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An older woman in a fur-trimmed cap leans over a large open book, holding the printed pages up to the light; a small woodcut illustration sits in the lower column.

Experience Capital: What You Actually Own After 40

ByIan HwangAug 29, 202616 min read

The handover pack ran to forty pages. Frances printed it twice, because the first copy came out with the appendices in the wrong order, and then she left both copies on the corner of her desk for most of a week without opening either one. Twenty-six years at the…

Four men in wide black hats and white collars sit behind a red covered table with an open ledger; a bareheaded man stands among them, all looking out

The Market for Experience After 40: Who Is Actually…

ByIan HwangAug 23, 202614 min read

Duncan kept the phone. It is a beige desk phone with twelve buttons and a small plastic window above the keypad, and in that window is a…

Detail of a Dutch painting: a woman leans out of a stone window at night, holding a lit oil lamp that throws her face into warm light.

No Time to Start a Business? The Six Hours…

ByIan HwangAug 16, 202618 min read

The notebook is A5, hardback, navy, the kind a company buys four hundred of at a time. Priya had filled eleven of them in twenty-three years of…

Detail of a Dutch genre painting: a fish seller and an older buyer face each other across a table of fish, a balance scale hanging above.

What to Charge for Your Expertise After 40 (And…

ByIan HwangAug 14, 202619 min read

Three prices exist for the same three days of work. Most experienced professionals quote the lowest one for life. Here is how the other two get set.

Detail of a nineteenth-century painting: a young man swings a scythe overhead in a field of tall reeds under an evening sky.

How to Stop Trading Time for Money After 40…

ByIan HwangAug 13, 202620 min read

You left the job and still cannot stop working. The five-rung ladder that decides who gets free, and the one-week test that finds your rung.

Detail of a Dutch portrait: a seated gentleman in a broad white collar and gold chain, a sailing ship at sea framed in the window behind.

Golden Handcuffs After 40: The Things You Cannot Take…

ByIan HwangAug 9, 202620 min read

The Tuesday after Marguerite left, her name went grey in the chat sidebar. Not gone. Grey. Twenty-six years compressed into a small circle with two initials in…