Im amazed a lot of you make so much money that its the number one reason you wouldn't leave your job for flying for a major because of the pay cut. I understand youhave to support you families and all but some of you sound a little greedy. No offense to anyone. It's your lifestyle. If I would leave my job for a dream airline job it would have to be about the same amount of money to support the life style we/family have became accustomed to. We are not rich by any means but we have a nice home, go on nice vacations and have everything we need.
In my case it's based on an objective real problem. We have no kids. That wasn't totally by choice, but we've long since decided that it isn't likely to happen. Adoption is not on our radar either.
There isn't going to be anyone around to intervene if we're being poorly cared for in our twilight years. And if statistics hold up, I'll be long gone and it'll be my wonderful wife who'd be suffering for it.
She's worked too long in medicine for me to easily say I don't want her to have the best elderly care that can be bought with cold hard cash. And I've seen the difference between her elderly patients' care who have real insurance or capital to spend, and those relying on the State.
So deciding to leave a high paid job where I'm socking away money, mostly for her, but ostensibly for both of us to retire on, and cutting my salary by 2/3s or more, isn't an easy decision. We're debt free and saving and investing for those salad days to come.
The hard part is knowing when the savings and investments are "good enough".
Especially in what looks to be a continuous downward valuation of the dollar, creating a hard numbers need for a pretty large percentage of growth in salary over time.
(The old truism, if your annual salary increase wasn't at least the rate of inflation, you're working for a lower salary next year... is cold hard mathematical reality.)
It's not greed. It's trying to be correctly fiscally prepared for the long term.
I don't go to the office for fun. I didn't get good at it and demand a pretty large salary for fun either.
An old boss always joked, "If you can't bill for it, it's just a hobby." I'm billing.
Helping the cause lately is that she's officially been promoted back to a Director level title and is awaiting the official title change and pay bump right now. She handles ops and her boss handles business. Not a bad gig for a nurse inside a major medical organization.
Obviously she can do pretty well taking care of herself.
I just don't like the idea of leaving it much up to chance. Life already has enough bad surprises. We weren't expecting to lose my dad at 61, and since he had me when he was really young, I now think once in a while that I'm less than 20 years away myself from when he dropped dead suddenly. Wake up call.
We've been discussing me changing careers lately. Or even just cutting back and mixing careers. Both of us are totally on board with the "do something you like" mentality. That's not the objective problem that we're trying to solve.
Taking a flying leap off of a cliff is fine with both of us. She did it a few years back when she switched nursing specialties.
It's the questions of what that does to us, mostly her, in our 70s, 80s, 90s, or even 100s, if one or both of us make it that far.
And just today a friend posted his wife's mom's birthday party at 106 on Facebook. Good freaking lord. Neither one of us really wants to live that long. It's an obscene idea for a couple without kids.
I'm sure our nieces and nephews would be kind. But that's not the same as having your own kids around to keep an eye on things.
And our society isn't likely to come to legal or ethical terms with assisted suicide before either one of is reaches an advanced age and has a terminal illness either. Bankruptcy. Yay.
Medical costs in our very old age will either be ungodly expensive to the point of being a bankruptcy inducing event, or socialized. Nobody knows which right now.
If it's expensive, that's something one can plan for, while in the best earning years. If it's socialized, we'd obviously be the demographic most likely to be horribly abused. Nobody around to deal with the bureaucracy for us, no real voting power or voice, just forgotten.
We already do that crap to our Vets. I see it. You see it. The people who want that system see it. It's not hard to see where my future lies, if I have to rely on a similar system to "do the right thing". Won't happen.
So... Not greedy. Abundantly cautious. Maybe more than necessary, but there's no family to fall back on for us.
I was an only kid on dad's side, and everyone there is gone, other than distant cousins and they're all older than I by many years.
I've got a stepsister and a half sister on the other side, and one is always broke and the other is in and out of touch for unknown reasons.
Karen's family are all significantly older than her.
We're gonna be the Last of the Mohicans 'round here. It makes you think pretty hard about the retirement finances.
Unless y'all wanna contribute to our retirement fund? I'm game! Haha.
Yeah, quality of life has got to be a huge jump from that to where you are now.