It bothers me too. There’s this idea that you’ve got to keep accumulating wealth no matter what.
You could be saving 30% of your income, have a year’s worth of living expenses stowed away, absolutely no debt, as well as a pension plan, and it’s still not enough. You’ve got to buy a house and/or invest in stocks too. And even that’s not enough for some people.
No, I don’t want headaches. I don’t want to follow the stock market. If I’m going to buy a house, it’s because I want to own the place where I live. Not to make a profit.
All the people I know who are constantly talking about accumulating more wealth (through investments rather than through their own labor) are living above their means and are now paying for it. Either by constant worrying or by working menial, back-breaking jobs on the weekends. And I have little sympathy for them as they complain about their situations in one breath and then try to give me financial advice in another. I might drive a 17-year-old car and not have the latest smartphone or whatever doodad is hot on the market, but my evenings and weekends are leisurely and I have no financial worries. That is worth more than any stock dividend.
I’m not poor - I’m broke (to me there’s a difference)
I was laid off from a well-paying job of 10 years in January 2009 and it took me 11 months to find a new job. I took a 20% pay cut, and while I lived within my means during my previous job, unemployment and the loss of a long-term relationship at the same time put a strain on my finances.
I’m still recovering, so while I make an OK salary, and still live within my (reduced) means, I’m struggling. But I have hope
I graduated from high school with lackluster grades. My grandmother was willing to pay for me to go to the local community college, but after a year I quit and moved in with my boyfriend. At this time, I had no job and didn’t know how to drive.
A couple years later, I got knocked up and moved back in with my mom. I never received or pursued any child support, but I did learn to drive and got a job at McDonald’s. Eventually I realized life would suck forever if I didn’t change something, so I went to night school and got a two-year secretarial degree. Unfortunately, I also got married to a McDonald’s store manager, who later got fired, and joy of joys, I was pregnant again. At this point I was supporting the three of us by working forty hours a week at McDonald’s. After the child was born, I left McDonald’s to work night shift at a drug store and pick up a few more hours working weekends at TGI Fridays. I think the husband had found part-time work by then…my memories of that time are vague.
Anyway, I finally found secretarial work. I got a divorce and a bit of child support, got remarried, and here I am today.
I still work at the same secretarial job. I forward the phones at five o’clock and don’t give my job another thought.
My husband makes three times as much as I do. He also has to bring work home, and frequently gets paged in the middle of the night. He thrives on it, being a type-A kinda dude, but I wouldn’t want to live like that. I like material things. Fortunately I don’t need much of them to be happy. If I’m poor again someday, well, I know I can do it.
I got a Ph.D instead of going straight into industry. I make more with the degree than I would have without, but the years of low income mean that it will take a few years to catch up, especially if you include investment returns to the equation. This was merely a case of accepting low income for a few years in return for higher income later. No regrets.
So - any conclusions, msmith? It seems like folks have a general sense of ways they could’ve been more ambitious, and have taken some of those actions and not taken others. It also sounds like most folks are NOT saying “I coulda been a contender, but ‘the Man’ kept me down.” And overall, most folks seem comfortable with the choices they’ve made. Are you reading anything differently?
As for me, I am pleased with my career and situation - and I am aware that I have had a lot of growing up to do before I could assume some of the management/leadership roles I aspired to. Not getting too much responsibility too early was a good thing - I have a deeper appreciation for the responsibilities I have now, and more experience to handle them better…
I am not richer than I am as a direct result of a decision I made to marry who I did, and waiting (too long) for him to mature. Afterwards, I was on my way to getting by and almost out of debt, when I was laid off about two years ago.
Decent income meaning we don’t have to watch every penny… so we don’t. While we’re not spendthrifts, we doubtless spend more than we should. Hence, less in the way of savings than we’d like.
Having kids. Yes, they’re fulfilling etc. and I do NOT regret it, but they’re an expensive sort of pet to have around and we’d probably have a lot more in college savings, maybe even have the house (the townhouse that is, we wouldn’t have needed to move!) paid off by now.
-missed opportunities
I let a few opportunities go by in the past. I don’t know if something I passed on 25 years ago would make a difference now or not, but it’s possible.
