Invariably, comment threads like this, pop up when I provide some current thoughts about my career. A career that quite a few HN readers share apparently, but that's where the similarities end.

Quite a lot of you didn't grow up in abject poverty and it shows.

The hole this puts you in, 99% of people have a really, really difficult time climbing out of and describing what this process is like, is lost on a lot of people. My biological mother made extremely poor choices and never took my future into consideration. We were housing insecure and we were food insecure. My personal safety was at times in jeopardy.

I've been in survival mode most of my life. It's only the last 5 years that I was in a position to finally make thriving choices for me AND for my family. It was only this month that I finally made the ultimate thriving choice to live in a place that I've dreamt of living in since I was a kid. I'm not even going into any other details about what effect this has on you as an adult, like homelessness, how expensive being poor is, etc.

So I'm only left feeling like laughing (and sometimes crying) when someone mentions savings. Shit, it's only been in the last 10 years, that I got over mentally calculating the cost of everything I put in my shopping cart, to make sure I could afford it. To this day, I still have anxiety over swiping my card in front of people at the grocery store, thinking that surely it's going to be declined (it hasn't in years).

I'm only just now able to start dedicating some of my salary to a savings account (or other investments). There is no time left to ultimately retire with anything matching my current salary, so I've resigned myself to work until I literally can't anymore and with a remote IT job, sitting at a desk, that sounds like 30 more years or more.

Change jobs? I guess you missed the part where I'm encountering ageism? I've had to lop off a decade of my experience in order to try to not appear older with my experience alone.

You aren't alone brother. I grew up with rich and poor family, but chose the poor.

People who have never had to wonder if they were going to have a meal or a place to sleep as a child can never know how it can permanently change your life. I'm glad you are making strides, I still struggle to, so that's quite the accomplishment and you should be proud.

I don't think I will ever stop tallying my groceries as I put them in the basket. Or being surprised when my kids ask for something from the impulse ailse, I literally don't even see it I'm so used to not being able to get any of it.

I firmly believe if every person had to at least work a minimum wage job for a year and try to survive off it, our society would be so much better off, you wouldn't have to explain being poor to some privileged kid who has all the answers because it worked for them.

Half of the country will never know what it's like to be the other half, but one side has all the incentives to keep it that way.

I have family who still spout 'If I were born poor I'd still end up rich' (translation- poor people are just stupid, I'm smart).

I'm cheering you on, and you give me hope!

I'm cheering you on too!

Set your sites on what you want and don't waver for as long as you can. It will happen!

Much appreciated, that seriously helps. I'm going to start trying to focus on myself more and getting myself right.

Thanks for the positivity!

>>I thought by the time you're 54 you could retire. I'm much younger and I could retire in a couple of years. What is your saving rate?

That is not going to help him much now. Not everyone has or could have started saving early in life. Some did not due to ignorance, some did not due to life circumstances, some did but other life events could have taken that from them (i.e bad investments, divorce, medical issue, or 100's of other things).

Just because you have the luck and privilege to be on the FIRE path does not mean everyone else is as lucky or choose that path. This person may have not planned to retire early and looking back now wished they had made that plan in the 20's. The road not taken an all that...

>>Change jobs until you find a job like that. There are plenty, I can assure you.

Again it would seem you are taking your anecdote and applying it globally. This is very region specific and I can assure you in my region there are exactly Zero jobs in IT that allow you to start at 10am, take a 2-3 hour lunch, and knock off an 6pm...

I will not implicitly state those are not common, but I can not imagine a region where they are?

I didn't say he should have retired, it's just my expectation for a software engineer to have the ability to retire by then.

It's very likely he could retire but he just didn't realized. Maybe looking into it, it's not a bad idea.

I worked on 3 continents, in more than 10 companies. No employer ever told me I'm coming in too late, my lunch time it's too long or I'm leaving too early (6pm).

Retiring early is risky. Due to market volatility the safe withdrawal / drawdown rate is lower the longer you need your pot to last, and the impact of miscalculating your expenses worse the lower that rate becomes.

Underestimate your annual expenses by $10K on a 5% SWR? Ok you need a pot of $200K more. At 3%? $333K more. 2%? $500K.

With interest rates in a 700 year downward trend, and yields dropping across all asset classes, you should NOT assume, as a software engineer, that you will be able to retire in your 50s.

Still, of that's something that appeals, start saving and investing, otherwise the chance is literally 0.

Very interesting, I worked both as permanent and on contract basis and they did their best to keep me. Nobody even come close to fire me. I guess just different kind of experience. I'm not trying to convince you, I'm just saying, there is better out there.