What stretch of your career was or is the hardest? (Class of 2026 through 2029?)

[ModestNestEgg]

Hello Everybody!

Short version of my question with additional detail at the bottom, for those who dare.

One of the more interesting posts I have seen recently was the one below about someone experiencing burnout, and it made me wonder if there was a stretch of your career (whether you are retired or are still working) that seemed the hardest, and maybe a stretch that seemed the easiest? Asked another way, was there a stretch where you really wanted to retire, but the days seemed to drag on with a cumulative pile of stress, and others where they were going by quickly and seamlessly?

https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f30/am-i-burnt-out-113933.html

Thoughts/questions/ideas?
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Additional detail (and a bit of a vent):

My introductory post is near the bottom. My annual spending after income taxes/FICA are paid (not counting my mortgage, which will be paid by the earliest time I contemplate retiring) has been fairly consistent in the upper 20K's to lower 30K's, depending on medical expenses/home repairs, etc. that occur each year. There may be a year in the near future where it could spike a bit when I need to replace an HVAC or flooring, but I am perfectly content not spending massive amounts of money, buying expensive cars, going on expensive trips, etc.

My state pension (in one of the best fundest states) could possibly begin just under 4 years from now with a bare bones amount (that would require me to work part time for a number of years or dip into my fairly modest retirement savings more than I want). 5.75 to 7 years would give me much, much more breathing room by giving me a full pension (depending on how much sick leave I have at that time which counts toward retirement) where I may need to dip into my retirement accounts, but only modestly.

So I am in that zone where retirement obviously doesn't seem as close as someone who is accomplishing that in a few months or a year or so, but it seems like a more manageable chunk (like high school or a 4-year degree) than the 10 or 15 years away that it was when I first began contemplating it more concretely.

Yet, I do feel the stress piling on, which can't be good for me. My own workload has increased. Everything seems more ambiguous. I have to deal with people not pulling their weight that I don't have authority to deal with, slowing my work down. It also seems like more and more of my time gets eaten up by having to do CYA things to appease illogical bureaucratic/legalese requirements instead of spending time on projects that I got into my field to do. To be honest, after multiple decades, it all just gets a little old, but public sector compensation is set up to be much more lucrative to people who stick it out just a few more years than I have already, so I feel like I'd be doing myself a huge disservice by leaving. And not every day is bad. I've just noticed more bad ones start to creep in the last few years.

Here is where I was about a year and a half ago (and people gave me really helpful feedback then):

https://www.early-retirement.org/fo...urney-and-aspirations-109459.html#post2614292

I'm still plugging away at setting myself up decently outside of my pension. So if we take away the rough market (and fairly stagnant value of my retirement accounts in last 18 months which has not dropped only because I have been adding to them consistently), I'm several notches better on these metrics than I was at that time (particularly with adding and fully funding an HSA and my home being so much closer to being paid off- only 3.5 years to go if not sooner!).

 

[Kork13]

I'm eyeing a potential FIRE exit in 2028 (age 42)... Or at least that's when I should be able to do so at will (pension eligible). I think the toughest point in my career thus far has been a few years back, around 2017-2019. I felt underutilized, underappreciated, and unrecognized for my efforts. My wife was also going through a major mental health crisis, and we were meanwhile trying to keep a pair of young children alive.

These are all of the ingredients for burnout, and your story has many of the same hallmarks. For perspective, I recommend reading (or listening, via podcast/TED Talks) some of the work about burnout by Adam Grant (Organizational Psychologist & Professor at U-Penn's Wharton School). He basically says that burnout is caused by a few factors: (1) excessive workload; (2) lack of control; (3) lack of support; (4) lack of progress & growth. Overall, he equates burnout more to languishing & lack of fulfillment than exhaustion. You're just no longer seeing the purpose & motivation in your work. Often, a change of situation can give you a different perspective & help resolve the feeling of burnout. That's what I'd suggest. Even if it's just a new project in the same job, or maybe a new role in a different department, or figure out something of the sort to help you get a different perspective on what you're doing. Burnout is just as much an internal struggle as it is a result of external factors.

That's what got me out of my burnout funk. I got an opportunity to do something totally different. My new job was productive, impactful, leading a great team, and I actually felt appreciated & successful. All the while, I was working 12-14 hour days, and loving every minute of it -- perhaps one of the most fulfilling periods of my career. Funny how that works. Even better, my performance in that job earned me a great deal of recognition & advocacy from my leadership, and eventually led me into a significant promotion.

