Save more than you need.

Run fiscal history simulations (several programs do this for you). If I had invested this money in 1900, how would this have fared? If I had invested this money in 1901, how would this have fared. Etc.

Accept that you can’t plan for everything except your own resilience. You may have to adjust your spend if things are looking harder than you had planned for. You’ll be fine. At least that’s what I tell myself.

My fiscal plan has me running out in 0% of historical scenarios, which is belt and braces. Still need to save a lot before I can retire according to that fiscal plan.

Yes they do. Not sure if 48 counts as older than you, but I’ve definitely seen economic cycles and peace/war cycles come and go. This too shall pass.

I’d agree that the average game dev is on Unity or unreal and won’t be hand optimizing any inner loops.

But there are a surprising amount of studios still on their own tech and there the low-level engineers definitely do (I’ve worked in the industry and have seen it first hand - and done it myself).

It also tends to be at the start of a console’s life span before the compiler and linker is mature up against the hardware.

Many games are still hand optimised in assembly, at least the inner loops.

BURN HIM AT THE STAKE!!!

It doesn’t (yet, Trump has sort of said they could buy it). The OP was talking about a British F-35B that had a technical issue and got stranded due to a missing part to fix it.