I am in my mid 40s as well and I agree, however for me the main stressor these days is that I feel that while I do have many productive years left (looking obje

I am in my mid 40s as well and I agree, however for me the main stressor these days is that I feel that while I do have many productive years left (looking objectively I am a lot stronger in my skillset now than I was 10 and 20 years ago) I am not sure how that will map with job availability as time goes on, with the constant thought in the back of my mind of the age discrimination existing in our field. Thinking about my father at my age he would constantly tell me I was lucky to be allowed to go to school rather than being pulled out and being put to work in the fields when I was 14 like he was; after WW2 there was a lot of poverty in some areas of Europe, meaning, he had to go hunting/fishing to be able to get something to eat poverty, or going in the fields after they were harvested hoping to score some ears of corn poverty. On the other hand his generation benefited by the later years, when he ended up making a really good living first being a musician (in the 60s it was definitely feasible, not like now where I see bands being paid less than I was in my 20s for bar gigs) and then being a blue collar worker, at my age he was working in a very low stress factory job for a solid middle class salary, and he was able to retire with full benefits at 53 due to having had to start working so early. In our generation we've been lucky a lot of us were able to go to school rather than have to work in the fields, but the lack of pensions and general different economic trajectory in our lifetime is definitely making me long for the guarantees his generation was able to have in terms of retirement. It's a lot easier to suffer privations when you are younger and healthy and strong than when you are old and are affected with all that old age brings. I have read plenty of times the U-shaped-midlife-crisis articles and I really hope that they are true, because honestly I am not seeing how there can be an uptick of the U without a sense of financial stability, which seems hard to have in the 50s and 60s given that pensions are not on the plate for us, and savings are vulnerable to market vagaries as well as medical expenses. Add to this the normal what-ifs about how we'd be able to retire NOW (or at least have enough saved up not to worry about retirement) if we had invested in stock X vs stock Y, or joined startup X vs startup Y, or bought house X vs renting apartment Y, and it's hard to remain positive at times