sven, I would be pleased to receive one whiny e-mail from you per day for the next year. I will respond to you with one sympathetic e-mail per week. Of course the fee for this service will be $20,000.00 in advance.
Alternately, you might consider simply getting on with life and recognizing just how tremendously well off you are to live in the wealthiest nation in the world, to be receiving a high level of education, to having a job, and to having a nest egg.
All that time in India, and you didn’t learn how very lucky you are? Grow up, kid.
I suspect she can do whatever she wants with the 20K, since the reason we know about it was her thread asking for advice about how she should invest it.
I think it’s a very bad idea to look at this $20K as the “only money I will ever have” and refuse to dip into it to buy things like food. She wants to use this money to fund her dreams rather than her reality.
Just to level set you, even sven, you will not buy a house, go to grad school, start a business or produce a short by having $20K in the bank. You need to have a decent job that provides enough income to cover your day to day expenses. If that means dipping into the kitty to get food and help fund a job search or move, then that is what you need to do. Eating potatoes and donated tomato sauce every day is just going to wear you down, that’s NOT smart.
At best, I see people offering their own stories of prior poverty simply to rebut the presumption that there is nothing to be done, that sven is stuck, by immutable circumstance, in her present position. If her posts had the tenor of yours, above – I am seeking happiness in my own way, and defining success and quality of life in my own terms – this thread would not exist.
I think an earlier thread (linked at the beginning of this one) dealt with how she should invest it. I don’t know if that’s relevant or not.
Myself, I say that if you keep asking for advice and keep ignoring it, then you’re presumably not hearing what you want. Probably best to stop asking.
That said, there’s plenty of people on the boards who drone on endlessly about all manner of things, so my attitude is not to get too concerned about it all…
I know it isn’t. That was the second part of my point – not only do such tales/advice smack of sanctimony (intentional or otherwise), they are also quite irrelevant, as they do not apply to the issue at hand. The portion of my post that was directed at sven – which amounted to little more than “quit whining”, supported by a logical scaffold – should’ve made that much clear, as well as outlining my position on what she has said, here and in the referenced threads. My secondary rebuttal of said style of “advice” in the post you quoted was in response to the hypothetical attitude Yeticus Rex seemed to believe I was promoting, which, near as I can tell, nobody in this thread actually possesses. Thus, that part wasn’t really directed at anyone at all, which answers your “who is doing this” question.
To make life easier, just read my first post to this thread – it contains the only points I’ve made that have any direct relevance to the OP and/or the thread’s subject – and ignore the rest, which are nothing more than additional clarification and response to hypotheticals, and only really applicable to the specific person whom I was addressing at the time.
Another thing that has to be considered here…and I have no way of knowing one way or the other…an honest talent self-evaluation.
Education and experience can improve anyone’s performance in nearly any field, creative, technical, or otherwise. But sooner or later, you have to ask yourself if you have the raw, naturally acquired talent required to be a full-time artist.
I had dreams of becoming an artist years ago. But once I admitted that my love of art and my ability to create it were two different things, I was able to see that I would have to do something else for a living and pursue my passion as a hobby rather than a career. My brother, the starving musician, is talented. Very talented, in fact. He’s got other issues that are preventing him from succeeding, but that’s another thread. You have to be realistic and see not only the creative aspect, but the business aspect, and evaluate how you will fare against the thousands of people who are chasing the same dream you are.
Just a thought. I wish you the best in your quest for a career in film.
And I see a bunch of people saying “No really, we do know what its like. We flipped burgers, worked in Starbucks, telemarketed and temped out of college, too. We lived in roach filled apartments and thought getting to dine at TGI Friday’s was fancy. Few people with liberal arts degrees (even when graduating with honors) are lucky enough to fall into a job doing what they want at a decent salary. Most of us either do what we love and don’t make much money, or have made a significant shift from what we thought we’d do in college - and making that shift takes a lot of time. It takes patience and compromise and work. And sometimes it takes moving halfway across the country.”
It is really the lucky and talented few who make a good living doing what they love to do where they want to do it.
