While Marco Rubio was confronted with the humbling spectacle of being photographed returning to Capitol Hill, tail between his legs, in a tiny Senate subway car, he could perhaps find comfort in the thought that he may soon strike it rich.

After nearly two decades of public service beset by a series of financial struggles, the erstwhile presidential candidate crawled back Thursday to the Senate, where he told a group of reporters that while he is ready to get back to work, the next few months at his desperately loathed job will be his last.

“I’m not going to be vice president. I'm not running for governor of Florida. I'm going to finish out my term in the Senate over the next 10 months. We're going to work really hard here, and we have some things we want to achieve,” Rubio said after he cast his first post-candidacy vote, according to Roll Call. "And then I'll be a private citizen in January.”

Once “Little Marco” retires his Senate seat, however, he is likely to have plenty of job offers on the table—a good thing, too, considering his long history of money troubles. On the campaign trail, Rubio often mentioned the $150,000 in student loans he took out for law school, which he only paid off 16 years later thanks to a lucrative book deal. Unmentioned were a number of other significant financial problems, including, among other things, a flap over using the state G.O.P.’s credit card to pay for thousands of dollars’ worth of personal expenses as the Florida Speaker of the House, an $80,000 boat purchase, a questionable decision to lease a $50,000 Audi Q7, an even more questionable decision to purchase a small house in Tallahassee and not disclose it, and an additional $30,000 in personal debt.

Luckily, there are few job markets more rewarding than the one for former politicians. More than 50 percent of senators become lobbyists after they leave office, The Atlantic reports, and those are only the registered lobbyists. Depending on their political prominence, the opportunities for ex-lawmakers extend far beyond government, to corporate board positions and government relations jobs that do not require official registration as a lobbyist. Former Senator Jim DeMint makes well over $600,000 a year as the president of the right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation. Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor pulls in a $3.4 million salary as the vice chairman of an investment bank. And former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick now holds a high-profile job at [Bain Capital]. (Let us not forget the late Senator Fred Thompson, who became a recurring character on Law & Order, earning $12.1 million in a little over a year from acting fees alone.)

Even if a multimillion-dollar payday is cold comfort for Rubio, the 44-year-old’s political career is not necessarily over. Consider John Kasich, who did a stint at Lehman Brothers between leaving Congress and running for Governor of Ohio. If the fact that Kasich was at Lehman Brothers during the 2008 financial collapse did not hurt his presidential chances—he’s still in the race, after all—Rubio could still return to politics, too, if he wished. It’s something to daydream about, at least, as he counts down his final ten months in the Senate riding his miniature subway car to work.