I do agree I think the emotional aspect is the hardest. Its what I'm struggling with the most. I know we won't be living on the street as we will find a way to make it work. Its more that it took so long to figure out and implement our general five year plan, looking at every single detail. To have it upended instantly without notice is incredibly difficult. It also really irks me that its standard to relocate across the country to a place where you have no family or friends to get an engineering job. Then two years later the company dumps you with no notice so they can hire newer engineers at a cheaper rate and skip out on the 401k match. As a typical two income household it took at minimum a year to hit our new "normal" and catch up. Following this plan there is no way we would ever get ahead. Unless you're willing to work 60+ hours a week and a devoted top performer it can make it difficult to get ahead. Coupled with enormous student loan debt there is even more stress because you are forced into a salary you need to move forward.
You articulate the issue very well!
I have felt exactly that way, working so hard and strategically to get ahead, only to find myself almost back where I started because of one person's perplexing actions. This past week I've caught the following two phrases spewing from me,
"What's the point of working so hard, investing in self-employment when you can lose everything as a result of one person's [blah blah blah].." And,
"I feel like I'm being taught a lesson for working! Now I know better!"Yep. Not my proudest spews, but they sure speak to how discouraged and disillusioned and scared and angry I feel in some moments. Many others have felt likewise.
For many of us, the path is not as simple, straight, and clean as some other people's are. For some, it's: get good degree, work hard for seven years, perhaps marry very wisely in the meantime, retire. For most of us, I think, it's a lot more like your path is: work hard, unwittingly fund a lifestyle that has more expenses than necessary, lose key income, panic, continue spending more than is necessary because we can't yet figure out another way, flounder, get a bit of footing, eventually realize how we can change our spending, slowly but surely find our way back.
That path does indeed suck while you're in the heat of it, but oodles of people have lived to tell the tale and come out well on the other side, to boot.
I know I sound like a complainy pants. I do realize, my one income is more than a bunch of other families combined that have children to support. I just feel like we're always playing catch up and we will never win.
Although even one of you earns copious more than I have in my best year, and I have a kid to support, I know that part is not so cut and dried, either. You have had massive student loan debts to deal with -some of us haven't. I don't envy you that at all, and feel deeply for this aspect of your circumstance. We all have life aspects that are easier, and all have life aspects that are harder. Kind of apples and oranges, and the emotional weight of your circumstance is just as valid as the emotional weight of mine. So, be kind to yourself in whatever ways you can -but especially in free ones :)
I know that right now you are scrambling and in a major process of reassessment and realigning, and that's hard. You are indeed in "catch up mode" and that is not a fun place to be at the beginning. But, I really believe you WILL win! Why? Besides having heaps of awesome qualities (smart, hard working, etc) you are also HERE. That is, you are aware enough now to be posting on the MMM forum, which is the point where things start turning around for real. In the last 16 months, I've moved from a "bare bones" budget of $3000/mo for my kid and myself to a new one of $1360/mo. Sixteen months ago, I absolutely could not have seen that as even a possibility. And my lifestyle is of about equal quality. You can do this!