I mean, you support yourself off a legacy, or a settlement, or something that just dropped into your lap without any intentional effort on your part. Inheritance, lotto, whatever.
Let’s say, for the purpose of this thread, you owe a third or more of your practical survival support on being in the right place at the right time. This includes wombs as well as getting hit by a rich man’s limo or whatever.
Anyone? I have two friends in this position; I sometimes wonder how many other people?
100% of my support and that of my children is from being in the right place at the right time and meeting my husband who enjoys having a stay-at-home wife. But I don’t think that’s exactly what you meant.
And although we get by okay, with a bit to play with each month, we are not wealthy nor are we in the position or lifestyle as someone who is a lottery winner or heir to any kind of family legacy.
Heck, I sometimes make our own bread just to save the two bucks we’d spend on the store bought kind. Never the less, I am fully supported now because I happened to be single and “cute” when one of our mutual friends was looking to set my husband up with someone.
My parents got me through high school. Without their support, I would not have seen the possibility of going to a top school.
The Marine Corps got me through the first half of college. Without their cash, I could not have afforded my first 3 years.
My now wife got me to graduate. Without her partnership, I would not have the diploma.
So, lucky sperm put me in a solid middle class family where I could shine enough to get into a top school. After that, it was effectively me.
Yes. All of it.
Not quite as glamorous as a legacy, but my career basically fell in my lap. I got my job through a temp assignment at a major company I had never heard of before working there. I’ve now been there 5 years, am making more money than I ever have and have bright prospects for a good future.
Not sure if this would count…
…I was able to start school, get on the track(s) I’m on to get into several good grad school programs, and essentially change the course of my life due to a small financial windfall. I happened to be selected for jury duty for a case that lasted several months while working at a job that pays employees their full salary while serving. Because the jury was kept away from home, we were given additional jury pay on top of the normal rate, and for those several months I incurred no utility or food expenses. I went from being several thousand in debt from a divorce to being free and clear with a few thousand left over once everything was paid out and settled.
Now, the choice to go to school was my own; at the time, my car was falling apart, and I could have chosen to buy a new(ish) car instead. So, it’s not entirely to chance. But, I’d never be in school if I hadn’t happened to get selected for the jury.
All of it. I am extremely fortunate in that I was born in a wealthy country to people who wanted a child, did their best to raise me, and value education.
I spent a lot of time thinking about this sort of thing when I was in Peace Corps. My counterpart, who was, if anything, smarter than me, grew up in a tiny rural village in what was a Communist nation until she was about 14. Her adolescence was then during an extremely difficult transition period, while Bulgarian society crumbled and the neighboring country disintegrated into a horrible civil war that lasted for years and deeply affected the economic development of the entire region. (What do you think when you hear the phrase “the Balkans”? I bet it’s not “that seems like a good place to invest my money”.) She went to college in the capital of the region, got a degree in physics, couldn’t find work, ended up teaching English because it was the only job she could find. I helped her apply for the Green Card lottery; she didn’t win. She earns the equivalent of 100 euros a month working as a teacher. She has to think about things that I don’t (how will she eat this winter? how will she heat the house? will she ever be able to find a better job?). Is it because I work harder or am better in some way? Hell no.
I got a free ride to college via the Illinois Veteran’s Grant and a steady paycheck from the GI Bill. Now that the first GI Bill ran out, I am eligible for the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which is helping me through grad school. All this because I joined the Army at a time when they were dangling lots of college money at new recruits, because I lived in Illinois which has a generous veteran’s grant, and because I happened to serve during 9/11 and the War on Terror. And soon after I got out of the Army, my wife and I got this house dirt cheap through family.
Also, I’m pretty lucky to be fairly smart. I just graduated cum laude with an EE degree which puts me in a much better position than someone who barely scraped by with a degree in political science or sociology or something. Granted, I couldn’t find a job before this semester started, that’s why I’m back in school pursuing my master’s. But at least I have that option and I didn’t have to settle for a job in tech support or something just to get by.
PS, I don’t mean to sound condescending in that last paragraph. There are plenty of smart people with degrees in political science and sociology. I just happen to know one woman who couldn’t do the math and had to drop out of her aerospace engineering major and got a degree in political science instead. Now she’s a bank teller I think. And there’s nothing wrong with tech support either. It’s just that I went to school for engineering dammit, I want to be an engineer!
I was born to middle-class Americans, so yeah. That’s hitting the lottery in this world, and anyone who thinks otherwise, as Ann Richards once said “was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.”
Bad luck that I was divorced by an absolute Bitch that wanted to take everything I owned and a slice of my next 30 years.
Good luck that I bit the bulllet and left the jurisdiction and country and landed a superb job in Istanbul!
Bad luck that I couldn’t get a resident visa in Turkey and had to take a rotational job in Africa.
Good luck that the day I left to go to my new rotational base in New Zealand there was a financial crisis in Turkey and when I removed my savings from the bank there they gave me $16,000 dollars more than I thought they should have.
Bad Luck that when I got to New Zealand my Nigerian Boss thought that even though I was a rotator, New Zealand was too far for their company to effectively administer me ( WTF?) and sacked me.
More bad luck I then had a massive heart attack my first month in country!
Good luck that I had the infarct inside the emergency room of the best cardiac hospital in the South Pacific when I was there visiting a friend.
More good luck that the bad nigerian boss copied my dismissal email to another boss by mistake who called me and took me then to Philippines where he himself was starting a new job!
Bad luck that I broke my foot the first month I was working in manila.
Good luck that my work effort at the fractured foot enforced desk job was so appreciated that the manager asked me to head a successful job bid in Korea.
Bad luck that my 25 years experience in my industry never prepared me for the xenophobia and racism that I encountered in Ulsan!
Good luck that when i quit the job and was on the plane out of there I met an ex colleague who invited me to work in Azerbaijan!
Wow I could go on and on with my list of happy and unhappy coincidences!
The thing is that I have survived all of life’s challenges up to now. I have no doubt that I will survive more. And when I don’t survive one… well good luck that I will be oblivious!
Lifes interesting sometimes.
You know I just read this back and I have missed about another 20 bad and good chance happenings that seriously set my life on a completely new direction. If I wrote it down it would be rejected by a publisher as too fanciful or impossible… sheesh!
Everyone owes their good fortune to chance. Even Horatio Alger believed this (Alger’s stories did stress hard work, but the idea was that if you work hard, you’re better able to take advantage when you got your lucky break).
For me, I can name many. Once, I was fired from my job. Two weeks later, the job I have now – which I love – was advertised (I was probably only one of two people in the area who fit the qualifications, and they were hiring two people). If I hadn’t lost my job right then, I wouldn’t have been looking in the want ads.
I met my wife because my ex-wife insisted I take a creative writing class. When she left me, I had someone to ask out.
Pretty much what I was coming in to say. All the luck in the world won’t help you if you aren’t smart enough or prepared enough to take advantage of it. “Right place, right time” only goes so far.
Alternatively, all the dumb in the world isn’t enough to keep you from being President, if you had the right parents.
Seriously, I’m about the farthest thing in the world from a fatalist, an I don’t think anyone here is discounting the value of doing your best regardless, but we’re all the products of our opportunities, and our opportunities are largely determined by the circumstances of our birth.