Barbarus---I do understand where you're coming from. There are some posters here who have had high-paying jobs in law, business, IT, and medicine. But there's also people like me (master's degree in occupational therapy---earning highest income of $43K before retiring last year at age 52). DH earned about the same.
The great equalizer for FIRE is the ability to live below one's means. And to happy with what one has. Consequently we never wanted or attempted to live in a big house (was happy in 1,000 sf condo until it got too rundown, had too many renters, and became a hellhole, so we did upsize to 1700), take fancy vacations, etc. We saved our money and now have much more wealth than people earning six figure salaries.
It is demoralizing when you realize that you have as much education and work as hard as people earning two to three times your salary. We talk about how high paid jobs are stressful, but it ain't always pretty or stressfree to be at the mercy of your supervisor, a manager above that, and one above that. The lack of respect shows up not just in the paycheck but in general treatment as well. So in many ways, I think us low paid workers have lots of incentive to save and invest and get out of the rat race since the reward vs. cost ratio (wear and tear on our bodies and psyches) is not skewed in favor of continuing to work.
As for why some of us are/were at the bottom of the work food chain. I guess there's many answers. At the age of 22, when choosing to go to graduate school to have better job options than I would have with just a BS in psychology, I was not financially sophisticated enough to truly understand what earning power was and what was needed to live on my own. Back then, occupational therapists in 1976 were earning about $10K. It seemed like a lot of money to me since I had never worked full-time (I also had never attempted to support myself, so I had no idea of what it would take or the buying power---or lack thereof---that $10K would buy. I remember telling my manager (of the lingerie department of a department store) what I would be earning when I completed my master's. She looked at me in disbelief and told me that she was earning considerably more than that---and with just a two year degree! But that didn't deter me. I wanted "to help people" and though occupational therapy was the way to do this. I couldn't believe that people were majoring in business---yeah, the sixties were over, but it was just the last decade and I thought my generation was serious about not just selling out, and working for The man, and making as much money as possible. So some of us naive waifs just didn't know how to choose a higher paying field---or didn't want to.
Then, once in the work world, those of us who didn't want to be managers or who weren't going to win a popularity contest did not move up or get major salary increases, so that's another reason why some of us did not achieve six figure salaries.
At one point, I made myself miserable because I had never reached that silly goal of earning at least your age in salary (hence the $43K at age 52). But I didn't succumb to total misery because I realized I had enough---and wouldn't have to work past 57 or so with the way we were saving and investing. So it really did work out for me. I'm just scared that the coming up generation of workers won't take to what may be lower salaries than they hope for and that there parents earned---and there could be a lot of very unhappy younger people around.
