It seems that for many young people, envisioning something 5, 10, or 15 years down the line can feel overwhelming. Have you ever accomplished a long-term goal that took years of effort or sacrifice?
I’d love to hear your stories—was it all worth it in the end?
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Therapy
25 years of marriage and a teenage kid who’s doing great. Worth it
My son, turned him around….he’s raising his daughter on his own….she’s turned out super cool.
Two stable supportive relationships in marriage (it would have been one, but she passed away).
I had good and interesting, but not terribly lucrative, jobs throughout my 20s (I worked in a museum, for a symphony, and as a free-lancer doing music production and tech support. I got into my 30s, realized that the impact of new technologies was going to take away most of my income, and decided I really wanted a job with a pension so I could be (more) certain of a decent retirement.
I took and passed the Foreign Service exam, did 20 years as a diplomat, and retired the day I was eligible. I always thought that the combo of federal pension and Social Security was pretty much untouchable—but even with the current uncertainty, I’m glad I took the path I did.
I’ve lived with HIV for 36 years and I promised myself that I’d survive until my mother died. She died last year and I wish I could die now. Trouble is I can’t kill myself because I’d leave my friends behind.
After dating men for 20 years, I decided to decenter men from my life. So for 17 years, no relationships, and little sex. But lots of sex toys and masturbation ecstasy!
After much reflection, I realize that I’m happier than I’ve ever been. And those 17 years were the best years of my life.
Sometimes the long game, though confusing and occasionally painful, is actually the right way to go.
Being true to yourself can bring immense joy. Try it.
Wish I had started 10 years earlier.
I retired 6 years ago at age 54. Worked hard and saved. I worked in government and never paid into social security. It’s a different retirement program. I spent 30 years with the last 11 years in a pretty high paying position that was extremely high stress and long hours.
It’s was totally worth it. I love life, and I still feel like I’m young enough to enjoy it!
Emdr trauma therapy…. Living my best……I
life I like myself and I finally love me. I’m kind to me. I am not living in fear. I’m experiencing new things and enjoying life. I feel like Rapunzel coming out of the tower
Marrying my wife of 37 years. I definitely married up and we have two adult boy who she mostly raised since I worked so much and she deserves most of the credit for their success.
5 yr plan that took 7 yrs. Buy a lot, build a house by ourselves, sell house. Getting ready to do it again
Getting married. Easiest question ever
Career change in my 30s. Went back to school at age 31, graduated at age 35, entered the job market as a new grad. Totally worth it. Also meet my wife along the way.
Stopping drinking
Marriage and three happy kids.
Not getting married. I came close once and realized I wouldn’t be a very good husband or father. I could have ruined many lives. I’ve been very happy being alone.
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Going to college and getting my Masters. I graduated during an economic downturn, and was never able to find a job in my field, but that MS never failed me, just having it was my ticket to many great opportunities. Folks would see that degree and know I was able to follow through on long term goals.
For you kids focusing on college: I have never once been asked what uni I went to (so Ivies might be a waste of $$, you decide, they do have great alumni associations). Also never once been asked my GPA. So kill yourself if you wish but realize it’s not necessary for long term success.
My kids turned into awesome adults.
Losing 85 lbs when I was 30. I had a life I never would have had if I was carrying around that much extra weight. I never would have taken the risks I did with relationships, career, socializing… It was the best thing I ever did for myself and I’m so happy I didn’t waste any more time buried under all of that flesh I didn’t need.
Created my own personal branded website. It’s all about the empowerment baby 4higherzense.com
My husband of 53 years
PhD in Clinical Psych and a wonderful career. If you love what you do, it ain’t working!
Was in a nasty motorcycle accident, I sued the guy after I somewhat recovered, I won. I was able to retire at 37.. it’s boring as hell in the winter tho
At 35 I met the love of my life. Married her 6 months later and have been happily married for 25 years. We have two great kids as well.
This October will be 25 yrs clean.
I believe there is nothing a person can do, no accomplishment so grand, that will not turn to dust in time.
I call it cheerful nihilism. If nothing matters, then the only thing that really matters is love.
So I quit the main quest. Instead I do side quests. Every late night conversation with a guitar and a little whiskey, every meal with friends, every sunrise or sunset shared with someone or just by myself – those are the meaning of life.
40 years of marriage and we are still good friends. He’s my best friend. There’s mutual respect, kindness, care and love. It’s a huge success in My book.
