Or at least way different than pretty much everyone around me including my friends. I worked really long hours during and after college. We were scraping by for a while so we had to be very frugal, a trait that has continued on until very recently. While I wouldn't say I really missed out on anything big there was an element of deferred gratification when it came to deciding to participate in more expensive social interactions.
Now I've turned those long hours of work into a good job thats low stress with flexible work weeks generally limited to 40hrs. Its also gotten us to the place where I am comfortable enough with our long term financial goals and existing foundation to 'loosen the belt' a bit in terms of our spending.
With the big increase in free time and being more interested in spending money on things like show\game tickets, trips to festivals etc I look around and it seems like everyone else is hitting peak time and\or money crunches from kids, increased bills, long work hours\pressures etc. Even dinners at houses have become somewhat difficult to schedule.
I don't think I would do anything differently but I'm a bit bummed that that my schedule seems off from a lot of other people's
It's a mix. Like, I work 70 hours a week. Partly because I love my job & partly because I know it's not going to be here forever (I work in IT Hardware), so I want to take advantage of it while I can. I'm already putting in Intel Compute Sticks, Razer Cores, and of course, virtual servers...stuff that is going to virtually eliminate my job at some point. The fun aspects of the job that I love aren't going to be around forever because desktop technology is becoming turnkey. My last half-dozen laptops have been $199 Asus or Toshiba models that I simply throw an SSD in & they are fine for 99% of users. Eventually VDI will work properly & we'll be back to mainframes & dumb terminals (granted, they'll be cloud servers & 4K thin clients).
Anyway, my time consists of 3 things: work, family, personal. Work is about 13 hours a day, 6 days a week, with commute. Family time after that, then personal time (either neffing or playing VR, or cooking something up in the kitchen, or once in awhile hanging out with a RL friend when our schedules coincide). More responsibilities now, so less time to just chill & do whatever with buddies. I'm also not an overly big social-activity person myself (games, shows, etc.), so I don't have to schedule that stuff so much, plus I try to avoid physical addictions as much as possible so my budget doesn't get eaten up (food costs enough, hah!). Like, a lot of my friends are weekend social drinkers & blow $100 a weekend. That's a car payment every month! terrycrews.jpg yo!
But everyone is free to do what makes them happy & my point isn't where your disposable income goes, but rather, one thing I've discovered as an adult is that a lot of what you see is an illusion. There's an awful lot of debt out there. Lots of the Facebook highlights live on credits cards with high balances & high interest rates. You just can't go nuts spending all the time on the money most people make, so you're seeing a lot of people digging into work to cover everything. Put stuff on cards, finance stuff, push off weekly paycheck tax withdrawl, halt 401k payments, etc. Then you get a nice big house, nice cars, nice vacations, and in some cases, I've seen $40k worth of furniture in friend's homes who have no business buying that stuff because they really can't afford it. Then some people start delaying having kids & starting their families, skip pursuing more schooling, etc.
I try to keep things simple. Debt is OK for school, cars (well, reasonable cars), and a home (not mansion). Anything else, cash-only, which means waiting a lot of times. Like, I just got a Vive VR headset ($800), but I tucked away a few bucks every week since February so it wasn't a big chunk out of my budget or savings. I've gotten to the point career-wise where I can eat lunch out every day if I want to, but I still keep things in a really simple financial management system (auto-pay bills through bank, his & her reloadable Serve cards with weekly auto-load allowances, and a backup CC for gas & emergencies, and then don't spend more than we make, i.e., don't live outside our means...effortless safety net) just so I don't get myself in trouble. I had a card table for a dinner table for, gosh, I don't know how many years after I got married, hahaha.
So yeah, I know what you're saying. It's just part of getting older. In your case, you were more disciplined than most people...didn't shoot yourself in the foot financially early-on, put in your dues at work at the start of the game so you could have a normal schedule later, etc. Which can stink if you want to be social & your peers are crunched on time. I spend a lot more time with "e-friends" (love you guys) than I do with RL friends simply because we all work or have kids or are in school or whatever. Gets me my social fix, but fits my schedule better. Someday I'll work regular hours & will have to find myself some hobbies to do in my free time, haha!
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