The useful career life-expectancy of engineers and developers...
The useful career life expectancy of engineers and developers these days is between 21-41 years old, if you can even make it to 40ish.
A lot of engineers have already figured out plan B is to using that 20 years to accumulate as much money as possible and invest it elsewhere in passive income producing assets so that your money can work when you don't want to/can't. Now more then ever, there is no other option. It's just not engineering, it's everywhere.
All they need to do is just move more work overseas to its remote office locations. And everyone knows you don't enter engineering purely because the salary is good. You probably start out around the mid $80ies-$90ies these days with a masters....And if you're good, you can stay purely technical and have a peak comp package around $200k year, give or take $10-20k) somewhere when your in your early 30ies...Figure about 30% of it goes to uncle sam, another 10% goes to the state franchise tax board since you're on W2 or 1099. Compare that with your accomplished lawyer or doctor or dentist (assuming you can graduate not so knee deep in debt. Some of my neighbors that own private practices are seeing kids graduate with $400k+ student loan debts who will never be able to find a bank to loan then additional money for them to start their own practice). Financially speaking, you do "ok", not great. And worst, you have a lot more "maintenance" to keep up than lawyers/doctors do. You see many doctors/lawyers practicing all the way until their gray haired/beard. You don't see many engineers, unless you move into management or because a high level architect. The other alternative is to move into sales. There, you have the privilege of selling things that the company really doesn't have, that someone else will eventually have to produce, for which you don't have to be responsible for since you were already paid to meet your numbers. So invest wisely, my friends. Buy lots of dividend paying stocks, buy as many rental properties that generates positive net income. Buy your primary home and take out a low 15 year mortgage so you'll be done with it by the time your engineering "life expectancy" expires. Start tucking away money in that 529 plan for that kid(s) you might have now, so that your kid has a $200k when he/she goes to college to he/she doesn't have to drown in $200k+ student loan debt. Start a side business so that can be a your tax writeoff and hopefully eventually end up being profitable so it plus all of your other passive income ends up at least being equal or if not more than your W2 wage income. You really have no choice, plus it's the end all/be all when you have enough f*** you money.