I've been working at a telecom company for years and making decent money, but lately I keep asking myself what for. I see my parents retired and they didn't enjoy any of it because they were constantly worried about money. Is it really worth sacrificing your life now for a future you might never actually get to live?
Don't fall into the opposite extreme of spending everything without thinking about tomorrow just because "it all ends anyway" - that's as naive as completely sacrificing the present. The point is finding balance: work enough to have security (because yeah, getting sick or losing your job is real), but also give yourself permission to enjoy right now, hang out with friends, travel when you can, finish those shows you left halfway through. Your parents probably didn't enjoy retirement because they never learned how to do it while they were working, not because they worked too much. What kills you is uncontrolled sacrifice - if you make decent money, there's room for both things without guilt.
The point is that working without enjoying anything along the way is like saving money you're never going to spend, so equally pointless. If your parents ended up worried about money even after retiring, the problem wasn't that they enjoyed themselves too much, it was that they never found the balance.
The thing is, money only matters if it gives you options when you need them, not for having it stashed away. Your parents probably didn't enjoy it because they kept having a scarcity mindset even after they retired - that's a psychological problem, not a math one. The real point is finding work that doesn't drain all your energy, or at least that leaves you time and headspace to actually live while you're doing it. If you're making good money in telecommunications, you've got the luxury of choosing: you can save enough without living like a monk, and that already puts you way ahead of most people.
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