There has to be a better system than this.
Don’t wait until retirement. Balance your life now. It’s going to be a long slog.
You don’t need to find an amazing career that you’ll love doing until you die. People who get that are extremely lucky, and it’s not the norm. You just need a job that will support you while still giving you time to do the things you enjoy.
Follow this: https://youtu.be/YHxwY3Fz2gU?feature=shared
As I tell my kids repeatedly. I am the exception not the rule!
It’s so bloody annoying a 13 year old is supposed to know what they want to do with their life. I fell into my career in IT at 25 after dropping out of college twice, running my own business unsuccessfully and generally doing my best to survive. Now I make 150k which is both too much and not enough money.
Point being, do what’s right for you and only you.
Live in a country with a decent amount of vacation days.
Guess I gotta move to Iran for that 53 days off a year Wikipedia says they get.
Hot damn! And here I thought 30+ days was decent amount.
and if in germany, get yourself a schwerbehindetenausweis and show it to your employer. they have to give you 5 extra days off when the GDB is at least 50.
Good luck finding a job, though.
A pivotal piece of advice once shifted my perspective on work. It was put simply: ‘If the thought of retirement is your main motivation, you might be in the wrong job.’ This implies that if you’re constantly counting down the years to retirement, you’re essentially wishing for time to fly by quicker. But those years are valuable, and letting them slip away in anticipation of something else isn’t worth it. The key is to find a career that reduces your stress and enhances your life now, not just in the future. While financial security is undeniably important, it’s also crucial to recognize when you have enough and to prioritize your well-being and happiness in the present.
Eventually you get to the point where you age-out of joy. I mean, sure, you try to throw yourself into your work, try to squeeze some semblance of satisfaction out of that dried raisin of a career. But it’s never the same as it used to be. It’s hollow, just like you, and you hate all of it. But what else are you gonna do? So you do your time and go home and stare at the wall; you have no desire to watch tv because it’s all the same bullshit you’ve seen for years. When you do watch tv, usually with your spouse who is little more than a grumpy roommate now. The tv screen is transparent, and you see nothing but the studs in the wall. The family mills about, completely clueless to the misery you are living. Sure you laugh, but it’s without the twinkle in your eye that you once had. You tend to spend a lot more time in the bathroom staring at yourself in the mirror, telling yourself you want to blow your brains out, but never do. Sometimes you cry in isolation. Most of the time you are numb and you sit there in silence. Otherwise, you pretend to do stuff until nightfall. Finally. You down some sleeping pills, go to bed early, doom-scroll for a few hours until the meds kick in. Lights out. You wake a few hours later, before the rest of the fucking world it seems, muttering the word “fuck”. Not with the frolicking fun connotation of youth, but in utter despair that you awoke at all. Again. So you drag yourself to that mirror, brushing your teeth, put on that hollow smile and start the day over. repeat. And again. And again.
I’m sorry, what was the question?
That’s not an inevitability of life, that’s just severe depression, my guy. Get help.
Here’s a hot take. Do what you want when you are young. Find a way. I spent my 20’s moving around, having shitty but fun jobs. I travelled. Saw all kinds of places and met all sorts of people. It wasn’t easy and sometimes it wasn’t fun. I found myself homeless even several times. I still wouldn’t change any of it. I found a wonderful partner and we moved together for a while before settling and having kids.
In my early 40s I was diagnosed with a really rare cancer that paralyzed me from the chest down for a year prior to surgery and left lasting disabilities following. Now in my 50’s with declining health I am so glad I lived. It means I don’t have a lot of things others have but I’ve never cared much for the Jones’ anyway. If Cancer taught me anything it’s fuck society and their expectations. Do you. Find a way. Be happy.
For me, I look to the past to see what life could have been like were I born 100 - 200 -500 - 1,000 years ago and try to find the positives that being born now has.
And the reality is that even as soon as 100 years ago life was much, much harder and worse in almost every metric. Brutal jobs, brutal hours, with safety of no concern, even if you were a child. Housing? You were lucky if you could heat your home in some way in the winter, and air conditioning didnt even exist yet. Physical labor jobs were a large amount of the work, so many people simple worked themselves into uselessness and then suffered the rest of their lives.
It doesnt get much better going back further than that really. Plague anyone?
Today we enjoy a massive, massive amount of comfort in our lives. Have amazing, tasty, and safe food at our fingertips almost without issue. Can travel the entire globe effortlessly when even a cross country trek could have been a multi-month brutal affair with a death sentence for half the travel party. Modern medicine eliminates so many of the issues of the past.
In reality very few people “just” work for 40 years and then retire useless husks and then die. I suspect you spend some time with friends and loved ones, perhaps even travel and engage in leisure time kings and queens of 200 years ago couldnt dream of during those 40 years.
Live with underlying existential dread for decades. Watch as “doing what you love” becomes “hating what you used to love because you’re forced to do it so that there’s enough numbers in the computer to prove that you’re worthy of continued existence.” Contemplate the pointlessness of it all on a daily basis. Be reminded that your feelings are invalid because “other people have it worse” every time the topic comes up. Nod listlessly as “successful” people tout their own hard work while ignoring any factor luck and privilege played, then tune out when they shift into the dissonant duet of “I succeeded because I am exceptional” and “anyone can do the same if they just work harder.”
Wake up the next morning and realize there’s roughly 30 more years of this, barring a massive coronary or aneurism or something.
I’ve pretty consistently chosen less hours and better working conditions over pay since I started to have that choice. It’s made it a lot more tolerable. I’m currently on a four day week, with a minimal commute, good perks and a relatively stress free job that I took a pay cut for. My retirement savings look pretty slim, but due to my health the chance of a long one isn’t much higher anyway.
