But maybe the most important thing to remember is that you don’t need a dream job to be happy. Your job cannot be a stand-in for relationships and people who care about you. A good job facilitates those relationships and often that is the sole reason that a once-quirky job now suddenly becomes reasonable and stable.

And there is the truth of the whole thing. Money means nothing if you have no time to enjoy your earning.

Perhaps a different career concept is to work less every year. Begin working the lunatic hours when you're young with the enthusiasm and stamina that goes with youth, then each year try to cut the hours down by 5% or so. By the time you hit retirement age, you only work a few hours a week anyhow.

For example, your career advice is "Know what you are selling" which could also be thought of as "Know what you want from both a career and retirement".

Then "invest money in your career" also becomes "invest for your retirement". More specifically if your retirement plans are to write the next great american novel then taking a writing course would probably be a good idea.

Finally, "if you have two careers, make sure they have synergy" has an obvious application in doing things in your current career to plan for your retirement.

Of course all this reveals that for me and everybody I know we plan for our "retirement" to be an extension of our current life rather than the so-called traditional golf/travel/spend the grandkids' inheritance.