Illcar,

I am 42. Stayed technical, became a consultant 10 years ago. Over the last 20 years since I graduated from university, I have been a developer, architect, technical team lead, project manager and director. I came back to coding, because that's what I enjoy best, and because in I.T. Projects, there are always far more openings for developers than for architects or managers.

I do not worry that I will get kicked out of the profession for being too old when I reach 50. First of all, there are not enough younger programmers coming out of universities to replace us, and also the profession has been steadily growing older over the last decade. Yes, I lost a few contracts to development teams in India, but not all projects can be sent off shore.

Yes, as a consultant, there is always the possibility that I lose my contract and that I have to find another one. But as a consultant I make far more money than a full-time employee, so even if I don't work three or four months per year (never happened) I would still come out better than with a salary.

  Also, let's say I am three months without a job before I find another contract, well I don't really lose 3 months salary. I would have lost 50% of it to income tax, plus work related expenses such as commuting. SO three months off is more like one and a half month pay loss.

As for office politics, I learned to not let it affect me. My responsibility as a consultant is to provide advice to my client, and then I keep a copy of the email. Sometimes a manager or architect will never believe their solution sucks until the team has spent six months on it and it crashes and burns in front of their eyes. As for myself, I will have spent six months working on a soon to be dead solution, but the only way for me to keep my sanity is to remind myself that I am paid by the hour, so like sex, the longer the better.

As for not having a house right now, this might just be a blessing for you. It means you are not shackled to high mortgage payments. It probably means that you could more easily move to another part of the country to get a job if you ever need to.

Being strategic about your next career move is wise. Worrying about all the bad things that may happen in the future is not going to help you, so you might just as well stop worrying and enjoy life.

Sincerely,

Pascal

Every year I hibernate my summer house. Here is how I do it:

0) Purchase a mechanical pump for about 10$ at the hardware store which plugs into
an electrical drill for power. Connect two short hose normally used for connecting your washer.

1) Purchase 25 gallons of plumbing anti-freeze liquid that's normally used for RVs and boats. The stuff is not poison, so there's no problem injecting it into your water system.

2) Turn off the hot water tank heaters
3) Close the main water faucet by which the water enters the house.
4) Empty the hot water tank

5) If possible, disconnect the water tank from the rest of your system by connecting the incoming (cold) water pipe to the outgoing (hot) water pipe. This way you have a closed circuit.

6) Connect the pump to the external water faucet that's outside the house, or to the water faucet connected to the washer inside the house, and have someone inside the house open one faucet; start injecting anti-freeze by activating the drill which runs the pump until the person inside sees the red anti-freeze liquid coming out of the faucet. Then close the faucet, and repeat for the next faucet, until all faucets have been spitting out anti-freeze.

7) Flush each toilet bowl, and pour one gallon of anti-freeze in the tank and in the bowl.
8) Pour some anti-freeze in the drains of all sinks, the shower, bath, etc.

Doing all that should not take you more than a few hours. You might need walkie-talkies or two cell phones to communicate with the person who is helping you inside the house.

Personnally, I turn off all electricity inside the house, except for the refrigerator. Refrigerators which stay close for too long stink.

I have never had problems with sensitive electronics stying in the cold like that, but if you are worried about this, you can always keep a little heating inside the house so that it stays above freezing temperature.

As for electric black outs, it will take your house - depending on the quality of the isolation - between one and two days before it loses its warmth, so you have time to gt back to the house in case of a power failure and install a gasoline power generator on the outside of the house that will connect to electrical heaters inside the house. Do not forget that propane heaters are not meant for indoor use and you could die of carbon monoxide poisoning.

As other slashdotters mentioned, it's good to have a neighbor checking out the house once in a while.

Good Luck