The Investment Blog

There are probably a million other people out there just like me but here goes.

I am mid 40s, and I feel stuck yet at the same time fortunate. I live in the same town that I was born in, have all my life, have a wonderful family that is well rooted here, we have a fine home – everything that life offers. I make well over $200,000 a year salary, which is a great living in this market.

I am one of the highest paid employees at my company. Yet there seems to be a "glass ceiling" preventing me from moving up to that last rung or two on the organizational chart. I’ve been promised and assured promotions for years, but for whatever reason, it never happens. And while I have somewhat of a high profile job with lots of perks, no micro management, a part of me is ashamed that I haven’t moved even higher at this point.

If I was to move higher, it would mean increasing my salary by 50% maybe even more but would mean a lot more headache too. More politics, meetings, hob-nobbing.

I don’t want to move, because we have deep roots here and it would be very hard on our family. And I can’t go to work for another co in town making anything close to this because it’s a small town.

I do have a contract that says if they ever let me go I’d get 15 months pay plus all my benefits – that’s about a $250,000 buyout essentially.

I guess it just really hurts my pride to think I could actually head into RETIREMENT someday at precisely the same level on the organzational chart that I have been for over a decade. I feel that I darn well could have accomplished 100 times more if I was ever just given the chance, and I’m angry about that. Yet the pay is fantastic, low stress job, and so on.

Any advice or perspective from people that have faced this is welcomed.

Does the phrase mid-life crisis ring a bell? You’ve made a choice to put your home life over your work life by staying in the same town, at the same company, and with the same family. This is not a bad thing. Sure, you could have run off to the big city and tried to make your mark in the corporate world, tried to work your way up to CEO and be king of the hill. But instead, you put stability and work/life balance ahead of your ego and ambition. This is not a bad thing. You may have to wait for those above you on the ladder to die off in order to get your chance at the brass ring, but that’s how the world works. By then, your children will have grown and you will have more flexibility in your time management between work and home. This is not a bad thing.

So what can you do deal with the fact that your life is not as exciting as you want it to be? You could do the usual — buy a red sports car, get a mistress, take up sky-diving — or you can do volunteer work in your community:
1. helping those who are dealing with job loss so you’ll appreciate your situation better
2. working with handicapped children so you’ll appreciate how lucky you’ve been with your own
3. volunteering at a senior center so you’ll learn what’s truly important near the end of your life (I’ll give you a hint – it’s your family not your job title)
4. assisting at an animal shelter to understand what people can do to beings who are not able to even articulate their needs and also to learn the joys of unconditional love

There are so many ways to make your life more meaningful, and not one of those depends on how long you’ve waited for your next promotion. So go out into your community and share your strengths with others. I promise you’ll get much more back than you ever give.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 6:26 pm and is filed under management buyout. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.