I turn 40 next month and I’ve done everything right and I’m BARELY keeping up.

I got good grades in school. I did as much community college as I could and then my parents paid for the rest of my bachelor’s. I worked hard at my jobs. I put myself through school for another degree so I could move up (and paid for it out of my savings, no loans). I had two kids and went back to work. I paid the crippling $3k a month to have them in daycare. I moved closer family to get their help after school. I drive a modest car and I live in a modest house. I have no vices - no drugs, no alcohol, no gambling. I cook my own food and do my own cleaning. I worked a “side hustle” for most of my 20s and early 30s (writing, making maybe 500-1k a month). I’ve saved everything I didn’t spend on rent, food, and utilities. I’ve never bought a coffee, or traveled outside the US, or traveled much at all. I am in good health. I married a good partner, and he’s a software engineer with no debt.

I literally did everything right, and yet we are behind on savings, we can’t afford to repair anything but the absolute essentials on our home, and we’re counting the days until we write our last daycare check so we can start… saving for college.

It’s hard not to think that shelling out over $140k to the daycare over the past 7 years didn’t have something to do with it.

And then there are my 79-year-old parents, watching my husband and I run this treadmill, and scratching their heads in wonder. We have so much less than they did at my age, and yet we have two incomes! How are we not living in absolute luxury?!

What a different world they lived in. Sometimes, when I feel like feeling bad, I remember that my dad’s pension pays him more every month than I earn doing my 40 hour a week software developer job. A pension! Imagine being paid while not even working.

(It was definitely the kids that did us in - I often think about how much more secure we would be without the daycare costs.)

That since I was pregnant it was time to let my career go.

My career is critical to my family’s ability to live a middle class life (and it’s critical to my sanity and happiness, but the person who gave me this “advice“ wasn’t really one for acknowledging or valuing mental health).