Figure out how to find new fulfillment from what you're doing, or figure out how to change what you're doing to allow yourself to find that fulfillment.

 

[SecondAttempt]

My current stretch is by far the hardest! Financially I can retire now but am waiting for the stars to align in other ways.

 

[big-papa]

For me, it's been cumulative over the years, but the stress probably really took off in my early 50's after I moved from being an individual contributor into a management role. I knew the politics might be difficult, but, really I had no idea. It was the first time I encountered somebody in another organization who decided to put an X on my back, for his own career purposes, and didn't even bother to hide it. Happened again a couple of jobs later in another situation. Then one more time. I ultimately decided that my sensitivity to it has increased probably more than the causes for the stress have.

I'm now 61 and my current job had been reasonably low stress for the first 4 years or so then we had some executive change up. About this time last year, my boss was let go and for a nanosecond I thought about going for his role, but no way - I no longer craved nor needed the visibility to the new high-pressure execs and I sure didn't need any arbitrary praise or critiques anymore. I also concluded that for each additional year of stress at this point, I'd likely knock off more than a year of life expectancy. So, I came to the conclusion over several months that it was time to plan an actual retirement date.

When new boss was brought in (somebody I already knew well and respected) I told him my plans. We agreed that I would stay long enough to find and train my replacement before riding off into the sunset. Replacement has been found and I'll depart early next year. It's been quite the liberating feeling.

Cheers.

 

[Markola]

^^^^^^. Your experience rings true with me. One time I took on more responsibility than I wanted, because I thought I “should” for my career advancement and when my boss left and I thought I had to. For me, it wasn’t the people or management load but the financial pressure to hit targets that only go up. It was an ego boost and more money but it put me out of alignment with what I actually wanted, causing stress, so I started looking for an exit and didn’t last long in the role anyway. I don’t regret the learning experience about myself, though.

 

[Physics Guy]

I was a high school science teacher for the last 23 years. The hardest stretch was really the first 2-3 years. I wasn't burnt out I was busting my butt to get good. Once I was on top of things I didn't find the job hard. Even the last year when I was burning out and Covid was changing schools it wasn't hard just frustrating.

 

[big-papa]

^^^^^^. Your experience rings true with me. One time I took on more responsibility than I wanted, because I thought I “should” for my career advancement and when my boss left and I thought I had to. For me, it wasn’t the people or management load but the financial pressure to hit targets that only go up. It was an ego boost and more money but it put me out of alignment with what I actually wanted, causing stress, so I started looking for an exit and didn’t last long in the role anyway. I don’t regret the learning experience about myself, though.

Yep. For me it was very situational. At some companies where I had a leadership role, things were fine. At one company in particular, the CEO actually encouraged backstabbing so it ran rampant. At another company the amount of politics running around was totally out of proportion with what one could achieve if one actually won a political battle. King of the molehill?

 

[TripleLindy]

I won’t go into detail, but the last 12-18 months of my career were by far the most stressful. In a way, I’m grateful, because that time period actually pushed me to realize my goal of retirement at 55, which I had set 20 years earlier, but had almost forgotten until that last year of employment. I sleep so much better now and have barely tapped into the freedom that comes with virtually no responsibilities. I’ve stayed in touch with colleagues and the stress hasn’t abated. I can only imagine what another 5 years of that would have done to me from a health perspective.

 

[disneysteve]

I'm a physician. Without any doubt, the absolute hardest stretch of my career began when COVID arrived in 2020. I was working full time in urgent care so we were on the front line full force. Many days I was diagnosing 8 or 10 or more cases. And early on we didn't have adequate PPE, we didn't know everything about the virus that we know today, we didn't have good workflows in place to protect ourselves. Many of my coworkers came down with COVID though I thankfully managed not to. Never in my nearly 30 years of practice did I fear for my own well being every time I arrived at work. I also feared that I would carry the virus home and spread it to my family, especially my elderly mother.



The whole COVID ordeal (which certainly hasn't ended) definitely accelerated me easing into retirement. I dropped to part time last November and then to per diem this past August so I only work 8 hours/week now. If not for COVID, I'm not sure I would have been so quick to cut back.

