There are ways to get out of poverty. But if you are in poverty, you probably don't know them since the people who raised you didn't know them.
Ciretose, this is probably one of the most true things that has been posted here. Of course, the advice you and I have been giving is a large part of that learning those ways to get out of poverty, and people are screaming "foul!' and accusing me of being hateful and cruel for advising them. Which, I believe, is part of the self-fulfilling prophecy I was talking about.
I hear a lot of people talk about how hard they had or have it. I wonder how many of those people quite literally depended on putting squirrel or rabbit on the table for the family, or growing small gardens in their back yard and canning the surplus for winter to survive. We did. To this day I can't stand okra because of all the damn okra I picked as a kid. I certainly was not taught how to get out of that cycle. I was the first person in my extended family to EVER go to college, and many of my siblings and cousins teased me unmercifully for "putting on airs" or the like.
My message, which seems to have inflamed so many readers here, is what used to be considered simple common sense. If you want to get out of poverty, the best way to do so with the highest probability of success is exactly what you and I have been saying. Sure it's not certain, but it's far more likely to get a person out of that cycle than blaming "the man" or bemoaning their "bad luck."
I've had "bad luck" in my career too. Lots of it.. But because I chose to go to college, learn to program and worked 50-60 hours a week for the first ten years or so of my career, that "bad luck" has mostly been that I didn't get the promotion or the job assignment I wanted, and as much as that hurts, it hasn't threatened my ability to keep food on the table.
A lot of my comments about the "bad luck" folks comes from my close association with a LOT of them. My cousins still live the same way today they did 40 years ago. But two of my brothers went to law school, one is semi-retired and the other is a District Attorney. If anyone asks me why they are where they are when the cousins we literally shared bedrooms with as kids are on public aid and living hand to mouth, I will tell them. They worked their asses off on a specific plan to a path of success that they set up when they saw me claw my way out of that abyss. Not to say my cousins didn't "work hard" too. They certainly did. But they worked day to day without a plan and at the end of the hard working day, when I and my brothers were studying for our classes, they were mostly at the bar or smoking dope and moaning about their fate.
That's just the way it was.
College does cost more now. But while college was the path I took, there are other paths. Right now if you really want job security you could do worse than learn a trade and move to a place that needs the trade. I mentioned welders, there are a lot more options than that. I needed an electrician to complete some work on my house when I moved. The guy who I eventually hired came out of retirement because there was nobody younger who serviced the rural mountain area I lived in. I was one of his last customers. To get an electrician in that area now means paying a "travel fee" to an electrician from the Denver area. Any person who wants a job can take the required courses to become an electrician and they will have a well paying job for life servicing those customers.
My daughter recently graduated from college with over $40K in student loans, and another several thousand dollars that I took as her parent. So I know the cost of college. Believe it or not, it wasn't cheap when I did it either, but I worked two jobs to pay as much as I could so I didn't graduate overcome with debt. My daughter also worked during college.
I think the thing that might be a point of contention is not so much that being successful is tied to "hard work" but that the work that is done has to be very targeted. It is very easy to be a "hard worker" and still not be successful because the work being done isn't directed towards a specific result. In my experience the biggest difference between successful folks I know and people who sill live hand-to-mouth, or are even on public aid, is not so much how much they sweat, but what they sweat doing, and how much they sweat when they are not being paid to sweat.
Most of what made me successful in my life was the effort I put into making my life better outside of my job or my normal obligations. I worked 40 hours a week in a "regular job" the whole time I was in college, PLUS I worked on campus in student jobs such as being a physics lab instructor (which is how I met my wife). On top of those two jobs I frequently carried a full semester load of physics, math and computer science classes. I worked the night shift, and after working all night slinging boxes into the shelves of a supermarket, I would go to school for the next six hours or so. While I was at school most of my co-workers at the supermarket were generally partying or sleeping. I know because I was usually invited to attend but had to go to school instead.
But I had a long-term life plan and was determined to pursue it. When I miscalculated my finances and my tuition check bounced and I got kicked out of school, I went to the dean and pleaded my case just so I could get back in the next semester. That semester when I was out of school was the most challenging semester of my college career, because I had FREE TIME and that meant I could party with my friends.
