What is Job Satisfaction Worth?

I turned 33 years old a month ago.  I also finished the first 10 years of my time as an educator. This means I am approaching the second trimester of my professional career.  The first 10 years was spent trying to figure out how to do my job and expending energy trying to advance my career.  I am now reaching a stage in which I think I know what I am doing.  I still want to "advance" in my field, but I am not so interested in moving on as I am in moving forward with what I am doing now and building upon that to make a lasting impact.

Up until this year I have been pursuing the next step in the chain of advancement and salary scale.  Trust me, I am still interested in these things, but they are not the driving force of why I get up in the morning.  I find I am more and more interested in job satisfaction rather than position and pay.  This has caused me to ask myself a question: How much is my job satisfaction worth?

I can truly say I am satisfied with what I am doing right now.  I think I could go on doing this for another 20 years if necessary.  I have built key relationships with colleagues and the community in which I work.  This allows me to continually find new and challenging endeavors in the midst of maintaining a high level of performance in my day-to-day responsibilities.  I still see sufficient areas for personal and professional growth without having to take a new job title.

At the same time, I have had several recent conversations discussing possible new positions that would greatly increase my pay-- in the neighborhood of $20,000 annually.  No matter what your current annual salary is, a $20,000 increase is significant.  So, I ask myself, do I put forth concerted effort to pursue these very real opportunities, or just sit back and see what happens?

Truly, I can say that I would be satisfied no matter what happens.  That is a good position to be in.  It is nice to know that if I remain where I am now that I will continue to have a high level of personal and professional satisfaction.  It is also nice to know that there are possibilities out there should I ever desire to officially have an upwardly mobile career path.

So, how much is job satisfaction worth?  Well, I guess I can say that for me it is at least worth around $20,000.  I hope this means that more and more I view my level of job satisfaction as a function of what I do and not so much a function of how much I make.  As far as I can tell this is a good direction in which to be heading.