Job or Money

Consider W. Berry Fowler. In 1979, Fowler started a tutoring company that became so successful he was able to sell out and retire in 1978a multimillionaire at 40. He bought a 50-foot cabin cruiser and a house in Hawaii, and busied himself vacationing.

But after five years of perpetual vacation, Fowler began to miss the challenges of work. So in 1992, he bought a fitness chain for children and now spends 75 hours a week immersed in balance sheets and staff meetings."My best days on the golf course weren't half as much fun as a good day at the office, he says.

A job, studies show, is more than a paycheck. Doing something well can increase confidence and self-worth. When sociologist H. Ray Kaplan surveyed 139 lottery millionaires, he discovered 60 percent continued working at least a year after they’d won.

If jobs are so important, wouldn't salary size be a gauge of job satisfaction? Americans think so. A survey conducted last year by Roper Starch Worldwide, Inc. , found that almost 70 percent of the respondents said they would be happier if their families had twice as much household income. Yet studies show that job satisfaction comes less from how much people earn than from the challenge of their jobs and the control they are able to exert. Work that doesn't engage a person will never seem rewarding, no matter how lucrative it becomes.