I am almost 42 and my net wealth is <$0. I've experienced your anxiety and gloom but these days I am pretty happy and optimistic about how much I'll enjoy my life as time goes on. The trick is to go deep in something narrow and high-skill-cap (for me it happens to be card games, but the what doesn't really matter). The quest for deep expertise is a boundless source of surprise, discovery, and rich, cheap pleasure. You are wonderfully lucky - with $500k in the bank you can afford not to work for a decade as you develop that deep expertise. I guarantee you that after 20,000 hours of [whatever thing] you'll be able to make money from it if you need to. But don't worry about that now - just pick something deep that you can do at a high level well into old age and focus on getting good. I don't mean good enough to get a job or whatever - I mean GOOD