A nice mixture of both teacher lessons and self teaching over the years could give a nice work/life balance kind of thing as they say.
A decent teacher is unbeatable but not always on the same musical wavelength as you - private lessons can be pretty intense as well, so it can be good to take a break for a year, or 10. to assimilate ....err..'what happened?'
But generally if you can afford private lessons, go for it!
BluesKing777.