Contra: you only live once. The risk with spending so much of your youth building for a future - in essence, living for the tomorrow you're trying to create - is that you won't want it when you get there.
When you're young, you're at the point at which you most likely have fewer worries of any kind than you will in the rest of your life. And you won't appreciate this until it's gone. A slightly more advanced career is a poor substitute.
I'm not arguing in favour of feckless youth. In fact, you should be serious about one thing - not wasting your time. But building a career that you abandon in your 30s or 40s may also be a waste of time.
Agreed. One thing I've noticed about my own life is how hard even 1 year out of your career track hurts you both professionally (skill set) and personally (income/wealth). I was doing financial services programming for a big bank as my first job right out of college before the housing bust. I ended up getting laid off and enjoying the "funemployment" people talk about: 6 month full severance, unemployment at the top rate after that, living at home with the parents, no debt, and doing whatever strikes my fancy.
I set an upper bound of 1 year maximum to be out of the field of programming. When I came back (should have kept programming while unemployed, stupid, I know) not only had my skill set deteriorated but so did my market rate. Out of college my salary was $98,000. By the time I had gotten back into the work force my salary was $65,000. It took about 1.5 years of hard work and a lot of overtime to get back to where I was. And during this time my peers that stayed employed have grown a lot both in terms skill set and market rate. So basically because I took 1 year off, I lost ~2.5-3 years of my career because I had to work back to where I was before.
I think if I were to get a do-over I would have not have taken a year off. But the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, as they say.
Yes still the same field. If I switch jobs I think I can probably expect a 30-40k bump + signing bonus since it's a totally different market now. Also when you have a job people want you. When you're out of a job you're seen as deficient in some way.
The risk with spending so much of your youth building for a future - in essence, living for the tomorrow you're trying to create - is that you won't want it when you get there.
Well said. Now that I'm 30, I'm pretty much living the dream I had for myself when I was 20, but it hasn't turned out to be exactly what I thought it would be.
I'm not sure there is any way you can win though. If I had lived my life differently in my 20s and not had fulfilled the goals I set for myself, I'd be still dreaming the same dreams wishing I could achieve them. The grass is always greener and all that.
The more I think about it, the less I understand this common concept of sweating and working NOW for the good you might one day reap... having been born in the West, you are in the extremely fortunate position of being able to perfectly work on skills and slowly building a career while at the same time enjoying life to the fullest. It is a very strange thing we always put the good times off for later and slave away now only to make more money to one day finally eventually reap all the benefits when we are 50, 60 or 70 - a time in life when your options are way more limited than they were in your 20s and 30s.
I agree with you, we live too much in the "one glorious day" fantasy world and we agree too much to become chased rats battling for minor increments of personal wealth when the truly wealthy people of the world are absolutely untouchable and forever out of our reach.
When you're young, you're at the point at which you most likely have fewer worries of any kind than you will in the rest of your life. And you won't appreciate this until it's gone. A slightly more advanced career is a poor substitute.
I'm not arguing in favour of feckless youth. In fact, you should be serious about one thing - not wasting your time. But building a career that you abandon in your 30s or 40s may also be a waste of time.