One of the most difficult decisions I ever made after six months of partying and doing what I liked, was to go back to school and resume my previous schedule. That was damn hard.
To at least make a small attempt to get this back on track, the first step to becoming a millionaire, if you aren't born rich, or win the lottery, is to advance your station to the point that you no longer live hand-to-mouth and can take what little you have earned and invest it and manage it.
In short, once you make a decent living, spend less than you make and invest the difference.
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AD - The issue is that the programs to learn a trade also cost more.
The free programs, like JobCorp, are being cut.
When I started my job, if a kid wanted to turn their life around and get a trade, if they were below a certain income level they could go to JobCorp or join Americorp.
Now they can't.
That sucks.
Additionally, it isn't just that college is more expensive. It is that it is exponentially more expensive.
It has nearly tripled, in real dollars, over the last 30 years.
That is both 2 year and 4 year.
In 1980-81 it was $3,101
In 2010–11 18,497
@AD - While I largely agree with the sentiment of most of the post, picking up to move is exactly the problem people are having. The bubble bursting means you can't sell your house (if you have one) and move.
North Dakota has lots of jobs, but no housing. You end up spending as much to get a place to live as you earn. I has a cousin who tried it and said it wasn't worth it.
Texas I have heard is mostly part time work unless you have specific skill sets.
There are ways to get out of poverty. But if you are in poverty, you probably don't know them since the people who raised you didn't know them.
A CDL is not a tough thing to get. If you can get one of those, you can get a decent paying job in Texas. Once you have a said job, you look for a company that offers pay increases for relocating to North Dakota. A large majority of these companies will offer housing in North Dakota as well.
My supervisor has been in energy exploration for ten years. He just quit and joined a company that is paying him fifty an hour, probably going to get roughly 60-70 hours a week minimum.
Just in case the conversion isn't clear, $50/hr at 40 hrs/wk is roughly $100K/yr. add overtime and 60 hrs/wk and you are talking between $150 and $175K/yr.
That'll get a person out of the cycle of poverty pretty quick....
I haz a job.
This thread motivated me to talk with my daughter about her current struggles. She has a college degree, but she has had trouble finding work using her degree. She has a rather narrow set of career goals, and so far has been unable to make a living pursuing those goals.
The result is that she is working a lower paying job that does not require a college degree and is still living at home while she saves money to enter a program that she hopes will advance her career goals. At her current rate of savings and the windows of opportunity to get into the program, that means she won't be able to do so until February. So she's pretty discouraged. But she's still plugging away.
Her other career goal is to be a writer. So she spends a LOT of time writing. She has been interning at a magazine for a year now, unpaid, to get her name out there. She's written over a dozen articles for this magazine and is just now tendering her resignation since they are not in a financial position to offer her a full time job. Nevertheless, she has a significant portfolio of published work interviewing a number of famous Hollywood figures.
She is very much following the same sorts of things I did when I was her age. She works full time, saves her money and works a significant number of hours unpaid as an intern to get experience she needs. She doesn't have much of a social life, that is true, but she's determined to reach her goals and feels that she will have time for a social life once she's achieved at least the initial goals of a decent job in her chosen career.
The biggest difference between her and me is that she has higher student loan debt, but at the same time she has a place to live rent-free and access to a car and we pay her insurance and phone bills.
I keep telling her it took me seven years to graduate, while it took her five, so she's still ahead of my pace.
Many of her friends are discouraged and also work low-wage jobs outside of their degree choice. Even the one friend she has who snagged a job as a computer animator is discouraged due to layoffs and lack of promotions. None of them are spending even a fraction of the time my daughter spends on her "outside the job" activities to continue to achieve her goals. Mostly they work, then party and spend a whole lot of time socializing with their friends.
ciretose, things are different for her, but are they better or worse than I had them? Hard to say. She picked a degree path that I knew was going to be difficult to find a job in, but she was so determined that I supported her choice instead of begrudging it. Seeing how hard she is working to attain her goals, I am crossing my fingers for this February. If that works out, she's probably on her way and roughly two years ahead of my own pace. If not, it will be on to the next opportunity.
