My hair isn’t quite as grey as a lot of yours, but I watched, initially enviously, as college students a few years ahead of me graduated into the tail-end of th

My hair isn’t quite as grey as a lot of yours, but I watched, initially enviously, as college students a few years ahead of me graduated into the tail-end of the DotCom bubble and “massive” (for the time!) salaries and signing bonuses, and then with relief for the boring government contracting job I managed to swing when they all started getting laid off and struggled to make those balloon lease payments they’d felt so clever about a few years before. Keep your lifestyle small, kids - perhaps take a look at what other lines of work with similar education requirements pay as a guideline; say, a mechanical engineer with a bachelor’s degree. Buy that car with cash, or at least one you could pay off with cash on-hand/in a non-retirement brokerage account.