Sliding Doors moment ruined my life

Mark_Glasses

@alidai I don't need to be a millionaire but would be nice. It's knowing how much of a possibility that could have been had I got that job vs my current situation where it's more a question of whether I can keep my head above water rather than be a millionaire. My occupation is OK but want to work myself up to senior management but only in a company where I'm interested in what they do. None of the companies I've worked for are those.

@powerspowers might be an idea

@baser999 I can't even do that

@prettyandfluffy if I can't work any more I'd probably become homeless and that's a real concern

@JReacher1 it's the knock on effect from it. Getting that job would have meant being able to afford a property straight away, by the time I was making £25k you could no longer get 100% mortgages and had to save a deposit whilst dealing with increasing rents and property prices. We couldn't buy until 2017 and will never get those 11 years back. The property we live in now was £130k in 2006, we probably paid that in rent alone and then spent £275k to buy our property. It's barely big enough for the 2 of us let alone kids too.

@ACG Add another decade on and you're about right. I'm married to the same person I was engaged to in 2006. I've been made redundant. 

@Potbellypig Don't know

@marcon I keep trying to dig myself out from this hole. I reached £25k but it was 5 years later, I bought a property but it was 11 years later. I've tried to get jobs that interest me more but never get offered them. If I'm stuck with the jobs I hate and manage to scrape enough money to get a bigger place and have kids I'll probably be dead by the time I've paid off the mortgage and the kids have grown up and gone. One of my teachers took early retirement because his kids had grown up and gone and his mortgage was paid off. That's what I've always wanted from my life but instead the opposite has happened.

@Ditzy_Mitzy I'm playing catch up all the time when I want to get ahead.

GenieBoy

I was only earning £20K before tax a year ago but now I'm a millionaire from winning the lottery. You could always try that.

MattMattMattUK

We have all made, or not made decisions that did not turn out the way we would have liked with hindsight, there is one particular scheme that I planed out but did not implement due to being unsure of it at the time would have resulted in me being worth about £14 million today, or other possibilities which would have resulted in me losing everything, or somewhere in between. 

If you do not think your life is good enough now then work on improving it, rather than lamenting the past. 

warby68

Its not really a sliding doors moment if you didn't get that job. The door was actually closed at that point. Sliding doors are more to do with your choices. 

I think plenty of us review our situations around our 40s as its a bit of a now or never age if we're going to take a different direction. Sounds a bit like that's where you're at.

However looking back is only really useful if its to learn from. Spending 20 years hankering after the impossible is not great. Time to drop it and move forward from where you are now.

Marcon

Mark_Glasses said:

@alidai I don't need to be a millionaire but would be nice. It's knowing how much of a possibility that could have been had I got that job vs my current situation where it's more a question of whether I can keep my head above water rather than be a millionaire. My occupation is OK but want to work myself up to senior management but only in a company where I'm interested in what they do. None of the companies I've worked for are those.

@powerspowers might be an idea

@baser999 I can't even do that

@prettyandfluffy if I can't work any more I'd probably become homeless and that's a real concern

@JReacher1 it's the knock on effect from it. Getting that job would have meant being able to afford a property straight away, by the time I was making £25k you could no longer get 100% mortgages and had to save a deposit whilst dealing with increasing rents and property prices. We couldn't buy until 2017 and will never get those 11 years back. The property we live in now was £130k in 2006, we probably paid that in rent alone and then spent £275k to buy our property. It's barely big enough for the 2 of us let alone kids too.

@ACG Add another decade on and you're about right. I'm married to the same person I was engaged to in 2006. I've been made redundant. 

@Potbellypig Don't know

@marcon I keep trying to dig myself out from this hole. I reached £25k but it was 5 years later, I bought a property but it was 11 years later. I've tried to get jobs that interest me more but never get offered them. If I'm stuck with the jobs I hate and manage to scrape enough money to get a bigger place and have kids I'll probably be dead by the time I've paid off the mortgage and the kids have grown up and gone. One of my teachers took early retirement because his kids had grown up and gone and his mortgage was paid off. That's what I've always wanted from my life but instead the opposite has happened.

@Ditzy_Mitzy I'm playing catch up all the time when I want to get ahead.

Good for you for reading the responses on this thread and responding at all. Many posters don't.

