the right job. Others (like me) need the financial freedom as well.

If are too far from center, you are spending your days wasting your limited time and energy. Stop. Make a change. Live consciously. These days jumping from job to job no longer assumed to be negative. It may take a while, but repeatedly asking yourself these questions will hopefully keep your career moves in the right direction.

You may have read that a Princeton University study by Deaton and Kahneman found that people were more satisfied with their life as their income rose, but only until about $75,000 a year. After that, higher income did not result in greater happiness. Doug Short of DShort.com extended this $75,000 number and adjusted it by the cost-of-living for all 50 states. The Huffington Post in turn converted that table into a nice pretty infographic map. I’ve mentioned this finding before and readers pointed out that $75k goes farther in some places compared to others, so it is shared below.

Money can only buy happiness up to a point. But just how much you need to get to that threshold really depends on where you live, according to a new analysis by Doug Short, vice president of research at investment group Advisor Perspectives.

Short’s analysis found that if you live in a place like Hawaii, where the cost of living is relatively high, a household needs to make $122,175 per year before some extra cash doesn’t really translate into more happiness. In Mississippi, by comparison, the threshold at which more money stops making you happier is a lot lower: $65,850 per year.

Of course, the next link on HuffPo was… More Money Always Leads To More Happiness: Study

As we celebrate the anniversary of our nation’s Declaration of Independence, I wanted to quickly share this excerpt from an article The Millennial Definition of Success by Adam Nash, CEO of Wealthfront:

Increasingly, as I talk to Millennials, some of whom who have found early success in their careers, and others who are just starting out, I hear the same things. This generation overwhelmingly associates success with control over who they work with, and what they work on. […]

Wealthfront now has over 12,000 clients, and most of them are under 35. What I find striking is that, overwhelmingly, with every success in their financial lives, these young people seem to immediately focus on using their success to gain control over their careers. They don’t seek to optimize for title, or financial reward. Instead, they increasingly use their success to effectively fund the ability to work on a product they believe in, an organization they want to be part of, and a leader they want to follow.

I’m not even a Millenial and these attributes are not restricted to those born after 1980, but I think it is a good observation. Wealthfront is one of many automated portfolio management sites competing with each other, but I think their relative success is mostly due to the fact that they “get” young, smart, tech-savvy workers. (Not by accident they are often the ones with lots of money to invest.)

Perhaps money is better viewed as a tool than can help you now rather than a way to avoid being broke at some point far off in the future. Being wise with money gives you options. Money is freedom. Money is control. Money is independence.

Chris Taylor of Reuters has been writing some mini-interviews about the first jobs of well-known finance gurus like Warren Buffett and Jack Bogle. They include newspaper delivery boys, retail stockboy, gofer, shoeshine boy, USPS mail sorter, bowling alley pinsetter, and soda pop vendor at baseball games.

The initial takeaway is that these are humble beginnings for people who ended up as rich and powerful. It made me think of my own first jobs as a restaurant worker and parking lot attendant. Does this mean we all have hope?

However, while working my minimum-wage jobs I also remember a lot of teenagers and adults being really bad at those entry-level jobs. Based on the short descriptions given in the Reuters articles, the people interviewed all displayed certain successful traits at their first job. Perhaps doing well at your first job requires most of the same basic skills that you need to succeed at future high-level jobs. I think these critical skills would include:

• Reliability. I remember many people not showing up on time repeatedly, or even at all for their shifts. Charlie Munger lists reliability as one of the most essential traits for success. He explains that while something like quantum mechanics may be unlearnable by many, reliability can be learned by anyone. If you can master the ability to always be reliable, that alone can overcome many other disadvantages.
• Persistence at trying to do your job well. You may not be very good at first, but if you keep trying and learning chances are you’ll get there. I recently heard an interview about chef Geoffrey Zakarian landed his first job with limited skills at the famous restaurant Le Cirque. How? He walked, asked, got denied, offered to work for free (!), got the job, and learned his way up starting with peeling potatoes.
• Good (basic?) social skills. The other way that I’ve seen people mess up minimum-wage jobs is that they just can’t get along with people or control their emotions. They get into heated arguments with customers and/or coworkers, and either get fired or are just never seen again (disturbingly common). The current chairman and vice-chairman of Ariel Investments both started out working together as baseball stadium food vendors. Look at Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, who met through common friends. Take advantage of any opportunities to partner with good people when you come across them.

If you’re a parent, student, or just someone looking to switch jobs, here’s a list of the professions where you’ll be least likely to become unemployed. Think of it as a career guide for the risk-averse or those who want the best odds.

The WSJ recently compiled a list of jobs and their 2011/2012 unemployment rates based on government labor data. In turn, Derek Thompson of The Atlantic used that data to screen for the jobs with the lowest, steady unemployment rates over that time period. The results:

Source: The Atlantic, WSJ, BLS

The professional-school medical positions – physicians, dentists, veterinarians, do well as expected. Engineers are also well-represented (yes!). Some would say this supports the idea that an STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) skill set brings the best value. The medical positions also carefully manage how many graduates they produce each year (unlike law schools). But I’d also note that people should consider why septic tank repairers and animal breeders are also reliable professions (hard to be outsourced, can’t be replaced by machines, etc).

I’ve been thinking about all the various jobs I’ve held during my life. I remembered that even as a 10-year old child, I dreamed about being financially independent in the way that I worked for money and could live on my own – I wanted to be like the kids in the Boxcar Children books. Looking back, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that I would eventually dream about being financially independent in the way that I didn’t have to work for anyone. I often wonder how I turned out that way.

Here’s a list of all the paying jobs I can remember, in semi-chronological order. As you can see, I’ve always been firmly on the nerd/geek side of things. As a kid, I remember listing my future job as “scientist”.

• Restaurant cashier/host
• Fast food drive-thru window dude
• Country club food server
• SAT/ACT/math tutor (high school)
• Undergraduate research summer intern
• Engineering summer intern
• Academic paper proofreader / chart maker / equation maker
• Campus security staff
• Parking lot attendant
• Tennis instructor
• University bookstore cashier
• University psychology department test monkey
• Math/physics/writing tutor (college)
• Graduate student researcher
• Graduate student instructor (physics, thermodynamics)
• Engineer
• Consultant
• Freelance writer
• Web designer
• Digital publisher (owner of various websites)

Work has been good to me. My stints in restaurants taught me that lots of people work very hard for very little money, which made me study harder. Being an working graduate student taught me that I could eat and live quite happily on an income of less than $18k a year, something I might not have learned had I went straight into a corporate job. I met my wife while working for campus security. How many jobs have you had, and which ones changed your life?