Most recently, I might have been able to go to graduate school via my old company paying 80% tuition costs BUT if I had still been laid off at the same time (the layoff was not due to performance issues but down-sizing) I would have had a half-completed degree, tuition bills, and no means to pay them or finish the degree so I’m not sure I would have been better off in the end.
-cultural mis-fits
While I am more than willing to work a steady 40 hours a week, and put in 10 to 20 over time on occasion, I just never fit the corporate mold that demands you put your job before both family and yourself. I didn’t show up to work when I was sick, I didn’t foist my ill parents off on someone else, and so on. Yes, this did hurt my ability to advance in the corporate world, I figured out quickly I was never going to reach the upper echelons of management. On the other hand, my family likes me. If I had to do it all over again I wouldn’t change that, because while jobs come and go my family has stuck by me.
-major unforseen events or circumstances
I wouldn’t say my layoff in 2007 was entirely unforeseen, I had about 6 months warning, but I didn’t see it coming the year before. It was sudden enough that my options for dealing with it were limited. And that’s what really kicked the legs out from under us, that and the fact that there are so few jobs available compared to those looking.
We’re frugal enough that if I had a full time minimum wage job we could scrape by. Of course, I’d like a little more than that. Alright, I’d like to be making enough to fly airplanes again as a hobby, but hey, even if I never step into another cockpit again at least I did it. I could be content with a minimal lifestyle if only I could reliably pay my bills without needing help from the family half the time.
Well, to be fair, I bet most of us on this board are middle class. When we talk about the problems of social mobility we generally mean POOR people… as in people who don’t have an internet connection with which to post on the Dope. Or in the very least, people living paycheck to paycheck.
As for me, I really struggle with overspending and not saving enough. I’ve improved a lot through the last several years but I still don’t feel as on top of it as I want to be. Sometimes I feel like that part of my brain is broken.
Second, chronic depression fucks with ambition. I would have had my Masters degree two years ago if it hadn’t been for a major depressive episode in undergrad.
Third, I decided to do what I want to do with my life instead of what will make me the most money. I don’t really have any desire to make a lot of money. I just want to be able to sustain my current quality of living until I die.
I haven’t had that much time to go all through them and crunch the numbers (stupid Man making me work all the time).
I have noticed that people seemed to have settled at a level where they feel comfortible with their financial situation and security. I also think that for most people there is a marginal benefit for working harder than they do. For example, working extra hours or weekends will not typically be worth the extra money or promotion that may come with it.
Although, it would be interesting to hear from people who were actually motivated and found they could not achieve their goals.
The plan was four years of college, a double major, and then grad school. Surprise fiscal concerns turned that into two and a half years, graduating with a bachelor’s in one major. Grad school was delayed so my then-fiancee-then-husband could get his bachelor’s, which he didn’t, because he wouldn’t do the homework.
The temporary after-college job turned into a job that I kept for seven years. I recently resigned to focus on getting my health in order. After that, though? I have no fucking clue what I’m going to do. Retaking the GRE won’t be a problem, but getting academic recommendations are going to be nearly impossible, and I’m not really sure that I want to accrue additional debt. I’m not certain I’d enjoy teaching, and the things I’m interested in–folklore–or good at–writing–don’t exactly lead to high-paying careers.
And I’m not going to take a job that I hate for the financial security. I’m not strong enough. The damage I did to my health over the seven years I was employed in my old job is proof of that. So I feel kind of stuck.
But, really, as long as I have my health, and the people who care about me, I could care about money.
“I wanted to be an astronaut but the dude at the NASA application center just laughed at me” ?
“I tried for my doctorate in chemical engineering but flunked out” ?
“I tried to be a musician but was told everywhere that my music sucked” ?
(well, I actually never pursued music professionally because it felt like trying would lead to a daily barrage of statements like that…)
Hmm - okay: I was moving up the ladder at my consulting firm and if I had made Partner before they went public would be looking a LOT of money right now - but my candidacy was right when the dot-com bust happened - no one was making Partner for about 3 years. I read the writing on the wall and left and took a solid pay cut to start working for a small company. Never looked back; best decision I ever made, but yeah, not as well off - certainly not yet. Gotta keep trying to rectify that
Actually I was thinking about an example from the book Outliers by Malcome Gladwell. In the book he describes two extraordinarilly brilliant people. One dropped out of college because of a mixup with his application forms and because of his trailer park upbringing, it never occured to him to challenge it. The other was Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, whose affluent upbringing enabled him to charm his way through an incident where he tried to poison his professor.