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So, I think the reason most people don't want to be a millionaire is that they don't want to put in the work.The question each of them must ask themselves is "is being a millionaire worth the work?"
Some of my fellow professionals have said yes, some have said no.
I would actually rephrase the question as "is being a millionaire worth the sacrifices ?"
Considering that
1) No amount of work or sacrifice GUARANTEES that you will end up a millionaire rather than a hobo
2) These sacrifices can include working more, but also saying bye bye to your hobbies, friends, family life (and sometimes family, such as spouse and children), and even personal ethics
I am not surprised that many would say NO.
So, I think the reason most people don't want to be a millionaire is that they don't want to put in the work.The question each of them must ask themselves is "is being a millionaire worth the work?"
Some of my fellow professionals have said yes, some have said no.
I would actually rephrase the question as "is being a millionaire worth the sacrifices ?"
Considering that
1) No amount of work or sacrifice GUARANTEES that you will end up a millionaire rather than a hobo
2) These sacrifices can include working more, but also saying bye bye to your hobbies, friends, family life (and sometimes family, such as spouse and children), and even personal ethics
I am not surprised that many would say NO.
At the risk of, once again, infuriating half of the population of these messageboards by posting a comment that suggests the path to wealth is generally a path of hard work, perseverance and sacrifice, I would also suggest that the sacrifice can be surprisingly small, if you have a decent enough job and are willing and able to defer gratification on certain things.
The average house in the Denver area is worth a bit more than a quarter of a million dollars. So if you manage over the course of your life to pay off a 30 year mortgage, you are 1/4 of the way there already.
If you donate 10% of your yearly income to an IRA or 401K that provides a decent rate of return, an income of $50K per year would mean socking away a bit more than $400 per month. That would generate a bit less than $250K at a modest 3% compounded interest rate. So between the house and the savings plan, you'd be halfway there.
Many jobs offer 401K matching, and 401K savings is generally tax-deferred, meaning that you save even more money by not paying as much tax.
$50K is pretty much the median income for the USA. So the 'average' person should be able to retire with at least $500K in assets if they simply save 10% in a tax-deferred plan (meaning actually cutting their income by 7% or so).
As I said above, the key is to get that "decent" job, and then to invest in yourself.
But if you can do that, then the "sacrifice" to gain decent wealth is not really that terrible. In my case that sacrifice has primarily meant that I live in a bit smaller house than I could technically afford and I only buy a new car every ten years or so. Otherwise I have actively pursued so many hobbies that it's silly, including golf, hunting, fishing, amateur astronomy, photography, gaming.... I certainly have not suffered much sacrifice in that regard.
A good friend of mine who makes quite a bit less than I do is very close to being a millionaire. He and his wife are quite frugal, to a fault in fact, but they live in a comparable house and drive comparable cars. They almost never eat out, rarely go to the movies and do not purchase the latest electronic gadgets (he still has a ten year old flip phone). So they have "sacrificed" compared to me, but they live quite comfortably in spite of their frugality.
The great secret of wealth-building is that it truly is not that hard. For many, many people it really is the difference between buying coffee at Starbucks, buying the latest smartphone, having the 42 inch TV, buying the largest house you qualify for, buying a new car every five years and living with slightly lesser versions of those things.
I will tell you one secret. I do a lot of shopping at stores that many people sneer at as "big box" stores. I save a lot of money buying food in bulk at Sams, and Walmart sells jeans for about 1/4 as much as The Gap.
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ciretose, things are different for her, but are they better or worse than I had them? Hard to say. She picked a degree path that I knew was going to be difficult to find a job in, but she was so determined that I supported her choice instead of begrudging it. Seeing how hard she is working to attain her goals, I am crossing my fingers for this February. If that works out, she's probably on her way and roughly two years ahead of my own pace. If not, it will be on to the next opportunity.
I have a history degree, so I started off making a bad choice :)
Speaking only for me, I went to college to be a writer, wasn't good enough and just "got a degree" on the 5 year plan. The plan was to become a teacher, but it was a half-assed plan based on not being able to get what I actually wanted.