 

[nobody]

I used to think the first 5 years were more stressful for me as I learned the job. Once I got confident and knew a lot more it was good, except since I was better I was traveling about 50% of my time being gone for 3-9 months at a time with a weekend home once every 3 weeks, wasn't fun. At year 12 they started pushing me to more of a lead position and bigger projects and the stress built steadily for the next 8 years till I retired

 

[Which Roger]

Easy answer for me. For the first half of my career at MegaTechCorp, company was doing well, work was challenging and interesting, and things were generally good. For the second half, company was struggling, work environment deteriorated, work got much less interesting, and I just hung on as long as I needed to reach FI.

 

[pjigar]

Still working and nothing stressful I can think of other than "2 days a week travel" for stretch of 4 years. FWIW I took the next day after the travel easy every week in order to recoup. When they pushed me to travel 3 days a week, I changed my employer. My work motto is very simple: "Not my monkey, not my circus". I do a hair more than what is necessary for the work: no more, no less. I disengage after hours and weekend: always have, always will.

 

[Bamaman]

I'm a physician. Without any doubt, the absolute hardest stretch of my career began when COVID arrived in 2020. I was working full time in urgent care so we were on the front line full force. Many days I was diagnosing 8 or 10 or more cases. And early on we didn't have adequate PPE, we didn't know everything about the virus that we know today, we didn't have good workflows in place to protect ourselves. Many of my coworkers came down with COVID though I thankfully managed not to. Never in my nearly 30 years of practice did I fear for my own well being every time I arrived at work. I also feared that I would carry the virus home and spread it to my family, especially my elderly mother.

The whole COVID ordeal (which certainly hasn't ended) definitely accelerated me easing into retirement. I dropped to part time last November and then to per diem this past August so I only work 8 hours/week now. If not for COVID, I'm not sure I would have been so quick to cut back.

Thank you, Steve, for hanging in there through the COVID pandemic. We have no idea what all the healthcare professionals have been going through the last three years. (My wife was a big hospital laboratory manager.)

My wife had major back surgery and fell and broke a leg--and just got out of bed this week after 4 months on her back. In the meantime, her primary care physician dropped all Medicare patients and is now only working in weight management. My doctor (in the same practice) sold the business to the local hospital and retired. My wife's pain mgmt. doctor quit and left town. And my oncologist sold his practice to a hospital and will retire as soon as a replacement doctor can be found. The medical industry is not stable.

Two of the hospitals my wife was in 7/2022 were "completely full", but they wouldn't admit 1/4 of their rooms were closed off due to insufficient staffing. I feel for those trying to get thru the local emergency rooms as 12-18 hr. waits are normal--understaffed.

And I'm not going to get into patients in severe pain--and the states mandating to doctors what little pain medicine they are allowed to distribute. Many in serious pain have had to go to street meds, and they're dying.

I'm so glad you've got full retirement in your sights. You've certainly earned it.

 

[Bamaman]

I spent 24 years working for a major automobile manufacturer. We were slaves to our objectives, and I never knew of any friends or neighbors that worked harder than us.

Times in the auto business are very unsettling right now with few vehicles on dealer lots. I honestly don't know how car dealers have stayed in business in the last 2 years.

My biggest stress was from 1979 to 1982 when the prime interest rates went toward 19%. New auto dealerships were not making sufficient money to pay the big interest rates. We'd get a couple of dealership checks returned weekly for insufficient funds.

I would be the one to deal with the dealers, and we were having to close dealerships--putting 10-25-50 or more people out of jobs. It was one of those thankless but needed jobs. We just had too many car dealerships back then.

The past few years have been good to businesses with interest rates being so low--probably too low. Now that interest rates are increasing and inflation raising its ugly head, changes in the business world are coming. Look for employee heads to roll.

And to those that are close to retirement that have executed a long term savings plan toward retirement, congratulations. You've earned the right to go to the house and get off that high stress band wagon. Never look back.

 

[COcheesehead]

I founded and ran a business for 24 years before selling it a couple years ago. There were so many bad stretches I lost count. In the end it was the best thing financially to ever happen to me, but on any given day it was the worst.
I tried to always keep the mantra of “this too shall pass” in my head. You will get through everything except of course death and taxes.

