I am very appreciate of topics like this both here at over at bogleheads.
When I got out of grad school in 2010 at age 28 I had about $3000 in retirement income saved. I remember my dad and an older cousin (he was probably 40 or so at the time) told me about how around age 40 it became much more difficult to find a job if you were out of work. I figuratively rolled my eyes and was excited to start my career as a newly minted MBA from a top-30ish program. There was no way that would happen to me.
I remember sitting at my desk at my first job out of grad school, before I had really settled in and had enough to do on a daily basis, and ran spreadsheets estimating how much money I would save for retirement. In those projections I used age 68 as my retirement date. I think I used a 5% 401K contribution and a 5% employer match as my contributions, and probably a standard rate of return somewhere between 8 and 10%. The other assumption I used was a 3% increase in salary every year, and every 3 to 5 years a 10 to 20% jump in income. My plan was to change jobs every 3 to 5 years for that big raise until around age 40, and then at that point I figured I would just keep getting promoted for these big raises.
Fast forward a little less than 9 years later. I spent the last 4.5 years of my career (prior to June 2018) in a dumpster fire of a job where the management I was under at megacorp was so dysfunctional, it was proving impossible to find a job outside of the department I was in because it was so toxic. I spent 18 months job hunting at age 35 and 36 and talked to countless employers who didn't want to pay me the same wage that I was making for lateral moves. I had done enough research in the industry and market to know that based on my experience, my salary requirements were not out of line. On the high end yes, but not enough to disqualify me from contention (in most cases).
Point being, I was miserable during that time and went on countless interviews, had a number of potential offers dangled in front of my face only to end up stuck in a bad job much longer than I ever anticipated. At the same time I watched the ugly side of corporate politics take over with many people I worked with. Good people who were great employees found themselves reorged and all of a sudden they were no longer valuable to the organization because a boss didn't like them for political reasons. I've seen people let go for similar reasons.
I have come to realize that the corporate world is not what I thought it was at 28, and I would be foolish to think I would be able to hold on until age 68 (let alone want to hang on until age 68). So instead I've focused on LBYM and tried to build up as much savings as I can.
My wife and I have about $330k in our retirement savings (split between traditional 401k, Roth, and HSA), 4 to 5 months in an emergency fund, and are about 1 year away from having my student loan paid off (this in an off itself costs more than our mortgage on a monthly basis). We unexpectedly had to buy a new car three months ago, but could write a check tomorrow to pay that loan off if we needed to. My wife is going back to school to become a nurse practitioner, but between employer reimbursement and paying as we go, we should hopefully be positioned to only have to pay her student loans back for about a year after she is done with her program (if even that).
All in all, stories like these about the harsh reality of the corporate world, and the experience of people here and over at bogleheads have really helped motivate me to try and fortify our financial life. We aren't quite where we need to be, but we are in much better shape to avert disaster than we were a few years ago.
So TL; DR, lots of gratitude for the conversation around stories like this as it has helped me realize (and prepare for) the fact that working until age 68 probably isn't realistic, nor is it something I want to do.
