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Notes -
Barring a large upheaval due to AI that I'm not seeing happening right now (though I'll admit it's not impossible), my profession is going to be in demand even if I lose my job. Even if I were to be unable to find a company to hire me directly, I'm confident I could sell my services as a consultant, there's a lot of companies that are too small to have a full time sysadmin on staff but would like to have one consulting. If I suddenly became unemployable in polite society, some of the skills I've developped around cyber-security would probably still make me employable in less polite society.
I'm currently in an apartment, but I'm looking into moving in a house soon, on a minimal mortgage (or no mortgage if I can swing it). That's going to go a long way towards securing my life from shocks. I'm also eyeing (small scale) homesteading; planting, canning, preserving, having chickens. Maybe hydroponics. In the meantime, I try to keep myself in a position where I could reasonably live in and work from my car if for some reason that became necessary. (As to why someone who's almost at the point of buying a house mortgage free is also preparing for the eventuality he might have to live in his car, it's a mix of timing and my pathological need to prepare and have backup plans, even if I have friends and family that would definitely take me in as Plan B to E).
I recently had an epiphany with regards to what I really want to do as a hobby, I want to go canoe camping and fishing. Equipment for these, to a high amateur level, has a relatively low price ceiling (ie, these are not really money pit hobbies after the initial investment). Once I have a paid off / almost paid off house, my paid off car, my hobby equipment, my food expenses reduced through homesteading, I think I'll be quite secure. My planning puts me at that point within the next year or two, without accounting for my wife starting to work within a year or so.
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