Yes, happened to me about 6 years ago. I'm a software engineer. My daughter was about a year old then, wife had left her job because we'd moved cities and later

Yes, happened to me about 6 years ago. I'm a software engineer. My daughter was about a year old then, wife had left her job because we'd moved cities and later to care for our daughter. I had a car loan and home mortgage. It was devastating and a blow to my self esteem, frankly. Took me about 2 months and a lot of sleepless nights to figure out what I wanted to do in life. I had savings to last about 10 months but that was it and my wife also wasn't finding anything since she'd basically been out of the work force for almost 2 years by then. Thankfully, a lot of stars aligned and a former boss who was starting up hired me. The first thing I did was pay up my car loan and home mortgage by selling another property we had (sold it for lesser than I wanted to, but I was done managing assets that weren't really bringing me enough). The next was building up finances. My wife eventually found a job and the last 6 years have basically been about saving money. I have around 70% of my retirement goal now and pretty happy about it. I've learnt that my job (and employer) are a means to an end. It's not my life. A job is a contract. One works for the man, and gets paid in return. That's all there is to it. My eventual aim is to leave a regular job in 4-5 years if all goes well, and work on something that interests me more. PS: My manager sold the startup last year to a big corp and I have a bit of Stocks/RSUs from that so that'll also help in the retirement goal of 4 years.