When was in college I was working, and the last job I got was at a medical supply distribution company where I was working customer service on some very large accounts. Multi-Million dollar plus annual purchases with daily and in one case multiple times daily delivery. Jobs were easy to find in the late 90's and if I had stayed I would have been moved into a sales rep position that made ridiculous money when you factored in commission (Multi-million dollar accounts).
But...I hated it. I hated knowing how much we ripped off hospitals and patients, I hated shady dealings and...well...I just hated it. When I was closed to graduation I started looking for something I could do without hating myself all the time.
I saw an ad for an Americorp Job, went to the interview and it was a 10k pay-cut, losing all benefits and going from 40 hour a week at a 9 to 5 to 60 + hours a week, including every third night and every third weekend. Oh, and on the nights and weekends you worked, you were on call 24 hours with a cell phone you had to answer.
My boss at the medical supply company thought I was crazy. My parents thought I was crazy. My roommates just wanted rent...but since it was Americorp if I took it I could defer my loans while working for them, and get a 4500 dollar lump sum if I completed that could only be used for student loan (or further education) so when I didn't have to make loan payments, the huge pay cut was...manageable. And 4500 was a huge chunk of my total student loan.
I took the job and 12 years later I'm on my way to being a millionaire in a job I love.
But if I tried that now...well the Americorp Job no longer exists. Budget cuts. Temp to perm jobs have dried up to just being more or less temp jobs, so I would never have gotten that job in the first place.
My wife is a couple years younger than me, got her masters and tried to get a teaching job 6 years ago. With a masters, she was still turned down or wait listed. She finally got a job a week before school started and had to move from Florida to Maryland in 2 weeks. We were dating long distance at the time, and I had to fly down and drive a U-Haul 14 hours to teach in a really crappy school district.
My wife was an honor student with a masters degree and Special Ed certification and couldn't find a job in that market...which is more or less this market. 5 years before that, my crappy history degree got me through the door at much better options.
You are able to take care of your daughter I suspect better than either of our parents were able to take care of us. So she can pursue things we realistically couldn't have if we were her age in this economy with these debts.
My frustration is with the fact that we aren't investing in opportunities we used to have still being available.
Just in case the conversion isn't clear, $50/hr at 40 hrs/wk is roughly $100K/yr. add overtime and 60 hrs/wk and you are talking between $150 and $175K/yr.
That'll get a person out of the cycle of poverty pretty quick....
Overtime?
I havent had a job that paid overtime since 1987. Note thats EIGHTY seven. So thats no overtime available for twenty six years. It certainly would have made me richer to be paid it.Its all time in lieu , and you rarely get to take that either, and often lose it.
(i work in IT, in the UK.... Or at least, did before my latest redundancy)
I do feel for the generation thats just coming out of University ..the jobs and opportunities just arent there for them.
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At the risk of, once again, infuriating half of the population of these messageboards by posting a comment that suggests the path to wealth is generally a path of hard work, perseverance and sacrifice, I would also suggest that the sacrifice can be surprisingly small, if you have a decent enough job and are willing and able to defer gratification on certain things.
The average house in the Denver area is worth a bit more than a quarter of a million dollars. So if you manage over the course of your life to pay off a 30 year mortgage, you are 1/4 of the way there already.
If you donate 10% of your yearly income to an IRA or 401K that provides a decent rate of return, an income of $50K per year would mean socking away a bit more than $400 per month. That would generate a bit less than $250K at a modest 3% compounded interest rate. So between the house and the savings plan, you'd be halfway there.
Many jobs offer 401K matching, and 401K savings is generally tax-deferred, meaning that you save even more money by not paying as much tax.
$50K is pretty much the median income for the USA. So the 'average' person should be able to retire with at least $500K in assets if they simply save 10% in a tax-deferred plan (meaning actually cutting their income by 7% or so).
As I said above, the key is to get that "decent" job, and then to invest in yourself.