So I wonder when people say they are “lazy” or “don’t have the ambition” to be more successful, how much of that is due to class perceptions that they don’t belong in a particular role or that they shouldn’t pursue it. Sure my job has long hours, but I can work from home and pretty much come and go as I please. I don’t have bosses who clock when I come in or go to the bathroom. And can you really say I work harder than a construction worker or a truck driver on a monotonous cross country drive?
I would even go so far as to say my own success has been hindered by being instilled with a middle-class working ethic of actually “doing something” that someone will pay you for. Employees “do stuff” for other people. CEOs, entrepreneurs and other business leaders come up with ideas and lead other people to implement them. You can only go so far being the best programmer or accountant or business analyst. And the more you build those skills (which tend to be extremely structured and isolating), the less time you are spending building communication skills, leadership skills, presentation skills, creative thinking skills and other skills to get ahead.
Well, actually, these days even the poorest people can get internet connections - my public library hands them out for free. I think you’d be surprised at just how many of us Dopers actually are poor. Not just living paycheck-to-paycheck but poor enough to be receiving some sort of government assistance to keep afloat.
I wound up being social mobile, alright, but in the wrong direction - down, not up. Like a lot of other folks recently. I’m optimistic I can work my way back up again but I know it will be awhile.
Well, I wanted to be a pilot for a long, long time. The Air Force wouldn’t take me because of my vision. Even if I got training the airlines wouldn’t hire me (most of 'em - I think Southwest might have) because of my vision.
I still learned to fly, but as a private pilot, and had to pay for it myself. Ah, back in the days when I could afford such a hobby… needless to say, that’s off the table right now, just can’t afford it. But being a professional pilot, although it had been an ambition at one time, wasn’t realistic for me due vision issues I have no control over.
I read the book. It’s subtitle should be “Nurture,” because the basic point is that whole “crops” of humans with diverse and varying degrees of talent are born every generation - but the circumstances of the world and their particular upbringing go a long way at filtering things down to one or two world-changers.
Again - not sure what to say: “I had the talent and ambition to be another Bill Gates, but my talents didn’t line up with what the world needed at the time the way Gates’ did at the start of the PC age, and I didn’t get access to my 10,000 hours of deep investment time to develop my skill set early enough?”
I will say this: translating your potential to results is hard. I went to a top college, a top business school, have worked for top-tier companies - and know a ton of colleagues in the same boat. You know what? Most are frustrated with their jobs, haven’t figured out what they “really” want to do, etc. Heck, until I left my consulting job, I didn’t realize how truly miserable I was - because I was checking off all the “right” things on my checklist of achievement, you know?
Thinking more about this. Sure - I have been a big source of my own limitations. I was too eccentric for some Big Company settings; if I had targeted small-to-midsize companies earlier in my career - ones that valued less “stuffed shirt” and more geekiness, I might’ve had more of the type of success I aspire to now earlier, sure. But more importantly, I thought of myself as the Strategy guy - kinda like Mr. Spock or something - I never thought I could actually be Captain Kirk. Then a few things happened where somebody had to step up, so I did. And I was pretty good at it. Who knew?
There’s a reason the book that the Facebook movie is based on is called the Accidental Billionaires. And Gates didn’t know he could juke IBM into giving him the OS business - and critical that would be to gaining leverage in a few years. Read Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew Grove, the former head of Intel - he was freaked out about having to leave their dying memory chip business - it was what they were founded on - but they were losing share and their processor business was growing - so Grove read the signs and made the change. And that is the difference - the balls to make the change - or when presented with evidence that you MUST change, you figure out a way to do it…
I wish I’d known more about post traumatic stress earlier. I don’t do well in aggressive work situations. Bullying, undermining colleagues and bosses, office power struggles, I just have to walk away.
Like a lot of other folks recently. I’m optimistic I can work my way back up again but I know it will be awhile.