10-18-2013, 04:58 PM
When in college I was split between electrical engineering or science education. My first two years in school I took many of the same courses that the electrical and chemical engineers took, but made much better grades than most of those students. So could have gone either route, I'm sure. Being in education I complained about the low salary for much of my career, though at the end, a little over $50K was much better than the early years. Now after retirement for about 9 years, retired at age 54, I don't think that choosing the education route was such a poor financial choice. Much of the higher salary of an engineer would have to go to aggressive funding of 401K to end up with a portfolio that would kick out a reliable $2400 per month. Plus, we have a very good health plan that only costs a hundred bucks per month, with the state picking up the rest of the tab.
So choosing to go the state route with its really good benefits was the biggest factor. Though, I worked at DuPont for about 7 years right after high school, and had already been aggressively saving that whole time. So I would say, saving until it hurt was a primary trait. No matter what a person's career, saving at least 15% in the early years and saving at least 25% during the mid to later years is critical, if one wants to live comfortably after retirement. Though the wife and I had very good state benefits, we still went for a twenty to twenty five year period when we saved 15%-30% of our gross, even when it caused us to really struggle during the child raising years.
I learned the last element from my brother. He lost his job at about 50 years old. But he had no house payment, no car payment, few if any bills. It took almost nothing for him to live a very good life style on the limited income that he had after losing his job and deciding to avoid the rat race from that point forward. So paying down debt or carrying very low debt is also an extremely important factor.
So choosing to go the state route with its really good benefits was the biggest factor. Though, I worked at DuPont for about 7 years right after high school, and had already been aggressively saving that whole time. So I would say, saving until it hurt was a primary trait. No matter what a person's career, saving at least 15% in the early years and saving at least 25% during the mid to later years is critical, if one wants to live comfortably after retirement. Though the wife and I had very good state benefits, we still went for a twenty to twenty five year period when we saved 15%-30% of our gross, even when it caused us to really struggle during the child raising years.
I learned the last element from my brother. He lost his job at about 50 years old. But he had no house payment, no car payment, few if any bills. It took almost nothing for him to live a very good life style on the limited income that he had after losing his job and deciding to avoid the rat race from that point forward. So paying down debt or carrying very low debt is also an extremely important factor.
Alex