But if you can do that, then the "sacrifice" to gain decent wealth is not really that terrible. In my case that sacrifice has primarily meant that I live in a bit smaller house than I could technically afford and I only buy a new car every ten years or so. Otherwise I have actively pursued so many hobbies that it's silly, including golf, hunting, fishing, amateur astronomy, photography, gaming.... I certainly have not suffered much sacrifice in that regard.
A good friend of mine who makes quite a bit less than I do is very close to being a millionaire. He and his wife are quite frugal, to a fault in fact, but they live in a comparable house and drive comparable cars. They almost never eat out, rarely go to the movies and do not purchase the latest electronic gadgets (he still has a ten year old flip phone). So they have "sacrificed" compared to me, but they live quite comfortably in spite of their frugality.
The great secret of wealth-building is that it truly is not that hard. For many, many people it really is the difference between buying coffee at Starbucks, buying the latest smartphone, having the 42 inch TV, buying the largest house you qualify for, buying a new car every five years and living with slightly lesser versions of those things.
I will tell you one secret. I do a lot of shopping at stores that many people sneer at as "big box" stores. I save a lot of money buying food in bulk at Sams, and Walmart sells jeans for about 1/4 as much as The Gap.
AD, I mean no disrespect to your demonstration. But truly, in the end, I am left wondering what people will do when they actually end up millionaires this way. Will they even enjoy the fruits of their labor by spending this hard earned money or will they keep on saving to get even richer ? And to which end ?
This reminds me of a song by a french comedian whose title was "Be lazy, aka advice to a newborn", and especially one of the lines was "Seeing the example of my father, who realized on the day of his funerals that he was the richest person in the whole graveyard."
AD, I mean no disrespect to your demonstration. But truly, in the end, I am left wondering what people will do when they actually end up millionaires this way. Will they even enjoy the fruits of their labor by spending this hard earned money or will they keep on saving to get even richer ? And to which end ?
This reminds me of a song by a french comedian whose title was "Be lazy, aka advice to a newborn", and especially one of the lines was "Seeing the example of my father, who realized on the day of his funerals that he was the richest person in the whole graveyard."
Raven, I sometimes kick myself hard in the arse for not having saved more and sacrificed more. Then I sometimes kick myself hard in the arse for not having "lived" more. Particularly I kick myself for not having bought a nice boat sometime in the last 20 years. I own a canoe with a trolling motor, which gets me out on the lake, but it's not the same as a 20 foot fishing/skiing boat with a 100hp motor... I could certainly "afford" one if I wanted to, it's just more debt, right?
Because I kick myself both ways, I figure I probably lived my life somewhere along the median line of "live for the day" and "prepare for the future." Is that a good thing? I dunno. I'll probably have more regrets about living more when I'm older, but then again, I'll have done a lot of things when I was young and able that I would otherwise not have done.
I do know some people who are living their lives so focused on retirement that I wonder what the point is myself. But I suppose I'll see the point if I'm 80 years old, scraping by on social security and they are vacationing in Rome at the same time.
To me the real issue of saving vs spending has been all about our kids. We have tried to give them all the advantages I lacked growing up, and that is expensive. The biggest problem we've had in managing our finances more "responsibly" has been dealing with our autistic son. Our insurance has only covered the tiniest fraction of our medical and therapy expenses, so we've had to spend thousands and thousands of dollars out of our own pockets each year just to keep him able to function in society.
But to try to directly answer your question, there is a tremendous sense of peace and security that comes from knowing that your retirement is taken care of. I'm not quite there yet, but I get closer every year. To some people that sense of peace and security is the single most important thing in their lives, so in their minds the sacrifices are very well worth it.
Interestingly I went to see the movie "Rush" last night. One of the key themes in the movie was very much "live for the day" vs "reduce every possible risk". In the end, the race driver who lived the more prudent and risk-averse life admitted that he envied the "live for the day" character's devil-may-care lifestyle.
To me though, it really is all about my kids. My father passed away with just a bit more in his savings than it took to bury him, and as he was on his death bed, he expressed great remorse over this fact, and it clearly caused him pain that some of his children were still suffering financially and he was not going to leave them anything other than his car or a few thousand dollars each.