My marriage. My husband is fantastic.
Being rejected from any sort of SO relationships.
Whilst it hurt at the time, it taught me to be entirely resilient and self sufficient.
401k, home ownership, raising a family. We were talking about this at the family dinner tonight. Before kids in the 70’s Congress pass laws to privatize retirement, Ira and 401k. If I had not believed them that ss may not be around for my retirement. If I didn’t start saving right away-I wouldn’t be retired now! That’s 55 years ago!
Wife, 22 years
Getting sober at 27
Marrying the right guy. But leading up to that, I was far from abstemious sexually. At 31 I hit on a cute guy of 24 for cheap sex and here I am at 66. But I never would have still been single and childless at 31 if I’d felt I had to be deeply committed to have sex.
Changed careers at 40.
It took 24 years but I’ve reached the pinnacle of my second career and having the time of my life.
My long term win: I was born into a Mormon family, couldn’t accept the racism and treatment of women, left it behind, explored other religions and decided to convert to Judaism. To do so meant studying with a Rabbi three nights a week for several years, learning Hebrew, following dietary laws and ultimately finding my peace. A long journey, well worth it.
I built a career doing something that I love. That meant sticking it out through the inevitable rough patches. But i did that. For me.
Maxing 401k and IRA every year for 15 years got me to a million bucks net worth with very little sacrifice by age 40
Divorce. Seemed like hell in the moment but it was the single best thing for myself and my kids. Much happier after and much better financially once I got rid of the ex wife who never met a dollar she didn’t try to spend three times.
Joining the Army on a knee jerk at 18 and sticking with it for 20. It gave me a baseline safety net for life.
Retiring at 45
25 years of marriage.
Plus a 35-year career in IT built on a huge risk. Chucked a perfectly good career in communications, moved to a new town, and earned an MBA and took on about $24k of debt. Second biggest risk I ever took, and it paid off in spades. Gonna retire in 7 years at 65 comfortably.
Two kids educated with no debt. Feels good man
Joined the Marines in 82, got married in 82. Retired from Marines in 03. Still hitched to the same woman. 82 was a great year. 83 wasn’t half bad since oldest kid was born. She set a standard of awesome for her siblings that came later.
Went back to college at age 24, quitting a dead-end, low-wage job to do so. My husband supported me for six years as I went through pre-optometry and then optometry school. It was a lot of work, but I made a lot of really good friends and was able to practice a profession that I loved for almost 30 years.
People kept saying, “Six years! But you’ll be almost 30 by the time you get out!” My response: “Yes, but in six years, I’ll be almost 30 no matter what, and I’d rather have the degree than not have it by then.”
It was the best thing I ever did, and it paid off very well.
I bought B of A Stock when they were having hard times. I set some money into their stock figuring they’d either recover or be absorbed into another, viable institution. I was right at that time, but got.out before the losses started piling up.The stock today is next worthless.
After a 20 year career in accounting, which I found tedious and boring, I returned to school and earned a masters in social work at age 47. With four other people, inside an established not for profit, I helped develop a supportive housing program that eventually housed more than 300 chronically homeless, mentally ill adults. Our retention rate was 96%. The program continues today. During the ten years I worked there I witnessed the most amazing, miraculous human transformations I could ever have imagined. This experience will carry me to the end of my days, believing in the awesome possibility of humanity, despite the current madness in which we are living.
Survived drug addiction and I’m able to enjoy my grandkids and some traveling
Just that. LIFE(been dead once)
Yes, it was worth it. Marrying my wife. 37 years this next August.
My adult kids in their 30s like me, get along enough to live together, out of my house, lol, the 14th is 44 years with my husband. I was never going to get married or have kids….🤷♀️
I was on welfare with a child during the mid 80’s. I went to college, earned 3 degrees, and had a 30 year career. Back then we used food stamps. It was embarrassing and what you could buy was extremely limited, nothing like today. Those 4 years on welfare, going to school, no car, using the bus to go everywhere, was incredibly hard. All while raising a little one and nurturing a relationship. Oh the tears, but the memories make me smile.
My career as a therapist started out with low paying, very difficult community jobs. I loved working with the people who sought services but the demands caused my health to deteriorate. I opened my own practice and found my niche, becoming a skilled trauma therapist and couples counselor. I made my services affordable and sure never made great money, but I can truly say I helped over a thousand people heal themselves from childhood abuse and improve their relationships.