Not without it’s issues. Pay is pretty significantly below the median. Fortunately I’m not interested in having kids and I’m content living cheaply, even if it sounds boring. But I’m in a weird dead zone for government support; for instance - if I earned more, there are programs for “middle income” housing and the like that I earn too little to qualify for. Low income housing programs are a joke - with wait times being as much as a decade -but even if it wasn’t I’m not high priority anyway. Also no way on earth I’m ever getting a home loan, even though mortgage repayments would be less than rent and I could conceivably make the deposit.
I simply work part time on purpose. I don’t have my own place (flatmates) so we all split the COL. It’s not truly freedom, but it feels a lot more free than when I worked full time. I usually have enough to save a little and also because of this I am able to travel a few times a year. But you have to be REALLY able to manage your finances to live like this. I have no credit card and prepay everything ahead of time. It leaves me with a lot more time to enjoy LIFE. and feel less constantly tired as well.
I dealt with it by choosing to not have kids years ago. I didn’t ask to be born, and I refuse to force that on anyone else.
Once things become too difficult, I’m pulling my own plug.
Dunno but I am hoping aliens invade in the following years and make our existence more enjoyable than this …
Cry myself to sleep.
On top of being too old, I’ll be too poor, so I’ll probably just neck myself around ~70.
Years ago my dad made a change at work. He was working in the wood shop at a factory, making cabinetry and such with wood. For a few bucks more an hour he could take a job doing something mindless and slow, and he needed the money.
Fast forward 6 mo and he can’t go back to the old job, but this one is so boring that he’s beyond hating it: he actually vomits before every shift because he just doesn’t want to go but he has to.
We moved and he sold fucking lawnmowers for about 6 years.
But we moved. And he changed; and later he got a job as a groundskeeper and that was awesome for him because in the downtime he could do anything he liked onsite. He built cabinets and renovated the work areas and basically everything he used to do.
Don’t cry yourself to sleep. When you get that random occasional burst of energy, I hope you remember to focus on “this sucks. What do I want to do instead” and then “okay how do i escape this shit and get there” and then keep breaking down each step into what is possible.
Get there.
I’m half done. I’ve kept up my health and I’m trying to improve it even more. When I hit 65 I won’t be too old to do much.
But the real question should be what are you waiting until retirement to do and why not do it sooner?
Because at the age of 36 I’m financially treading water and a week off here and there is enough time to de-stress from work, not enough time to do what I’d really like to.
You answered the why not without answering the what you want part. I’m sure you have a good reason to prioritize finances over your goals though. Good luck.
I’d like to travel.
You simply work
Because like it or not, you need resources to live. The entire bullshit fairytale (or furry tail) of working in your own vegetable garden to live off the lands IS STILL WORKING YOU LAZY ASSHOLE. And it will be working a lot harder for a lot less resources with a lot more risk when your crops fail
Somehow you snowflake types (sorry, but yeahyou "I hate to work, hoe can I sit on my ass for the next 40 years and have someone take care of me?) somehow really roped yourself into the idea that you can live off air or something. No matter how you do It, no matter what system you implement, you still gotta work!
I worked hard for what I got and I don’t have much, and that is fine, I have enough z I don’t needs a super yacht (nor should anyone, but that is a different story). Yes, I too sometimes have bad day and don’t want to get out of bed but then I just make myself, you know, have some discipline?
You will NOT be able to get by doing nothing unless you leech off and abuse someone else, or an entire group. Until we have fully human like AI robots thatcan do all of our tasks, humans are required to do work, PERIOD.
If nobody will work anymore and we all go to our fantasy vegetable garden then within months, medicine will run out, say goodbye to grandma and everyone that has diabetes or cancer or anything else, and that goodbye will be painful and excruciating. Then after a few months millions more will die from food shortages. Want to complain about it on the internet? Well fuck you because fuck you, because nobody is working anymore and the internet doesn’t work on magic, it runs on hard human labor, meaning that WE HAVE TO WORK.
Putting it on “but evil corporations!!” is a bullshit excuse as well. Like it or not, you need them. Without those evil corporations, no more medication, no more food, no more electricity, no more life for the vast majority of all of us. That evil corporations should change for the better is something that nobody will deny but that is a different story BECAUSE YOU STILL HAVE TO WORK YOU ENTITLED ASSHOLE.
So yes, you are lazy and yes, you need to get off your ass and stop leeching off your mommie. Sorry to be harsh about it but this post just really shows you are entitled and lazy and your post is just really insulting to those that try to live a responsible life and help others. Stop thinking about yourself, you’re not the only one here.
/rant
Everyone knows work is necessary, what isn’t necessary is 40+ hours a week so some Capitalist can buy another yacht from exploitation of your labor.
Nobody thinks work is unnecessary, this is a strawman.
I don’t doubt that you’ve worked hard, but I do believe you should own your labor, not some Capitalist.
Again, nobody is suggesting literally zero work. Just restructuring.
More strawmanning, blah blah blah.
No, we don’t need corporations owned by a few people, workers can own and run the Means of Production without someone exploiting their labor.
No, this post shows that you’re incredibly out of touch with what people are advocating for.
I hate it. I started learning about FIRE, Financial Independence, Retire Early. The great part is that you can do what you want, you just have to match your spending to your income.
I hope for a better system for my kids’ friends. (My kids will have me guiding them.)
The chase to grind up from Proletarian to Petite Bourgeoisie to eventually Bourgeoisie just to escape the Capitalist hellhole is downright dystopian.
