Sliding Doors moment ruined my life

Mark_Glasses

In 2006 I applied for what I considered to be the perfect graduate scheme for me. It closely aligned with my skills and interests paying £25k a year going up to £40k once the graduate training period was over. 

No other jobs looked any near as good but I ended up compromising by taking jobs I didn't really want because they were better than what I'd done before. I didn't start making £25k until 2011 and £40k until 2017.

Had I got that job in 2006 I would have bought a property soon after and then got married and had kids. I delayed all that to get my career off the ground by which point it was a time you had to save a deposit whilst contending with extortionate rents and property price increases. My property would have cost £130k in 2006, in 2017 it cost £275k. I did get married before that but am still child free because we can't afford it. If we had a child in say 2007 they'd be finishing school this summer and I'd have being a grandad to look forward to.

I've hated all the jobs I've had. They've always been a compromise and I've not even had an interview for 99% of the jobs I've genuinely wanted. I'm also not getting any younger and don't know what to do next.

My friend who is the same age as me managed to buy a property in 2007 for £235k. It's now worth £500k and he now rents it out and bought a big house in the country for £550k. Once his mortgage is paid off he'll be a millionaire. That could have been me had I got my job in 2006 but instead I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place with no prospect of being a millionaire.

What do I do?

alidai

Go back in time to 2006.

Or alternatively, live your own life.  Why do you need to be a millionaire? What is the actual job / career you want to get into?

powerspowers

I don’t think dwelling on the what ifs are helpful. Life and careers are crazy pavement rather than a path and there’s nothing to say that path would have been as perfect as it looked. 

If you are feeling unfulfilled, I’d have a think about what you want t9 change in life and what steps can you make. I’ve struggled w8th a similar sliding doors feeling and counselling really helped a few years ago and I’m much more satisfied with my life now rather than a “what if” regretted life

baser999

I’ve been retired two years now and think ‘what if’ on many occasions, especially when it comes to academic failure. I spent my last 20 years in NHS, so never going to be a millionaire Rodney, am now receiving a pension and took a lump sum sufficient to clear the mortgage. 

‘If only’ is too late now, but I own my house, support myself and partner, which in the present climate is enough to ask. 

prettyandfluffy

Mark_Glasses said:

What do I do?

Suck it up.  Stop comparing your position with others, there are always people who are better off and many who are far worse off than you.  Get on with your life and enjoy what you have.  I learned this when I developed health problems and had to stop work aged 47.

JReacher1

You can’t dwell on not getting a job 17 years ago as being the reason why you’re not happy with your life. 

ACG

You might have also met the wrong woman, had a kid together split up and she turns into a psycho who wont let you see your kid and tells that you were a terrible father so they grow up and resent you and also been made redundant during the credit crunch. 

You may have also been run over by a bus or something. 

You cant look back at the last 17 years with regrets. I am sure we all have regrets and/or things we would change but you seem to be dwelling on them a bit too much. 

What are you? early to mid 30s? You sound like you are a couple of years younger than me. 
You have a decent paying job by the sounds of it and no commitments. Go travelling or get saving. You missed the boat last time but there is potentially going to be a house price drop this year/next, get yourself in the best possible position to take advantage of it. 

I bought my first home in 2012, house prices were still low following the 2007 recession and I bought a doer upper (it was all I could afford), by the time I had done it up house prices had jumped a fair bit. Between those 2 things and the fact I had also paid the mortgage down it put me in a good position to buy the family home. 

Stop mopeing and get yourself ready for whatever the next opportunity is. 
 

Potbellypig

''We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them''

Khalil Gibran

Marcon

Mark_Glasses said:

In 2006 I applied for what I considered to be the perfect graduate scheme for me. It closely aligned with my skills and interests paying £25k a year going up to £40k once the graduate training period was over. 

No other jobs looked any near as good but I ended up compromising by taking jobs I didn't really want because they were better than what I'd done before. I didn't start making £25k until 2011 and £40k until 2017.

Had I got that job in 2006 I would have bought a property soon after and then got married and had kids. I delayed all that to get my career off the ground by which point it was a time you had to save a deposit whilst contending with extortionate rents and property price increases. My property would have cost £130k in 2006, in 2017 it cost £275k. I did get married before that but am still child free because we can't afford it. If we had a child in say 2007 they'd be finishing school this summer and I'd have being a grandad to look forward to.

I've hated all the jobs I've had. They've always been a compromise and I've not even had an interview for 99% of the jobs I've genuinely wanted. I'm also not getting any younger and don't know what to do next.

My friend who is the same age as me managed to buy a property in 2007 for £235k. It's now worth £500k and he now rents it out and bought a big house in the country for £550k. Once his mortgage is paid off he'll be a millionaire. That could have been me had I got my job in 2006 but instead I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place with no prospect of being a millionaire.

What do I do?

You didn't get the job in 2006, but you've had nearly 20 years since then to take steps to get your life on track. You aren't getting any younger but you should be getting wiser - so what you do now is start trying to plan an action course to get where you want to be. The old adage of 'if you don't know where you're going any road will get you there' seems to have been in operation for far too long, so starting to take control is going to be the only way to change things.

That, of course, is usually easier said than done (or you'd have done it long before now). Talk to your spouse; marriage is a partnership and you may find there's more support and help than you expected, if only you are prepared to ask for it.

Begin with one simple question: 'What is stopping me from improving things?'.

Then look at your answers. Are they reasons, or simply excuses? Fear is a great deterrent, especially fear of the unknown - but given how unhappy you are with the 'known', is there really so much to lose?

Marcon

I appreciate you're not in a great place mentally or any other way right now, but very many people have found this genuinely helpful reading: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Who-Moved-My-Cheese-Amazing/dp/0091816971

Ditzy_Mitzy

If life gives you lemons, keep on trucking and run them over - or something.  If you had bought a winning lottery ticket or had the next big idea for the next big thing.  If only you'd put your life savings on the rank outsider that just, just somehow came in at Kempton or thought to invest in a little company called Facebook.  

But then you could have got the graduate job back in 2007 and have been hit by a bus on your night out celebrating the fact.  The garden of forking paths is a strange place indeed; what we do at each juncture isn't necessarily a conscious decision.  Occasionally, one or other fork will be blocked by someone else or by circumstance.  

Sliding Doors presents a fun metaphor, but it's only a romantic comedy.  The characters are marionettes with strings pulled by many hands: writers, producers, the audience and so on.  Sliding Doors requires the 'ideal' to exist because all romantic comedies require the ideal to exist - we want the protagonist to get the girl/guy; we know the protagonist is going to get the girl/guy.  We, the audience, will have fun along the way but we know that we've booked a seat on a safe ride.  It's a go on a model railway rather than a roller coaster, hence the lack of shoulder clamps.  

Real life is different.  There might be an ideal, when all chance and serendipity is taken into account there probably is, but it isn't lurking in the smoking carriage of the tube train not taken.  The ideal is obtained by a series of decisions, actions and pieces of happenstance.  All those things must occur, and the chance of that is low.  Remember, too, that you are the sum-total of your experiences.  You, in another place and at another time, would not be you.  You wouldn't exist as the you you are now in the head of someone else, you actually would be somebody else and would have somebody else's problems.  We've all got them, one way or another.  

It doesn't do to dwell on what one cannot change.