For everything there is a season.
There is a reason so many Hallmark movies end with the mid-career person deciding to move back to the small town from the big city.
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I think this really just shows that people live/grow-up in their own bubbles oftentimes. Many times not the fault of the person rather the parents that kept the child in the bubble.
If you hear from your parents that if you go to an elite you will rule the world and you hear that enough you start to believe it. Plus other sources of information might say the same thing.
A rich kid might not understand things about people who make less than their parents. The same goes for the poor kid who doesnât understand things about people who are more stable or rich. Until you have been around the block you just donât know.
My wife who went to school with me at a T20 school probably would appear to this person to have fallen down because she is making only about 40-50% of what she could be making if she hadnât left the workforce for 9 years for the kids.
Heck even myself. I am sure many of my classmates do better than me financially. I decided not to climb the corporate ladder fully. I was able to be around for my kids coach them some. I know guys that are out to client dinners 2-3 times a week. Or they travel a ton. They hardly see their kids. That is their choice.
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Fit is very important in that field â some of the requirements really stink.
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Itâs common as people get older that they discover what they really like doing and adjust accordingly. Our younger selves have so little information to make decisions and often we start off doing what we think weâre âsupposedâ to do or what our parents think weâre supposed to do. When we age and get experience we realize our lives are our own. Itâs liberating TBH. As long as they are enjoying what they are doing and making enough money to support themselves, thatâs success.
What I consider a tragedy are the kids/adults that are under so much stress that they end up turning to drugs or suicide. This can happen at any education, economic, or work level. Unfortunately, itâs common among doctors actually, but I see it most in high school students or young adults based upon working at the high school. Itâs super sad.
People need to fill the niche they enjoy, not the one they are âsupposedâ to have as defined by others.
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My husband got his MBA from NYU and is a financial planner, heâs been with the same financial services for 30+. He couldâve made more money, but he coached dozens of his kidsâ teams and rarely missed a game. Iâm 2 classes away from my MA and havenât been employed since 1995. I took care of the kids, cooked, cleaned, shopped, did laundry, drove carpools, my kids were very involved in extracurriculars. I wouldnât change a thing.
My dad had degrees from Princeton (chemical engineering) and Columbia, good job with a lot of travel, he was never around (and not a kid person until he was a grandparent), his company was bought out and upper management was let go, he really didnât work again after 55.
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ps Iâm sure we could be making more if that mattered to us, or living in a more prestigious place according to many, but we donât want to. We love traveling. One of my favorite memories was being on an airplane heading to HI for a month with our kids. My seatmate was dressed in a suit - heading there for business. He was a frequent flyer. He envied us and considered us ârichâ that we could take a month off.
Chances are he made more than we do, but we just choose to use our money differently.
Absolutely no regrets BTW.
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My husband and I got masterâs degrees from a top engineering school. We had excellent grades and good experience. We could have had a high-flying career designing skyscrapers in Manhattan or Chicago. We decided to live in Maine, where we design a lot of houses and other small structures. But you know what? We started our own firm and work from home in a beautiful house on three wooded acres next to the most protected river on the east coast. We are so happy to live and work here. Every time I go out to the mailbox, I think how lucky we are. So if thatâs âfalling off,â itâs fine with me. 
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Many people choose work/life balance, raising a family, personal fulfillment, small town life, over professional success. Whoâs to judge? My husband and I quickly figured out after starting a family that we couldnât both have the type of high powered careers we had planned for ourselves. I took the professional hit and raised our kids so he could put more time and energy into his career. No regrets.
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I worked at a large homeless shelter in Boston. Not exactly prestigious, with a population that often considers themselves failures. But Tracy Kidder just wrote a book about it (and health care): âRough Sleepers.â Maybe the OP could read that book.
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People from all sorts of colleges do all sorts of things. Maybe they donât want to high powered top careers. Maybe they want a good work life balance.
We live in an affluent area. My kids had many friends who lived in huge houses and their parents drove nice cars and they went on nice trips. But then again they hardly saw their fathers. Theyâd always be at work or at something related to work. In some cases it was both parents. We had less money (believe me, weâre very comfortable and certainly not lacking), but we spent a lot of time together as a family. One of Dâs friends says the most she remembers about her dad is hearing him coming home late at night and spending their entire vacation in Hawaii sitting at a table by the pool with his laptop and cell phone getting work done. Thatâs kind of sadâŠ
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When my wife went back into the workforce she took a job that she was vastly overqualified for with the HS. The location and time was great and met our needs as family. To move to the next level she needed a Masterâs. She went back and got it not too long ago. We donât have the family requirements that we used to have with our youngest a senior in HS. (Soon we will be empty nesters) So when canât make it home at the normal time it is no big deal. She will get a pension that will help with retirement and offset some of the years she wasnât working.
I have thought plenty about our decision for one of us to stay home. It definitely affected us financially and times got lean. We couldnât save the $150-200K per kid so they could pick almost any college to go to. It was a tough pill to swallow. Who doesnât want the best for their kids. My kids ended up being high stats and I give my wife about 95% of the credit. She did the work to make sure they started school on the right foot. In my mind there was a cost, but I wouldnât have changed it. We feel extremely lucky that we got to raise our kids and not have someone else do it. My kids will get through college without debt because of our little savings and their hard work. I am good with that. They are starting out adulthood ahead of where my wife and I started. We had debt and plenty of it.
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I actually feel a bit badly for the OP who seems to have such sky high expectations for him/herself and no concept of what is truly important in life. Iâm guessing this was ingrained throughout his/her upbringing.
Unless they have been struck by tragedy there is no reason to feel badly for those who have made lifestyle choices and (as the OP terms it) have âfallen off.â Nobody has the right to make judgements about (legal) choices that other people make.
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Iâm invoking the Mercy Rule.
Any user that wants to start a thread sharing how their paths veered from what they originally planned and inviting others to do the same is welcome to do so.
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