I wrote up the reasons for angel stock being better than employee stock on Twitter and, as I am on a phone right now, cannot conveniently paste it. Can someone please link that conversation here?
The numbers I'm going through right now show that, even if I can make a lot of income consulting, if I just join the right startup I could earn stock options worth effectively more than I'd ever be able to make consulting (assuming I don't get stock consulting).
if you are able to earn $150k / year from consulting in a relatively small fraction of your time (incl. the overhead of networking, etc), that frees you up to use the remainder of your time on other activities, perhaps profitable or something else you value.
some ideas: start your own startup, start your own small business, focus your energy on building a diversified investment portfolio, buy and renovate a house to sell, plan and run a series of workshops, start your own hobby farm, spend more time with people whose company you enjoy.
Generally, unless you have a team, if you're finding that you can multiply your hourly rate by 2000 and get within shouting distance of your annual gross, that means you're not charging enough.
There are a lot of good things that come from jacking your rates up, beyond just being able to make the same amount of money while doing far less work.
A pretty common strategy is to dial your rate to a point where you're consistently between 70-80% utilized, and to raise your rates some % for all new clients annually.
At a consultancy with a team of people, a utilization rate over 85% might be considered overheated, risking burning people out.
(Though if you're running a body shop you don't care about overheating).
If it was just me and a partner consulting, I'd use rates to dial utilization back to 50%.