Holy shit! And here’s my wife and I trying to figure out our combined $36k annual income.
To be fair, it’s completely our choice. We decided that retiring was more important than anything else we could do.
Also, to be fair, I did have a job in 1975 in which I paid more income tax than the combined gross incomes of my parents, and they actually had decent jobs. But it sucked, and I never again put earnings ahead of working conditions or work-life balance.
As for tech specifically, I entered shifted my hobby to a career as programmer and instructor in 1993 at about $28k, went freelance in 1996, earning $50-60k, and went back to employment in 2004 earning quite a bit less, but with far less stress. I was at $65k when I left the field entirely in 2011 due to burn out, situational depression (my therapist’s term), and excessive stress. It turns out that the employment was just a different kind of “sneaks up on you” stress than the stress of always chasing work.
After that, I can tell you what I was doing and what I was earning (much less!), but it doesn’t really matter, because we were living the life we wanted and still managed to figure out how to retire.
Holy shit! And here’s my wife and I trying to figure out our combined $36k annual income.
To be fair, it’s completely our choice. We decided that retiring was more important than anything else we could do.
Also, to be fair, I did have a job in 1975 in which I paid more income tax than the combined gross incomes of my parents, and they actually had decent jobs. But it sucked, and I never again put earnings ahead of working conditions or work-life balance.
As for tech specifically, I entered shifted my hobby to a career as programmer and instructor in 1993 at about $28k, went freelance in 1996, earning $50-60k, and went back to employment in 2004 earning quite a bit less, but with far less stress. I was at $65k when I left the field entirely in 2011 due to burn out, situational depression (my therapist’s term), and excessive stress. It turns out that the employment was just a different kind of “sneaks up on you” stress than the stress of always chasing work.
After that, I can tell you what I was doing and what I was earning (much less!), but it doesn’t really matter, because we were living the life we wanted and still managed to figure out how to retire.
I hope the same for you and everyone else.