Hi Tom--

Good article, well written.

The funny thing is that I have been thinking about writing a similar article with different advice.

For me, it seems like your 20s are for travel, bumming around the country, living out of a backpack and packing up your life at a moments notice to take a job in a far away place.

My husband and I both spent our 20s working as crew on board sailboats. We made no money, didn't build careers, investment portfolios or retirement accounts.

When we hit our 30s, we got square in a hurry--he's a firefighter/paramedic and I'm a teacher. We met with a financial planner who almost laughed us out of the office when she saw how little we had.

Now that I'm almost 40, we've worked hard at our jobs and have managed to catch up financially. We're happy at work, and we have a great house, kids, pets, friends. We've also noticed that lots of our friends are starting to feel tired of their jobs, their houses, their lives that have been the same for close to 20 years.

We both feel great about our lives and our jobs and we often talk about how glad we are that we didn't start taking life too seriously in our 20s because now we're not burned out in our 30s.

I guess there are just a lot of different ways to do things.

Good piece.