I bought a house as a single mom 25 years ago and it’s paid off. It’s not fancy but it’s all mine.
I had two great careers, both based on self-motivation, independent study, planning & persistence. To start my own business (in a completely unrelated field from corporate IT Director), I got up every morning for 13 months at 3:30 to study then worked all day. The payoff was marketing & having clients and income within a couple of weeks of quitting my job.
At 32 I became a professor, after 26 years of schooling. Yes, it’s a long term win.
32 years sober, which seems weird to even say
37 year marriage still going strong, paid off mortgage and still in excellent health.
36 year career before retiring at age 59. Currently 52 years of marriage to my high school sweetheart. Both are absolutely worth it.
The reason i recently landed a dream job i should have no business jumping into – is because i could explain what it was like 20 years ago in my first job out of college – recruiting door to door salesmen through yellow pages and sunday classifieds and only a fax machine or mailmen for resumes – until the internet and email came out allowing a singular shitty local office operator job to be scaled globally with careerbuilder and call centers …
i’m so far from that world but that experience through that revolution exactly – landed me a key AI role for parallel reasons – because i experienced firsthand what tech innovation could do and the universe was waiting for me all these years later to come full circle 💫
After dropping out of college in ’71, I went back and collected degrees over 14 years starting at 43. AAS Electronics in ’86, BA Business Adin ’90, AAS Pre Engineering ’92, BS Comp Eng ’96. Retired as a Tech Program Manager for Fortune 500 Aerospace company in 2010.
Will be married 40 years in August. My parents and my husband’s parents we all married 50+ years. I feel like we all won.
40 years of sobriety ☕️
We saved and scrimped for 15 years to build our dreamhouse. Finally got the house plans done as a trade for a job I did for the architect. Then decided – after the garage at the old place flooded for the 2nd time – we needed to get going. Started up the house build in 2012, finished it up by doing most of the work ourselves by 2017. Moved to it in Jan of 2018. Lots of sacrifice, the new place was 3 hours away from the old one. Tons of driving and zero vacations or any fun or frills for 5 years.
Worth it. 🙂
Married the right man for me. 42 years. He has passed and I’m left with wonderful memories. Biggest win of my life!
I was born into a very poor family. Needless to say I did not want be poor all my life. But right along with that as a youngster I was a science and science fiction nerd. I remember when Star Trek can on TV. I didn’t want to be Capt Kirk, I admired Mr Scott, the chief engineer. Images in my head of knowing about and understanding all that stuff, being able to fix it and so forth. It just got to me. The kid born in a one room home with no electricity. We did leave that behind and move to a city when I was 10. And all the machines and gadgets just fascinated me and I wanted to learn how everything worked. Besides stuff learned in school, I think I read every edition of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics the library had, and they had years worth of issues.
So I didn’t have a clear idea, nothing exact. but I wanted to be that guy that knew stuff, the one people called when something didn’t work. The one who could just inspect something for a while and figure out how it worked, and maybe make it work better.
College was not an option. They didn’t have nearly as many methods of getting money for college as they do now back in the 1960s. I ended up joining the Navy. And found out that the better you performed your job there, the more likely they were to send you off to additional technical schools. I worked my ass off. Even off duty from my own assigned tasks I’d help others, both just to be helpful, but also hoping that it would be on my superiors minds when they were thinking about sending some crew for more training. Advanced stuff. And it worked for me. And then I discovered there was a way for me to do college work while on active duty, and as long as I passed the courses, the Navy would reimburse me for them. It took a while, one course at a time for the most part. Sometimes classroom, sometimes correspondence course. But by the age of 38 I had a BS in Engineering. Was thinking of going officer, but then things changed and the Navy was downsizing, so instead stayed enlisted and retired from the service as a Senior Chief, E8, with that degree and many years hands on experience with all sort of equipment. Went to work as a civilian engineer. And eventually ended up as the Chief Engineer, the department head for an office of engineers who designed, laid out, and programmed automated control systems for all sorts of commercial and industrial equipment.
I am satisfied. Maybe I never got to be Mr Scot on the Starship Enterprise. Although at one point while in the Navy I was a Chief Auxiliaries Officer on the USS Enterprise, CVN-65. But I was the guy who knew stuff, who people came to to solve problems they couldn’t figure out. AND … I was not poor, I was able to provide a decent life for my wife and children.
