Have you considered looking for a job you don’t hate every second of? Or at least gets you closer to 30/40 hours than 50?

I can’t work 50 hours a week for long without feeling very resentful, even at a good salary, and maybe that’s you, too. Working and scrimping super, super hard for 10-20 years so you can kick back full time later sounds good in theory.

but in practice I’m not sure how feasible is is for a lot of us, especially if you don’t have much of an enjoyable life outside the grind or have a sort of pessimistic view of how likely the sacrifice is to actually pay off.

My husband and I scraped by pretty hard during the first ten years of our marriage and while I do enjoy the freedom it gives us now, I also understand with just a tinge of bitter sweetness that we really did make some major sacrifices to ensure a financial stability that, in the end, is never going to be 100 percent, because money and wealth are social constructs and society is always changing.

I say... figure out how to live a life that doesn’t feel like an actual prison sentence, because “doing time” for money is not worth it in the end. Take the vacation, change the job, say “no can do” to the OT. Don’t take the money