I want to do a bit more for my kids.
ciretose, I'm sure our relating of our lives growing up is boring the crap out of most of these readers, but just for comparison purposes...
I was a child of the 60s and 70s. I read science fiction voraciously. As such I was determined to be an astronaut. So most of my desire to "go to college" had absolutely nothing to do with planning for an eventual retirement and making a million dollars. Nope, it was entirely about fame, fortune and making history. I was going to be the first human being on Mars.
So while my brothers were buying, taking and selling drugs to make a few extra bucks, I was looking at the requirements to become an astronaut and I decided there were two key factors, and those were a highly technical college degree and a stint as a test pilot. So I decided to get a degree in physics and join the air force as a pilot. Most of my efforts from the time I was thirteen years old were driven by that desire. I started busting my butt to get my grades up and started investigating any programs or opportunities to get a leg up in the Air Force.
I graduated High School with honors and did very well on my SAT and ACT tests, so I was able to get into a good college. Unfortunately I didn't have ANY FRIGGIN' MONEY at all, and while my dad had moved away on me, I still had to apply for financial aid, scholarships and grants based on my dad's income, and had to do so for a couple of years until I was able to apply based on my own income. So even though he didn't make a lot of money (he had retired by then) it was still enough that I was only able to qualify for lesser grants or scholarships. In fact I received a half-tuition scholarship to an Ivy league school, but still couldn't afford to go there. So I ended up going to a state college and working my way through school.
Finally, when I was on the verge of graduating with a degree in physics, I entered the Air Force pilot training program. I was doing very well in that until the Air Force Surgeon General's office did an exhaustive medical survey and discovered that I had a medical procedure when I was TWO FRIGGIN' YEARS OLD that washed me out of the program. I appealed the decision all the way to the Air Force Surgeon General himself, but lost the case and was sent packing.
So there I was, in my last semester at college and all of my dreams and aspirations had come crashing down on me like a ton of bricks. I can't remember ever being so devastated in my life, except when we got the autism diagnosis on our son.
So I had to figure out what to do with my career aspirations in ruins. For a while I just fiddled around. I graduated and the bank I was working as a teller offered me a management trainee position because that's what they did for any employee who graduated college while working there. So I went into that program and as part of it, I had to sit for a while with the computer programmers. The manager trainee program at the time had the trainee work in every major bank department to learn how the bank works. Well, since I had been programming for years in my computer science classes, and I had also been programming for fun on my own, I was able to not merely sit with the computer programmers, but actually take on some programming assignments. The director of the department asked me if I'd like to become a full time programmer, and since nothing else at the bank appealed to me, I agreed. That's how I got my first full time salaried position.
That was very much in the heady heyday of the blossoming field of personal computers. At work I was programming the mainframe, but at home I was programming a PC. I joined some PC programmer clubs and societies and was making a name for myself locally as "the Mac programmer" in the area when a company contacted me to come on board and create an entirely new Macintosh software division within the company.
A few years later I was running the entire company's software development, but it was an entrepreneurial company that was not adapting well to the Internet's challenges, so I went looking for a "more stable" programming/managing career, (because I had a wife and kids to take care of now) and ended up at a major telecommunications company where I eventually took over their online software development efforts.
I had a natural knack for software development, and as a manager my technical skills allowed me to gain the respect and trust of engineers, so I've had a pretty successful run in technical management ever since.
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I'm very grateful to not have kids to worry about. My own finances would be much more stressful otherwise.
Kids change more than your financial priorities. But if you don't have kids, well, you don't have kids. And kids are great. Really, they are. I am glad I have a couple.
I will say that I agree with Bill Cosby when he says that you don't qualify as a full-on parent if you only have one kid. Because if you come home from work and the lamp is busted and your only child points and says "he did it" you've got other problems...
In short, once you make a decent living, spend less than you make and invest the difference.
Agreed.
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Kids change more than your financial priorities. But if you don't have kids, well, you don't have kids. And kids are great. Really, they are. I am glad I have a couple.
My wife and I enjoy small doses. Going and playing around for a few hours with the knowledge we get to hand them back at the end and go home to our quiet house.
