After high school, I joined the military instead of going to college because I thought it would make my dad happy. Upon separation, I dawdled in low-paying jobs and aimlessly went to community college on-and-off during the years I could’ve been at my most productive (20-27). Finally got my shit together at 28, got a good job, and am going to school four nights a week after work.
Upon further reflection, I feel I have a lot of good ideas and if I had followed through on a few of them, I might have made a very comfortable living. I have a good head for business but was always too lazy to get an idea off the ground.
In all honesty, we’re doing pretty well. But we could certainly be pulling down more money. I’m wrapping up a Ph.D, so I’ve been spending more money on daycare than I earned for more years than I’d care to admit. I’m now working in the private sector and actually making a decent salary, but I’ve gone out of my way to find a firm that is very flexible and isn’t concerned with face time.
Also, my husband and I both suffer from a spectacular inability to delay gratification. We generally spend whatever we have available. Fortunately, we have 401(k)s, college funds, etc., that are outside of the pool of “available cash,” but could be used in emergencies.
Finally, I have a moral opposition to basic tenets of capitalism. I’m never going to get rich - whatever that means - because I’m never going to invest directly in the stock market.
I put my short-term happiness above financial long-term security. I am fortunate to have 2 part time jobs that I love and am very good at. I refuse to work more hours and become physically and mentally burned out and exhausted. Already been there, done that. I don’t want to own a house or have any other long term financial commitments. I am not having kids. I downsized and simplified in order to have this life. I drive a 13 year old car, have no savings or retirement and am totally fine with that. I pay the bills and have a bit extra. I have enough cushion for a car repair or some other under 1k expense that pops up. I love my life, I do all of the things I want to do and I am happy. The only thing I would like to do but do not have the money for is travel. But working 50+ hours is not worth a few trips a year. Life is too short, I may not be around in 5, 10, 15 years. I work to live and play, that’s enough for me. Living this life at (almost) 40 may make me look like a lazy loser, particularly compared to my successful friends but again, I am totally ok with that.
My wife and I made a conscious decision to not make more money than we do now.
I’m the income earner. She’s a stay at home mom. Her earning potential is greater than mine, by somewhere around 30-50%. So if she (and I both) worked full-time, our household income would be anywhere from 100-150% greater than it is now.
When she was pregnant with our second, she was working part-time (her choice, employer offered full-time and she declined). She was offered a Director position for a municipal government agency and declined that position as well.
My income alone is such that I can support a family of 4 and pay the bills. We own (mortgage) a home, have two cars, and no debts or loans save the mortgage. We also have enough cash reserves to equal 6 months of my income.
We decided we didn’t need the extra money - in that the benefit of having that money was outweighed by the benefits of her staying home with our 2 kids.
I was in school to go into teaching (it was my life’s dream at the time) and I had a falling out with my advisor and like the impulsive 21 year old that I was, he said that if I didn’t like the rules, I should find another program. So I did. As a result, I had better jobs while I was in university (leading to no debt when I got out) and getting a better paying job upon graduation. (Where I still am 10 years later making double what they hired me at.) On top of it being a better paying gig, there is an incredible amount of flexibility and respect for everyone here as individuals (meaning I don’t have to sweat it when I have to run to the doctor/store/hairdresser in the middle of the day as long as I still get stuff done).
When looking for a house to buy, our realtor wanted us to ‘just look’ at a house that he thought would not be a fit so we could tell him what we liked and didn’t. It was a condo townhouse with three bedrooms and was about a third of the cost of a detached home of the same size in the area we wanted. While I am not in love with my house, I do love the financial freedom that it has afforded us without having to compromise on the major things. Honestly, if I had a shitton of money, I am not sure I would move.
I would be a lot richer had I not gotten married and had kids.
My husband’s parents were supposed to pay for his student loans and they didn’t. So, upon marriage I found myself out 30 grand. (7 years on and I still hold a lot of animosity towards them because of this.)
Kids are expensive. Daycare, activities, food, clothes. People told me but I didn’t believe them. I do get deals on clothes and food but you take what you can get when it comes to daycare and giving my kids one activity a year is way less that what I see other parents doing (yes, that is guil talking).
There is one other thing, I love disney world and go once a year. It’s pretty expensive but is something that I would be hard-pressed to give up.
One thing I need to add that a lot of people have already stated here… I am terrible with my finances. I make enough money to live a very comfortable lifestyle for a single thirtysomething, but if I lived more frugally, I’d have way more saved up. I just love to eat out too much.
We are not poor, not rich, just a tad bit above average. But with 6 people to support, money is never as plentiful as I’d like. Here’s why:
I decided after my second child was born to be a stay-at-home mother. This extended for about 11 years, so when it was time to go back to work my resume was old and my skills were outdated. So I’m not making as much as if I’d been working all along
We had 4 kids. We love 'em all, but they are expensive!
My husband decided to go into academia instead of getting a job in industry after getting his PhD. Being a professor is prestigious and he really enjoys it. But there is no doubt a job in industry would pay at least double.
But I’m not complaining. We have everything we need and quite of few things we don’t need but we want anyway.
I spent large amounts of money through my 20s and racked up debts. I won’t say I wasted the money - I had a ball travelling and seeing the world, but I also spent lots on stupid crap, a car that I couldn’t really afford, and for a while I gambled too much.
I had fun, but I’m still paying off my debts at the age of 34. Hopefully in just over two years’ time my only remaining debt will be my mortgage, and (assuming my salary remains unchanged) I’ll effectively have more than twice as much money each month. I earn almost double the UK average salary, and my wife earns comfortably more than the average, so we really should be very comfortably off, and we’re not. We don’t run out of money each month, but we’re paying off debts rather than building up savings. The only plus side is that I have a good pension scheme.