 

[W2R]

I've been retired for 13 years. For me, the hardest part was getting a job in the first place. Second hardest was every single doggone day of work. I think I was always meant to be retired! The last two years were especially excruciating since I was FI but had to wait until my health insurance kicked in (there was no ACA back then).

Ah, but the goal was so worth it!

 

[brett]

Hardest part for me was making the decision to uproot our family, our teenagers, and move.

Difficult at first but it turned out to be the best decision ever from a financial and a family perspective.

The other hardest part was having to lay off great employees. I hated that process even though most of them moved on to as good or better positions and the severance was top drawer.

 

[MRG]

I left the sawmill for a programming job. I absolutely loved what I did for many years there. I moved positions every few years, so I was never bored and well compensated. I made the move from IC to management and still loved getting up and going to work.

I had planned on 30 years at Megacorp to make it a nice even number. At 29 years and 3 months I became DONE. The culture of Megacorp had changed since the founder and CEO retired 4.25 years earlier. Place went from getting stuff done to how you looked in a suit(my British born manager referred to them as "neer-do-wells")!

I had a conversation with my Fidelity rep and turned my resignation the next week.

 

[EastWest Gal]

Retired pediatrician. A few times stood out:
1. Early in my career, our practice demanded that we see our own patients in the ER when on call at night, in addition to being called in to attend high risk deliveries. Our practice had 6-7 pediatricians, and we were paired up to cover all the phone calls for one partner each. We had one set weekday off for the first 8 years. I was always paired up with someone who had Monday off. Imagine going to the hospital at 6:30 and seeing 4-5 newborns, maybe attending a meeting, then arriving at the office with 30 phone messages on my desk, week in and week out.

One time I was on call on a Thursday I was up all night at a delivery and taking care of a sick newborn. I went home long enough to shower and change. On Friday I covered someone who was off in addition to my own practice, and saw 45 patients. Then that sick newborn got sicker and had to be transferred to Stanford at about 11 PM. This was after being up all night the night before. Then on Saturday I was on call again, seeing newborns, then patients and phone calls in the office until 1PM, then phone calls, ER visits and deliveries. I also had to see some of the newborns on Sunday morning.

That was only one year into the practice, and I was not yet very efficient with paperwork. Between that and being given push back for taking vacation days to help with my dying MIL and having to beg someone to cover a few hours so I could attend her funeral put me over the edge. I decided to leave the practice, and in fact left the state entirely.

The second time was here in PA, several times experiencing blatant misogyny and insults from our medical director, at the end after I came back per diem to help the practice out in a pinch, after being asked over and over again to help out.

Overall I experienced more burnout than joy in my career. Overwork is the norm in medicine. The last two months I struggled to care. I can't imagine how docs like disneysteve got through the worst of Covid. I'm glad I retired fully in 2019.

 

[CindyBlue]

The worst years for us were definitely the last five or six years of our working career, when admin changed and not for the better. Then it changed again and got worse. We in the trenches tried hard to keep the old, friendly, hardworking, cooperative culture we used to have, but we were beaten down bit by bit until it became untenable for us (my hubby and I worked at the same place.)

Though I was a year from FRA, with the help and advice from everyone here - which I started seeking when things got so bad at work 5 or 6 years before we retired! - we retired, and I lived off my savings for my contribution to the household income until I could get to SS.

We both loved our jobs - over 40 years for me and over 50 years for him. It was hard work, and we spent well over "normal" working hours there, but we'd still be working if it hadn't been for that admin change. It wasn't the job...it was the attitude and actions of the new admin that did it, and we lasted for a long time dealing with it and trying to work it out with them before we finally gave up. So sad...

Since we left three years ago, it changed yet again and is so bad that well over three-quarters of the staff have quit since.

 

[pacergal]

The first two years out of nursing school and working in a hospital were pretty stressful--even in the 70's there was a nursing shortage and they could not find enough nurses to take night shift, so each floor had to rotate Days/Evenings/Nights one week each, rinse/repeat. It was exhausting! After DH and I got married and I wanted a "normal" work life, I went into Public Health. Best decision ever. Less pay, for sure. But a great future pension and M-F with holidays off.
About 15 years in there, I got burn out really bad, not sure if it was the job or mid life or what. I interviewed for a few positions, but when I looked at the entire package, the finances just didn't add up to where I was.I was at the "golden handcuffs spot" regarding my pension. So I changed to a different internal position twice in the next 20 years. Loved my last 6 years prior to retirement, but the stress was still there! I worked past earliest age for pension due to other incredible retiree medical benefits .