To which we have passengerpigeon responding that Sven is the only person who has ever been in this situation and the world owes her a living doing what she loves. (Sven herself does not seem to believe this). Which, of course, as a former temp who lived in a roach filled apartment trying to make a living with a Film Studies degree in the crashed market of the late 1980s in Minneapolis, I know is bullshit.
Just because she has to decide what to do with the $20,000 doesn’t mean she actually has access to it. I myself am sitting on about $11,000 that I can’t touch because it’s tied up in different investments. Sure, I’d love to get my hands on that money and pay off a lot of bills (and solve a lot of problems), but I can’t.
I’m not trying to defend even sven. However, there is a time to chase dreams, and there’s a time to grow the fuck up and take care of business. As much as I’d love to work in radio, I know that may not happen. I’d rather bag radio or put it off and find a job that pays a living salary so I can take care of myself and my family. That is the priority, and sven needs to learn that.
Well, in one post you said something to the effect that Even Sven should look to herself as the cause of her problems, and my response was that it was classic finger-pointing. Life problems are rarely ALL the victim’s fault, or ALL due to external factors – generally it’s some kind of combination.
In another post you explained how you’d managed to improve your lot in life through hard work and persistence, which is a good thing, but I pointed out that what worked for you might not work for others for a variety of reasons. Your post seemed to posit that because it worked for you it would work for anybody. Not necessarily.
Note the boldfaced section. You’re complaining about the fact that even sven is … complaining. But why should she not complain? I APPLAUD her decision to save that nest egg and use it in a way that might be able to get her where she wants to be in life. I ADMIRE her for sticking it out and doing boring, mundane work for low wages and surviving on those wages, for a chance to do some filmmaking. As far as I am concerned, she can complain all she likes, because shit work is shit work and poverty sucks no matter why you’re stuck in it.
I’ll grant you the decision to go to India doesn’t make a lot of financial sense – would have made more sense to use whatever resources she had there to get her out of her current grind – but it seems a minor point.
Also, what do you mean, “take responsibility for the fact that you’ve chosen to be poor, etc.”? Do you mean just “shut up and suffer in silence” or what?
I just wanted to point out that there is NO investment - none whatsoever on earth - from which it is IMPOSSIBLE to withdraw one’s money. There might be a penalty or taxes but the owner can have it at any time she chooses.
Normally a person wouldn’t want to do that. But if the choice is between paying 10% penalty and starving to death once one’s bag of potatoes and cans of sauce in the pantry run out, then the owner of the funds should take the money out.
What is up with you people ragging on sven for not spending her $20K inheritance? She could use that money right now, sure. Pay off some debts, stock the cupboard, whatever. But that’s backwards: she wants to save money for a film project. Spending it now helps in the short term, but it better serves her long term goals to treat the money as an untouchable nest egg.
So granted, choices, blah blah, options, blah blah, shouldn’t complain, blah blah blah. But are you seriously suggesting that sven should sacrifice her long term goals and aspirations to patch up a short term problem? Because that’s what you’re implying if you think she should be spending her $20K right now.
Yeah, well I moved across the continent too, and it doesn’t not have to not suck. Or maybe it doesn’t have not to not suck. Or is it that it doesn’t not have not not to not suck.
Sorry, but that’s utter bullshit. Money is not a zero-sum instrument. You can always get more money. She needs to see this not as a nest egg, but as an investment tool. She should spend the money now to move to LA so she can get into the film industry.
Once she gets a foothold in the industry, more money will come. More important, she will find investors yo help her realize her dream. Right now, she might as well bury it for all the good it’s doing her. In any event, she is not poor, and she is whining instead of doing.
In this Oprahfied world, “shut up and suffer in silence” is advice that ought to be taken more often - and it ought always to be taken when the suffering is the result of one’s own choices.
The fact that even sven’s choices are unpleasant is immaterial. She has choices, and in that she’s already better off than some 90% of the world’s population. To me, the single most important task in becoming a grownup is to develop a willingness not only to make unpleasant choices–but to live by their foreseeable consequences. This she has utterly failed to do, and until she does so she gets no sympathy from me.