Kids change more than your financial priorities. But if you don't have kids, well, you don't have kids. And kids are great. Really, they are. I am glad I have a couple.My wife and I enjoy small doses. Going and playing around for a few hours with the knowledge we get to hand them back at the end and go home to our quiet house.
That's what grandkids are for.
That's what grandkids are for.Yeah, but you have to get through the 30 years between.
Heh. Depends. In some cases I've seen relatives make the turn in fifteen years or so. My 60 year old sister in law is already a great-grandmother.
I don't yet have any grandkids... But that day will come.
Have some cousins-in-law doing that. Don't approve, but we try to be supportive.
You know, it's interesting. I don't "approve" either, but the reality is that in spite of this branch of the family tending to have out of wedlock kids like clockwork, they are really great folks. They are on my wife's side of the family and all of them are successful middle class folks who are great fun to be around. I've come to decide that how kids are born really isn't an issue, it's how they are raised that matters. And these were raised right anyway. EDIT: Well, except for the out of wedlock kids thing anyway...
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@AD - As an aside, the requirements for enrollment in the military are actually way up from where they were.
Still not that high, but most branches aren't taking GED kids.
On the upside, you probably would have been able to go Ivy league now, as many of them have free tuition for low income kids.
So not all things are worse.
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Kids change more than your financial priorities. But if you don't have kids, well, you don't have kids. And kids are great. Really, they are. I am glad I have a couple.My wife and I enjoy small doses. Going and playing around for a few hours with the knowledge we get to hand them back at the end and go home to our quiet house.
It changes everything. I have zero regrets (my daughter is being pretty adorable right now actually) but if you ever need something to clarify what is and isn't important...kids fix that.
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If my wife and I had not decided to have kids, we'd definitely either be millionaires by now or else have a boatload of fancy stuff. It wasn't just having "kids" but also having a special needs kid whose condition isn't covered well by insurance. That meant my wife decided to stay home instead of pursuing her own career. In terms of "sacrifice" vs being rich, having kids was definitely the biggest factor in our situation.
But some things are more important than money. Kids would definitely be at the top of that list.
Since median household income is the more relevant statistic than individual income for living expenses, that's why I used it. That's also why it's the chief statistic that the US government tracks for economic purposes. It has become expected in today's America that a "household" frequently has more than one wage earner. I have no problem using the same technique that every economic tracking system I can find online uses for evaluating household income.
As far as my evil acts of shopping at Walmart is concerned Krensky, I certainly hope you aren't typing that message on an Apple computer or phone since Apple has been proven to exploit child workers. "Designed in California" leaves out "and assembled by tiny fingered Chinese children in brutal sweat shops for pennies per hour."
The idea that WalMart is any more evil than Google, Apple, Whole Foods or Chevrolet is laughably naive and ignorant. But if self-righteous indignation and misdirected moral preening makes you feel better about yourself, you go right ahead and do it. No skin off my nose man.
Krensky, another debate for another time or thread.
Economic models, analysis or policies that ignore what real people do in the real world are just fantasy economics. The world economic model is changing, I get that you don't like it. Oh well.
As I said, believe whatever makes you feel morally, intellectually or spiritually superior. I dont care..
I wonder how many rich people are there in the world, and how much money do they have...
I hereby name the winner of this thread: Grand Magus/Electric Wizard!!!
[Podium is drowned in cheers and huzzahs]
1) I got a conscience
2) did not win the lottery
3) There is not other way to become a millionaire for people with a conscience.
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If my wife and I had not decided to have kids, we'd definitely either be millionaires by now or else have a boatload of fancy stuff. It wasn't just having "kids" but also having a special needs kid whose condition isn't covered well by insurance. That meant my wife decided to stay home instead of pursuing her own career. In terms of "sacrifice" vs being rich, having kids was definitely the biggest factor in our situation.
But some things are more important than money. Kids would definitely be at the top of that list.
