Personal Finance Canada

Holy shit! And here's my wife and I trying to figure out our combined $36k annual income.

To be fair, it's completely our choice. We decided that retiring was more important than anything else we could do.

Also, to be fair, I did have a job in 1975 in which I paid more income tax than the combined gross incomes of my parents, and they actually had decent jobs. But it sucked, and I never again put earnings ahead of working conditions or work-life balance.

As for tech specifically, I entered shifted my hobby to a career as programmer and instructor in 1993 at about $28k, went freelance in 1996, earning $50-60k, and went back to employment in 2004 earning quite a bit less, but with far less stress. I was at $65k when I left the field entirely in 2011 due to burn out, situational depression (my therapist's term), and excessive stress. It turns out that the employment was just a different kind of "sneaks up on you" stress than the stress of always chasing work.

After that, I can tell you what I was doing and what I was earning (much less!), but it doesn't really matter, because we were living the life we wanted and still managed to figure out how to retire.

I hope the same for you and everyone else.