I hear you. My situation was similar. My dad died at 53 when I was 19. No education. Depression era baby, had 7/8 of his family wiped out in the course of about 3 hrs so for me it was my older brother I worked for. He has 8 yrs on me. He went into the wrench twisting business at 22 so I was cheap and easy to be had help lol. No complaints. I learned how to be a mechanic from him, Body work, weld, fabricate etc. Construction, wiring, plumbing. I've been self sufficient all my life. Had no choice. Thankfully I still have my brother in my life. He's still working at 68 but that's how we are. I joked to him that we should end up buried side by side and on his Headstone it should say "Sorry, not here, working" and on mine it should just say "Yeah , me too". Neither of us will ever likely "retire" in the sense of sitting in front of the TeeBee and doing nothing all day. Thats my Father in Law. I feel that has to be the biggest waste of "retirement" time ever. But to each his own. suppose.
I was 27 when dad died. No siblings, a homemaker mom that didn't drive, not uncommon from her era. Trying to talk her into learning was fruitless. I stayed in the area, bought a house a half of a mile away so checking in on her was easy, ran errands, fixed things, etc. Her friends and neighbors took her out often too. Other than that, busted my tail pursuing my career thinking I might die by 50 like my dad. Or 65 like his father. Eventually the demands at work became insane and the potential for the some of the operation to get transferred across country or offshore was looming over me. After many dedicated years at 45, I felt like I had zero job security. I always dreamed of someday developing a piece of land my father had leftover from his 1970s subdivision and decided to risk everything and make it happen. I helped dad build a few of the houses in that subdivision. Lucky me, the abutting piece was a landlocked woodlot and the abutting piece to that was owned by a land company. I bought dad's leftover piece from my mother, bought the woodlot cheap, bought more acreage from the land company and optioned the rest of their parcel for later. I developed the most beautiful premium elevated mountain/lake/pond/sunset view subdivision in the area. It was a huge success. I made a lot of money in that move, and put a crown on my Dad's old subdivision. For me, it was the right move at precisely the right time. My old group was disbanded about 3 years after I left, I would have been screwed If I had stayed and missed the 2002-2008 housing boom - and the job was so all consuming I couldn't do both well. I never tried to go back. Working for oneself and being successful is far more satisfying than working for the man. Developing land was perfect for me. No partners. No employees. Huge upside potential. I had the absolute time of my life managing everything while fulfilling a 16 year dream that no one else had the vision to see.
Congratulations on getting your dream. I'll bet its a nice feeling.
Thanks! It really was an incredible feeling of accomplishment while in the thick of it. I'm so thankful my mom lived long enough to see it all happen successfully, she had seen all of the trials and tribulations of my Dad's subdivision (the Carter years were devastating). I knew the wild ride would eventually end so I took the time to relish every moment, every success. Unfortunately I didn't have another fully engaging lifelong big dream to follow it up with. My folks have both passed on, my engineering career is over, I divorced years ago, no kids, broke it off with my last long term girlfriend a year ago due to covid and politics. Longtime friends and cousins are getting old and dying off. Many moved away years ago. One side of my extended family are raging progressives that want nothing to do with me, the other side is conservative, thank God. The country is falling apart, the world is heading for Armageddon. And I'm at the threshhold of getting old. Not exactly "living the dream" lately. The biggest item on my plate is cleaning out 4 generations of family clutter and memorabilia (my folks were depression era too) and distributing it to distant family who will hopefully appreciate and keep in their families, get rid of all the stuff I've spent my life collecting to get my estate in order while I am able, so when I pass on I'm not leaving a mess for someone else to clean up. Many things didn't turn out at all as I expected in life. If I had it all to do over again, I'd have married young and had children early instead of placing my career ahead of family aspirations. However, if I had married young, I probably wouldn't have dared to risk everything to develop a speculative subdivision. Many developers go bankrupt, and some of those end up committing suicide. I know of two just in my area while I was developing my project. One guy was over $5M in the hole when his estate was finally wrapped up.
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