Taking an honest assessment of my finances and figuring out how to recover from a divorce at 38

Hello,

I don't want to debate details about the divorce or anything like that and just want to focus on where I am now and how to plan for the future.

I felt like I was doing fairly well financially for a while (especially compared to the average America), and then a string of things absolutely derailed my financial goals. I got laid off, a stack of really expensive, bizarre emergencies kept hitting, and at the end, I went through a divorce that took half of my 401k.

My current financial picture:

175k salary (37% after tax is paid in alimony for the next 21 months), but I have always lived a pretty low cost lifestyle, so currently I feel pretty okay. I have a decent chunk of leftover money per month that I am currently paying down a debt mentioned below and will turn that into retirement contributions once that's done.

I live in a HCOL "community property" state where 50% of the 401k is taken from the time you were married to the time of separation. We lived almost entirely on my salary so I was aiming to save for that. Post divorce, I am at 220k. Given what I mentioned about a salary of 175k being well above okay for me, I do not intend to live at that lifestyle. I would be more that comfortable around 105-110k today. I hit 40 in two years from now (on the dot, today), so at 3x my salary by 40, pre-divorce, I was aiming for a minimum of 500k to support us both. I am now wondering if I should aim for the number I would be comfortable with (110k).

Once the alimony is up, I plan on taking that money and dumping as much as possible into catching up on my retirement.

45k in index funds.

I do not own a house or any major assets that would make a meaningful contribution to my net worth outside of an old car that's worth maybe $5k at this point.

7k in 0% APR debt for 24 months (one of the aforementioned emergencies, paying this off), no other debts, emergency fund is covered.

Currently contributing 5% to my 401k – at my previous job this was much closer to 18% with 6% matching, but I was laid off and the current company does not have a matching program. I'm very emotionally sensitive to debt, so I kept it low to free up funds to pay off the 7k debt. would like to have this up to around 10% by the end of the year. My field is getting pretty ravaged by AI, so while I would like to hop to a company that might pay more and have a matching 401k, the reality is that my current job is VERY stable and finding a stable job that offers more right now feels risky and not something I want to gamble on.

1. How can I optimize this plan?
2. Am I in a decent position to recover, all things considered?
3. Am I right in putting my eggs in the basket of "optimizing my retirement" post alimony since I'll be freeing up a significant amount of money?

Note: I know some people are in a MUCH worse position than I am, but I am wanting to take an honest eye on where things are and be able to put my best foot forward over the next 2/5/10 years.