If I had been sensible with my money, I could have probably paid off my mortgage by the age of 40. But I would probably reach 40 wishing I’d had more fun in my 20s!
I’ll clarify (as if that really needs clarification). I’m an attorney and I certainly have the option of making more money than I do. A LOT more money. I could have kicked ass in law school and gotten one of those awesome $125,000/annum year 1 jobs in the top tier firms. Hell, I could have set my sights lower and gotten a nice $90,000 job with upward mobility had I wanted.
The problem is that I’d have had to work 80 hour weeks at a law firm and, frankly, I find that concept to be boring. I value my freetime as much as I value the money and, for me, it was a tradeoff I just wasn’t willing to make.
I certainly wish that I was making more at my current job (who doesn’t?). But I’m also fine with the 8 to 5/40 role and can’t see myself giving that up to go back to a firm, even at double my current pay.
I make enough to support myself comfortably and securely, by my standards, and I’m doing something I enjoy and for which I think I’m well-suited. Shouldn’t that be enough?
Let’s see… decent undergrad degree, a couple of decent, if not spectacular staff analyst/developer jobs out of college, an MBA and a MS in IT, and then a consulting job, and another decent if unspectacular job as a business analyst.
I make decent money- in the 65-85k range, so between my wife’s income and mine, we’re fairly well off, but not “rich”.
Why am I not ‘richer’? I see it as a combination of 3 things:
For the first half of my career, I worked for small IT departments where there were no promotions to be had, not a lot of turnover, and not a lot of expansion going on. Therefore, the raises weren’t fast in coming, and neither were the spiffy titles that HR people look for.
I’m kind of a big doofus. I don’t look the part of a management type- I’m fat, I’m not overly concerned with my appearance (not a slob, but not a clotheshorse either), and worse, I’m kind of a dorky absent-minded professor sort, instead of a golf-playing schmoozer.
After years of seeing how the game is played and what gets people promoted, I’ve more or less decided that I’m not going to sacrifice my self respect, personal time and family time just to be some combination of a workaholic yes-man in order to make a few more bucks.
It just seems like a waste of my effort to try and be something that I’m not, in hopes that I can fool someone into thinking I’m executive material. I’ll probably end up a project manager here in short order, and eventually a manager or director, but I’m not pushing for it too hard.
My wife has had a long and expensive medical history in our time together. It’s not only created bills we were not expecting, it’s kept her from working - she hasn’t had a full time job in our 16 years together, and hasn’t worked at all since 2007.
She came to me with a one year old and debts from her first marriage. It was a conscious choice I made, and gladly, but we’d have more money if we’d gone the more typical ‘married for a few years, both working, building up a egg before your first child’ route.
I overextended myself. I have had jobs, but this last one I got in 2008. In my field, with my degree, I made great money. I never had a problem getting a job, any job. But my company wasn’t doing well and they gave us two months advance notice we’d be laid off.
I started looking immediately and soon found out everything has changed since 2008. Even small temporary jobs, are hard to get.
I am now working two part time jobs for a grand total of 24 hours a week and get unemployment (reduced by they jobs I work).
One of my part time jobs is clerical work, and I had to enter all the applications and resumes sent in for the job, I eventually got. Did you know for a minimum wage job, two days a week, for an ad that ran three days on Craigslist, they got 1,700 resumes and applications?
That just shows you what the economy is like in Illinois.
When you have a good paying job, you tend to not appreciate it enough, till you go out and look and find there isn’t much else out there
I made the honest mistake of believing that when I got my M.A. in English, all the silverbacks would eventually retire and I’d snag a full-time job.
That was quite some time ago.
I would say that the one thing I am good at just doesn’t pay well at all. So I have to do the 60-80 hour a week thing. I would love to have more stuff, but what I have I am comfortable with.
I’m poor because I’m lazy and I like to give money away. By that, I mean that I don’t want to work long hours and stress late into the night about work. I work to live, I don’t live to work. Any money left after I pay the bills goes to charity.
This is my choice. It drives M crazy. M works insane hours, spends more time on planes in a year than I have my whole life and he’s got a ton of money.
It bothers me that people expect me to want to “do better” when I’m perfectly happy where I am.
Really! (Well no, not really, but kind of!)
You see, I have been an underachiever since college so there was little chance of me making it “big”. Long story short: As someone earlier mentioned, things felt too much like “winning” (or, at least, trying for someone else’s approval) and I lost my motivation. I did end up with three degrees (one graduate) but “settled” on teaching H.S. science - This was for both altruistic and selfish reasons (Sure it helps kids to be successful/be better educated, but more importantly, I just want my society-at-large to understand their reality through evidence not superstition.
Now, on to the cause for my being “less rich” than I should be:
I married a wonderfully brilliant woman who actually earned her undergrad and MBA (UofC) through hard work and passion - two things I really didn’t need (or understand) for academic (or professional) success. She made pretty good money for a while too (easily more than twice what I make as a teacher), and soon had an opportunity to make much, much more… The rub was that it required some 70% + travel. She wasn’t even particularly happy with her current work, and though we’d really be considered “rich” if she accepted this generous offer, she turned it down.
She finally took a more fulfilling position in a company outside of Dallas for even less pay than she had been making in Chicago (including cost of living) and though we lost out on a whole lot of money, we really couldn’t be happier (well, except that we now live in Dallas ;))
But I don’t mind being “less rich” because we’re happy.
I have suffered from a chronic mental illness for most of my adult life. One result has been an inability to get and maintain anything other than heavilly supported work. Not the recipe for financial security or wealth.