Not feeling valued at work is rough.

Triggered by ongoing (failing) salary discussions for our area, I got asked for my input today by one of my data scientist colleagues, about their own financial situation.

“If you have thoughts or perspective, I’d be glad to hear them as well, ….. Your thoughts are always well composed and well-reasoned.” Now that’s a way to this girl’s heart 🙂

Like many in engineering-like fields, their savings rate was higher than the norm, and they were feeling a little insecure about it. Were they perhaps depriving themselves? Should they be spending more on, on stuff, on experiences, just because it’s “normal” to?

But the thing is, they’re HAPPY with their current lifestyle. They’re young, no kids, and love to spend time outside. The life they love just doesn’t happen to be expensive.

So is my colleague’s high savings rate a problem? I gave them some context from my own family, both nuclear and extended.

I wish my husband had been thinking that way before our marriage.  Given he was 29 when we met, we paid for our own wedding, he was 31 when we married, and that he was still toting around school loans and had zero savings/investments, there was a lot of wasted opportunity on his financial fronts.  And he was newly 32 when we started having our first daycare bills, oh what a financial shock that was. It’s only gotten worse from there as we went from 1 kid to 2, and daycare to private school, and those draining factors won’t improve for our family until the kids have finished college.

Growing up I’d always heard from my elderly, 19-teens-born grandma to save 10% for a rainy day, and unfortunately I took that advice at first.  But eventually I figured out that her rainy day looked a lot different from my daily reality in the mid 2000’s when I first started earning an adult paycheck, in ways teenage me didn’t appreciate when first internalizing her advice:

• Early in her life health care could be feasibly paid for out of pocket, and later with 100% medical insurance coverage from her husband’s employer
• Houses were tiny and 30 year mortgages just weren’t a thing (just 5 years long back in the age of Laura Ingalls Wilder through the Great Depression, and only up to 20 years for a while after that)
• Annual college bills (IF you went to college) for her children at a 4 year engineering college (yes you absolutely got done in 4 years, and that was pretty much guaranteed to turn into a well paying/secure lifetime job) were  <20% of her blue collar husband’s annual wage, paying out of pocket was entirely feasible
• Student loans that dragged on for decades weren’t a thing
• A meaningful pension with COLA was the norm
• Social Security wasn’t in danger of reduction
• They only had 1 car between her and my grandpa for years because wives didn’t work back then
• Daycare bills weren’t a thing
• Private school tuition bills were minor, if you had them, because the only private schools were religious (eg subsidized) ones, and again could easily be paid on a single income family blue collar wage for 3 kids simultaneously
• You lived near family and in a close-knit stable community, because you relied on community and especially family as your safety net rather than needing to buy services/insurance on everything

Preparing for very different times calls for very different savings rates, especially pre-kids. I assured them there’s nothing wrong with having a high savings rate at their life stage.

We also discussed that evolutionary biology shows what the human body is biologically built for and expecting – a small, dedicated group of inter-dependent people who we can trust at our backs, and lots of time outside in nature.

Not only that, but this kind of low impact lifestyle is wonderful for the environment. Which only helps protect their options for future time outside!

Right now my colleague is stockpiling tools. When there are kids, they may not be able to stockpile as many tools, and that’ll be okay. And some day, those tools may be used to construct a parachute to soften a landing from a situation they need to jump from, whether that’s a toxic work environment or anything else.

How is your savings rate? Are you ready for the day you need to turn tools into a parachute?