Some forumites would know that I have really valued my JOB and treated it as an asset over the years.
Hi Oscar,
Perhaps this is the most telling statement you articulated: it's an asset.
And as we all keep telling each other, "Don't fall in love with the asset" (be it IP, Shares, Gold, whatever).
And just as some of us put blood, sweat and tears into renovating a house or developing a block, you have done that with your job.
But at the end of the day it was to build up that asset to generate income or to sell it (I see "selling your job" in your case to be taking the package)
Your dilemma at the moment reminds me of where someone has built a house from scratch and it is generating great rent. But then one day, someone offers to buy it off you.
The rational mind would calculate the PV of the cashflow over the next X years..... etc etc
But yes, it's part of you and hard to let go.
I think I can emphasise somewhat - while my own career on paper is 25 years with the company I work for, my involvement with the place is since I was born. Both my parents worked for this company - they met at work and pretty much got married at work. My father moved us to Australia when I was 5 - to work in the first subsidiary the company was starting in Australia. The company bought a site and started building a factory. We started here with 30 people, half of them expats from the country I was born in. Far from my extended family, these people would become my surrogate aunts and uncles, and the first MD and his wife pretty much took the place of my grandparents. Over the next decades, we would build up to 1,200 staff with offices all over Australia.
So now I too am in a situation, where there is a generous package (nothing like yours though!!
) on offer, and a voice in my head saying "when do I call it quits?". I too enjoy the job, it pays well for the (lack of?) effort I put in, an asset and tool for serviceability of loans.
I am still at the site that the company built when we moved to Australia - but earlier this year, the current execs decided to sell the site off. I look around and perhaps unlike in your situation, many of the "old timers" have gone, and the closure of the site might be a fitting time to go.
I suspect it is much harder for you to jump "off the moving train". However, as you yourself and others have said, I am sure your talent and skills will be in high demand - perhaps even as a contractor/consultant to the very company you leave. And if you want a change of career, I reckon I can get you a gig as a lecturer
I am sure you will make the decision that is right for you.
The Y-man