My husband tried programming as a side hustle... At one point he personally made enough to pay off half our house and work half-time while doing the next project. That ended up a failure, but he's got another one under way.
He gained some fame and notoriety at the time.
Problem is, even though we're doing better than most for our age (And will probably payoff our house long before others) I can't help but notice my in-laws and how...easy...they seem to have it in their retirement. They have enough money and pensions to continuously go gambling as a hobby and are able to handle keeping multiple houses at a time for their own use. And they worked a union manufacturing job that I'm pretty sure no longer exists at the company paying that pension.
I'll be extremely lucky if I can retire. No matter how much I dump into my 401k it seems to be perpetually dinky. Those who came 20 years prior didn't even have to worry about a 401k.
For our own day jobs nearly every way we could potentially "move up" without moving out of state involves pointless "make work" jobs or swallowing a lot of corporate kool-aid. It feels like there's nothing interesting to do in that corporate world.
In the meantime, I'm almost thankful to be like my parents: Likely to get overly bored if not working. I don't see myself retiring, even if I had the money. It's sad that I feel thankful for this, but this is my world: That without pensions. Maybe my husband will eventually make something big. Maybe I'll start my own side-hustle just to keep things interesting. But I'm very aware that I live in a different workplace than those who came before.
My husband tried programming as a side hustle... At one point he personally made enough to pay off half our house and work half-time while doing the next project. That ended up a failure, but he's got another one under way.
He gained some fame and notoriety at the time.
Problem is, even though we're doing better than most for our age (And will probably payoff our house long before others) I can't help but notice my in-laws and how...easy...they seem to have it in their retirement. They have enough money and pensions to continuously go gambling as a hobby and are able to handle keeping multiple houses at a time for their own use. And they worked a union manufacturing job that I'm pretty sure no longer exists at the company paying that pension.
I'll be extremely lucky if I can retire. No matter how much I dump into my 401k it seems to be perpetually dinky. Those who came 20 years prior didn't even have to worry about a 401k.
For our own day jobs nearly every way we could potentially "move up" without moving out of state involves pointless "make work" jobs or swallowing a lot of corporate kool-aid. It feels like there's nothing interesting to do in that corporate world.
In the meantime, I'm almost thankful to be like my parents: Likely to get overly bored if not working. I don't see myself retiring, even if I had the money. It's sad that I feel thankful for this, but this is my world: That without pensions. Maybe my husband will eventually make something big. Maybe I'll start my own side-hustle just to keep things interesting. But I'm very aware that I live in a different workplace than those who came before.