If you keep trying to dig yourself out of the hole, and so far it hasn't happened, that doesn't mean it can't or won't happen - but it does suggest you need to take a different approach. Changing what you're doing, and changing your mindset, are both difficult, but realistically there aren't other options if you want to have a happier future.

Without knowing anything about you, it's difficult to speculate helpfully, but one thing did spring off the page: '....want to work myself up to senior management but only in a company where I'm interested in what they do'. Do you have any skills which would enable you to set up your own business, possibly as a sideline until you see whether it's going to take off (and assuming your current employment terms don't preclude that)?

Do remember too that senior managers need the ability to plan, cope with setbacks (possibly major ones such as COVID), and generally have a high level of resilience. They learn from the past, but they don't live in it - or fantasise about what might have been. A manager's role is to make things happen in the best interests of the business.

Ksw3

You don't know that you would have enjoyed the job in reality, you might have been made redundant, you might have become a different less nice you because all your colleagues were <insert insult of your choice here>. 

If you are dissatisfied with your life its much more beneficial to think what you can do now. Looking at the past to one event will only breed more and more resentment. It makes you feel stuck and helpless. It prevents action. 

It might be worth looking at how you relate to money. It sounds like you think of it as an indicator or status, happiness and achievement( I could be wrong). My own relationship with money is very complicated and I have spent most of the last decade understanding my relationship with it and how significant a role it plays in my life (my worries, my childhood, my aims and ambitions etc). 

Mark_Glasses

@GenieBoy I do play the lottery

@MattMattMattUK it's clear with hindsight that not buying a property before 2008 has been a financial disaster. Yes it could have been a rocky road. My friend bought in 2007 and then in 2008 went into negative equity, got made redundant and had a new born daughter to support. They got through the storm and eventually sold for much more and bought a big house I could only dream of owning. I don't know how much more earning potential I have but my friend doesn't need to make big money anymore because he's got his dream home and his daughter is almost a grown up. He also says his job is basically his hobby, I don't really know how I can turn my hobbies into money.

@warby68 it was my decisions based on not getting that job. I took that rejection really bad and didn't apply for anything for a while after because no jobs looked anywhere near as good. I eventually lowered my standards to the point I ended up going where I didn't really want to go. I think it's worth mentioning that I had a final interview for a job that seemed almost ideal last October. I didn't get the job but I told myself that job wasn't the be all end all and there will be other jobs. Since then I've had no interviews in part because I've not applied for that many jobs and none of the jobs look as good as the one I interviewed for last October. I'm feeling like history is repeating itself.

@Marcon I don't really know. I'm mindful of the fact I just have experience of my specialist job and no experience of the industries I'd like to work in and as a result I don't really have any relevant contacts.

@Ksw3 I didn't grow up in poverty but we were far from wealthy. My understanding from an early age was that academic achievement was the key to being rich so that's what I did. I now know that is nonsense but at the same time I know I have some untapped potential. At all the companies I've worked for when I look to the top of the ladder they are always people that probably don't even know how to do my job but are always domain experts. I've always been in the wrong domain.

Marcon

What does your wife have to say about all this?

tooldle

I have a friend with a similar outlook to you. After uni, his life hasn’t worked out as planned and he dwells on this endlessly. Do you know what? It drives people and positivity away from him. 

He has much to be grateful for, including a job and a house. No relationship or kids, but then who would want a partner lamenting the past over and over?
You have two options, to dwell on what might have been or, to move forwards. To move forwards look for the positives and work on a better version of you. By that I mean, identify what positive you have from the October interview. What feedback did you get to help you for the next interview? Everyday identify something you enjoyed, remind yourself everyday of what you’ve enjoyed that day and the day before. Give yourself a few weeks to adjust and then start sharing that joy with others, including your colleagues. Make those 7-8 hours of work each day as bearable as they can possibly be. Get stuck in, share learning and knowledge with others and they will share with you. Use that network to learn more about what others do and hence learn more about yourself and what roles might suit your strengths. 

Most importantly, do not compare yourself to others. Different circumstances, different lives and who knows what really goes on in anyone’s life. Your mate might be on track to be a millionaire at some point in the future. Equally he could be mortgaged to the hilt, with lots of debt and be on track to lose it all should BoE base rate rise another 1%.

badmemory

I was supposed to win the lottery.  It would probably have helped if I paid but hey ho.