I keep saying I'll set up retirement once income stabilizes. Why haven't I?

You have told yourself the same sentence for three years: I will do it when income stabilizes. Reason asks a simple question — has that condition ever once been met? If not, it is not a condition. It is a reason to delay forever, dressed up as prudence. A retirement account does not ask whether your income is steady. It asks only whether something goes in. A person earning an irregular $2,000 one month and $6,000 the next can still set money aside — just not the same amount each time. Ask who this waiting serves. It serves the part of you that fears choosing wrong, or facing the paperwork, or admitting the account should have opened years ago. It does not serve the person you will be at sixty. Equal dignity means your future self deserves the same care as your present one — not less, because he cannot yet speak for himself.