I am in exactly the same boat, brother. Me and the wife were pulling in 150k+ a year before we had kids. Our second, my son, was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum blah-blah. I quit my job (she makes considerably more than I did) to run him to therapies and to help iron out dietary issues (his GI tract was an absolute mess) and now my wife is our only income. People hear that she is making 100K a year and wonder why we live like we make 30-35K a year and nobody understands the extra cost that my son incurs for us. He breaks out from food allergies(corn, soy, most grains, a bunch of other stuff...50 in all) and gets "more autistic" if I feed him anything not organic so my food bill is at least twice what it should be.
He is doing great and is in a normal school environment with very little assistance but if I relax anything he starts to regress.I wouldn't trade him for the world but his issues sure do make for some tough challenges and choices.
Keep on truckin' bro. Being rich isn't the goal anyway, my wealth dwells within me and anyone that knows me see it.
Krensky, another debate for another time or thread.
Economic models, analysis or policies that ignore what real people do in the real world are just fantasy economics. The world economic model is changing, I get that you don't like it. Oh well.As I said, believe whatever makes you feel morally, intellectually or spiritually superior. I dont care..
Whereas what you believe is the truth? Nice.
Whereas what you believe is the truth? Nice.Krensky, another debate for another time or thread.
Economic models, analysis or policies that ignore what real people do in the real world are just fantasy economics. The world economic model is changing, I get that you don't like it. Oh well.As I said, believe whatever makes you feel morally, intellectually or spiritually superior. I dont care..
I'm not the one claiming moral superiority. I just buy stuff I need at the best price I can find. That appears to piss some people off.
If my wife and I had not decided to have kids, we'd definitely either be millionaires by now or else have a boatload of fancy stuff. It wasn't just having "kids" but also having a special needs kid whose condition isn't covered well by insurance. That meant my wife decided to stay home instead of pursuing her own career. In terms of "sacrifice" vs being rich, having kids was definitely the biggest factor in our situation.
But some things are more important than money. Kids would definitely be at the top of that list.
I am in exactly the same boat, brother. Me and the wife were pulling in 150k+ a year before we had kids. Our second, my son, was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum blah-blah. I quit my job (she makes considerably more than I did) to run him to therapies and to help iron out dietary issues (his GI tract was an absolute mess) and now my wife is our only income. People hear that she is making 100K a year and wonder why we live like we make 30-35K a year and nobody understands the extra cost that my son incurs for us. He breaks out from food allergies(corn, soy, most grains, a bunch of other stuff...50 in all) and gets "more autistic" if I feed him anything not organic so my food bill is at least twice what it should be.
He is doing great and is in a normal school environment with very little assistance but if I relax anything he starts to regress.
I wouldn't trade him for the world but his issues sure do make for some tough challenges and choices.
Keep on truckin' bro. Being rich isn't the goal anyway, my wealth dwells within me and anyone that knows me see it.
Healer, I hear you and sympathize more than you can know. I get a lot of questions from my peers at work about why I drive what I drive and live where I live with the salary I make. I can only say "autism is a rather expensive thing" so many times.
But please, for the sake of all that is holy dude, no matter how desperate you get, no matter how hard the road, please tell me you would never resort to shopping at Walmart!! I mean that would be the real tragedy.
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But please, for the sake of all that is holy dude, no matter how desperate you get, no matter how hard the road, please...
I do avoid Walmart 95% of the time. I don't get why people are all over it though...their prices are good but not really better than Kmart/Target. I usually do IKEA for furniture stuff and Target for households. I also do BJs (it's like a Costco if you don't have them in your area)...Fakey like buying toilet paper in bulk!. I drive a 5 year old Hyundai Accent and a 7 year old mini-van.
My wife's co-workers are rockin' BMW, Mercedes, Audi, etc...luckily she has no real materialism so it makes this whole thing workable.Autism fact. 50% of marraiges end in divorce, parents with an autistic child have a divorce rate of just over 80%. Autism can wreck a family, stay strong and fight being a statistic is my motto.
Good luck bro.
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It might be because I spend too much time playing RPGs.
I drive a 5 year old Hyundai Accent and a 7 year old mini-van.
I see your 5 year old Hyundai Accent and raise you a 10 year old Hyundai Sonata. ;)
Seriously, though, I've never understood the obsession with having a new card. I hope to get at least five more years out of mine...