Agreed. One thing I've noticed about my own life is how hard even 1 year out of your career track hurts you both professionally (skill set) and personally (income/wealth). I was doing financial services programming for a big bank as my first job right out of college before the housing bust. I ended up getting laid off and enjoying the "funemployment" people talk about: 6 month full severance, unemployment at the top rate after that, living at home with the parents, no debt, and doing whatever strikes my fancy.

I set an upper bound of 1 year maximum to be out of the field of programming. When I came back (should have kept programming while unemployed, stupid, I know) not only had my skill set deteriorated but so did my market rate. Out of college my salary was $98,000. By the time I had gotten back into the work force my salary was $65,000. It took about 1.5 years of hard work and a lot of overtime to get back to where I was. And during this time my peers that stayed employed have grown a lot both in terms skill set and market rate. So basically because I took 1 year off, I lost ~2.5-3 years of my career because I had to work back to where I was before.

I think if I were to get a do-over I would have not have taken a year off. But the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, as they say.