I'm 40. I'm a single parent and divorced. I'm a Veteran.
I spent my 20s going to college, working for a porn company (not as a performer), and then joining the Navy. I paid off student debts, alimony, and child support. I have one successful and one failed startup under my belt. I've always, always, always, lived paycheck to paycheck until recently.
At 40. I was finally able to save up enough for a house in a HCOL city. I have roughly 6 months of savings and not a whole lot for retirement.
At 50 - I'd love to still be in tech, but I don't see it happening. I already see the writing on the wall that I need to start going the management route or I really need to find my niche as an individual contributor to be retained. I'm the old dude on my team.
In retrospect, I had a blast in my 20s and would not change it for the corporate grind that I'm currently in.
All of us have different stories and paths. There is no "right" or "wrong" path, it's all a journey.
Sure, if I had done things a more responsible way I may be in a completely different situation in life. Who knows? I don't.
> I have roughly 6 months of savings and not a whole lot for retirement.
Note that one can save a 'decent' amount even if you have 'only' ten years before your planned/desired day. This book has a Canadian focus, but the principles are probably pretty general:
Not OP, but reasons that are pretty easy to imagine:
- Living in America and suffering from either cancer, heart disease, or any chronic illness.
- Have any number of children and not having a family member available to care for them before they are of school age and after school from Kindergarten until whatever local laws permit for the child to be home alone for a few hours a day.
- Buying a home at the wrong time and taking an absolute bath on the "investment" once some unforseen circumstance forces you to sell the home while upside down on the mortgage.
- Experiencing various forms of fraud.
- Experiencing a lawsuit in America, whether you came out as the winner of said dispute or not.
- Being 50 and having had the poor but not unreasonable "luck" of having worked for the wrong start-ups in 1999, 2007, and 2022.
The point is, it's nobody's business why. The reasons are probably personal. Even asking opens a form of blame-game dialogue instead of beneficial and productive conversation.
Definitely true. But I've read a lot of personal stories on the Internet, and maybe OP is willing to share. As for the blame-game, yes, it could happen. But it's a bit shame if we shut down potentially interesting discussion by preemptively deciding the outcome.