OP--keep plugging away and keep your eye on the prize. Make sure you take all available vacation days for mental health time away if you can. I started a retirement countdown at 1000 days , it didn't make time go much faster, but it was fun to mark off one more day, every day!
The three legged stool of pension/SS/investments is priceless.

 

[Irishgirlyc58]

I worked in health and human services for ~36 years.
I thought the Great Recession and corresponding fallout in 2008-2012 approximately would have been the worst. It was bad-seeing people lose 15-20 careers and no jobs available. It was a tough few years professionally but personally it was fine.
I was an HHS director in 2020 when Covid hit. Those last two years with Covid blew the problems during the recession right out of the water.
No personal protective equipment for staff going out on child welfare cases, asking staff to transport potentially Covid positive homeless people to a quarantine trailer, and planning for alternate care sites should our hospital systems fail. Those are just the highlights. Talk about stress.
Then of course I had to worry about my family’s personal safety.
Hands down 2020-2021 were the absolute worst.
On the plus side I got a lot of insider information on Covid which was both interesting and helpful. So there’s that.
I retired at the end of 2021 which was actually the time frame I selected several years before as I maximized my pension. I’m just now starting to feel less stressed. My health has improved so much this last year since I now have time to pay attention to exercise and cooking.
Ironically, I always thought retiring in 2020 would be cool- as in vision, going forward, etc.

Life has ups and downs. Just try to build some positives into your life while work is tough.
How old are your kids now?
I always liked having older kids because you can go places so much easier with them. Maybe take weekend trips or something.
Don’t let work suck the life out of you.

 

[ModestNestEgg]

I just want to pause right now and thank everyone for the strategies, resources, your own personal experiences, and most of all, the empathy. Many of your situations are undoubtedly more difficult than my own.

I think my post was motivated by noticing that the ratio of bad weeks to good weeks has been creeping in the wrong direction, especially over the last year or so. There have been times during my career when the number of good weeks exceeds the number of tough weeks, so hopefully that trend can move back in the right direction until I at least have more ability to retire if I choose. I do think the direction that this goes will be one of the major determinants (not counting things that may happen outside of work) of whether I choose to retire as soon as possible (even taking a significant hit to my finances) or wait it out 2-3 years.

I will read all of these responses (received so far) more thoroughly to fully digest them, but I want each of you to know that every response is much appreciated!

Thank you!

 

[Klubbie]

I'm 40 now so still have many working years ahead of me. From 2014 to 2018 were by far the toughest phase of my career to date. I took a job that looked promising and turned out to be just a terrible situation. Work was boring. Leadership was poor, and I was somewhat trapped due to the debt my wife and I were paying off at the time. Thankfully we got our debts paid off (except mortgage) and won't find ourselves in that situation again. What really made that period tough was the isolation. Our department did not have a great reputation within the company. Fortunately the sub team I was on built some decent relationships with folks but it was a struggle.

I've recently entered another stretch professionally that is similar. I am at a new company and had been in a role I really liked. Good leadership. Good team. Interesting enough work. I got reorged into the department I left at my old job that I hated earlier this year. My boss works 2 hours away and the rest of our team is in Bangalore India. So far it is very isolating and frustrating as the work is boring and the leadership in this group is lacking. I'll keep networking with folks I know in other areas of the company in hopes to move on. Or I'll switch careers.

Either way, poor leadership and boring work are hard for me to cope with. The summary of burnout above by another poster is one I very much relate too.

 

[RobbieB]

My worst was right before my best.

Took a sales job after I got canned from running a small manufacturing operation, they consolidated operations to a larger facility in Minnesota.

Started out great. Learned the territory, increased sales, my feces had no aroma. Then my biggest customer had their technology replaced by better technology and sales went down.

Suddenly I was feces. Into the "boiler room" for another bashing. Week after week. Lost sleep. Called recruiter and bailed out.

Finished up 18 years later with the new company, had a good time!

Yell at me, I'm gone. Easy. I can always get a job.

Later I found out the tyrant boss had a stroke, got a divorce, got re-married and then died. RIP blowhard.