Trust me, some of what I had to do was miserable, sometimes horrible working conditions, sometimes risking my life, sometimes unbelievable working hours 7 days a week for months before a few days off. Sometimes it was not fun. But it was worth it to me. After retiring from the Navy, the guy born in a one room home was able to tell his wife, who’d suffered through too many transfers and absences of her husband, that she could name it. We’d move to the place of her choice, and I’d have a house built to her wishes … her choice, because she frigging deserved it. And I could do it and I did.
She was 40 then, and got the house she dreamed of, in the place she wanted. She loved that house. And lived there until age 63 when she died suddenly. But it was good and it was all worthwhile. She was back in her native rural Minnesota and spent countless hours whenever the weather was warm tending her many flower beds and the large vegetable garden. It was one of her favorite things.
My wife
Still alive. Somehow.
After spending a solid 15 years being blackout drunk 4-5 days a week… and functioning at a high level.
I literally, cannot remember so much of my life.
Retired at 53. Worth no social life in my 20’s (working, getting my master and running a side biz) – yes. Worth working jobs that I didn’t love until 47 and switching careers the last to sports which I love – yes. Worth sacrificing all I could have had along the way to now spend my days the way I want – hell ya!
Having the job that I’ve had for 25 years. It pays me well enough to feel comfortable. I’m not rich, but we get by. Housing’s manageable, we can travel, fridge is full, we can enjoy nice meals out often enough. I really can’t complain.
But my real biggest win is my kid. She’s a lifelong win. She was born at 6:49 which is the name of one of our lottery games . I figure that she’s my lifetime lottery win.
I was 28 when a financial advisor showed me the math – what the cost of living would be for me to retire at 65, and convinced me that that, yes, old age would really happen to me. I was shocked that it would require being a millionaire. He asked if I wanted to be a millionaire, and then showed me how, if I was diligent and stuck to saving and investing. I retired at 58 as a multi-millionaire.
Choosing a good partner. Been married 37 years.
Divorcing first husband in mid twenties. We weren’t a good match, but both went on to have satisfying, healthy relationships. Wouldn’t trade my first child with him for anything, but realizing it wasn’t going to last (puppy love) and having the courage to end it had amazing outcomes for all involved. Great guy, but not my meant to be. Married 27 years now to the one. Share holidays with our oldest and our new kids from resulting healthy relationships. Best of all worlds. Best long term win of all.
Buying into an S&P 500 fund when it was down 20%. It takes a while to go back up, but if you have time … definitely worth it
Making it this far alive.
financial independence
Choosing to be a nurse. I don’t love working in healthcare in the US, but it’s given me financial security and enormous flexibility in my working life. I don’t have to work 5 days a week, I can have mornings off, or evenings, if I choose. It can be hard work, but it makes the rest of my life very comfortable.
Downsizing and selling home. Building a tiny house
I guess career/job, I’ve been working in state government for 25 years now. I have 5 years left until I can retire with a full pension. I was never highly driven with career aspirations I simply learned a lot over time and advanced into different positions over that time. I now make a good salary, have great benefits, and can save extra every month in a government worker retirement account (a 457b plan). I believe my job, if I can last the remaining years, will allow us to get mortgage paid off before retirement. So again, in my 30’s my aspirations weren’t all that high but over the long-term course of time it’s worked out really well so far. My biggest challenge moving forward is staying healthy, I unfortunately did not listen well to warnings about what an unhealthy life style will lead to when I was younger and it’s starting to hit me physically.
Dropped out of college, ended up joining the military, got out after 6 years. Was aimless, drinking and partying too much without any direction. Started attending night school at 28 in fits & starts. Finally got serious at age 30, and graduated at age 39, master’s at age 44. Extremely self-satisfying knowing that I didn’t give up and continued to push to complete the goal. Set me up for future success.
Married just shy of 49 years.
We spent 8 years trying to buy a property and another 2 putting a cabin on it and 7 more making improvements to the property. No one had heard of Belize when we started. It was an adventure! We love it. We spend winter there as our work is seasonal. The country has come such a long way since we first visited. We are located in a once isolated village far from the tourist spots. There are so many gringos there now and so much interest in the area. They keep.saying it’ll.be the next Cancun. I don’t know about that. But they have plans. The quaintness of the place is already being improved.
My wife and kids, and a few dogs along the way.
Getting rid of that abusive man.