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Location: Formerly Pleasanton Ca, now in Marietta Ga
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ocnjgirl
I would dispute several of these (most don't apply to the vast majority of people) but most especially this last. My grandmother was able to leave several hundred thousand dollars and a home to her 3 kids. But my mom is now on Medicaid, every cent of it spent on health issues as she aged, and then on assisted living when she could no longer remain at home. My brother and I both lived in one bedroom, second floor apartments and worked full time (where in days past, one job was enough to allow a wife to stay at home and have a home, so there was a means to take care of the elderly). My generation is the first in our family who will not get any inheritance at all.
40 years ago, college was much more affordable than it was then, but today I know only a handful of people who can pay for their kid's college.
Of course there are things that are better now, health care, information availability, etc., but when I see the young people at my job I can't believe how much they are up against, and I feel badly for them. The difference in a first job in therapy when I graduated 20 years ago and now is night and day in terms of so many things. I paid $5.00 a pay for my health insurance. My 20-something co-worker, the one $100,000 in student debt, told me yesterday her share is almost $250 a pay (so $500 a month). I got $1500 in continuing ed money from my employer, today it's been eliminated, even though it's a requirement for our profession. So we pay for it all ourselves. I just feel today people are getting squeezed in ways that just didn't happen when I was 30.
I don't know that I would dispute several of these, maybe question a few.
I think the route of college, get a good job isn't the guaranteed path it once was. College is more expensive but I think people need to be educated on how much that debt will really cost and impact them. Then determine if going indebt is worth it. The job market is unstable. Not that jobs aren't there, but job longevity is risky.
I know people that have gone on traditional routes that follow a lot of those things that stealth listed.
My friend wants her son to go to college. I keep telling her to look at different things involving entrepreneurship for him. Also look at how society, taxes, and economic factors will be in the future.
Sometimes even a trade might be the better choice.
To make it , you definitely need to think a little out of the box nowadays.
I don't know that I would dispute several of these, maybe question a few.
I think the route of college, get a good job isn't the guaranteed path it once was. College is more expensive but I think people need to be educated on how much that debt will really cost and impact them. Then determine if going indebt is worth it. The job market is unstable. Not that jobs aren't there, but job longevity is risky.
I know people that have gone on traditional routes that follow a lot of those things that stealth listed.
My friend wants her son to go to college. I keep telling her to look at different things involving entrepreneurship for him. Also look at how society, taxes, and economic factors will be in the future.
Sometimes even a trade might be the better choice.
To make it , you definitely need to think a little out of the box nowadays.
I don’t have kids, but if I did, I’d only encourage college if they had the stuff to pursue professional education (ie, doctor, top law, top mba) or could get accepted to a top 10 school.
I was not able to go to college (for free) at age 15, (which my kids had that option, as do many thousands in USA and abroad). I was not even able to go to college until I bought a house for my parents, and got them raised...(another issue...)
Online access to information allows early learning / access to data for career choices
You can write / sell software at an early age (before driving...)
You can network worldwide with other innovators (I know several pre age 30 who have international companies)
You can hire others (in foreign countries) to do your tasks / responsibilities at FAR less cost that doing stuff yourself
Software can be implemented and youthful learners have a HUGE advantage to train others / apply knowledge as skilled users (The rest of us are too busy working!, little time to learn software / productivity enhancements)
Inventors can get stuff made overseas and 3D printed that earlier generations had to BUILD themselves.
Money is MUCH easier to get <5% (18% when I was needing it)
Crowdfunding / angel investors were unheard of 30 yrs ago.
So many MORE ways to fund college today (should you need to bother to go)
Parents and grandparents are so much more wealthy / providing funding to college students as compared to 40 yrs ago.
Many advantages today.. (But... I will concede that USA Higher EDU is quite the scam (WAY overpriced and under performed)).. Profs and schools, milking America of it's $$ and talent, as a way to fund their own cushy jobs. (BTW: I teach in higher U on occasion... sorry I didn't get to do that as a career!!! I would have been REALLY relaxed / comfortable / healthy!
If you have an IQ of 145+ and an enterprising spirit you can do all that. I have to wonder what opportunities exist for someone of a little below average ability.
You don't need an IQ of 145 to do much of anything except maybe extremely advanced scientific research, unless you're talking about one of those skewed online IQ tests where everyone magically has a 125 IQ. I've taken an IQ test and scored 135, I literally think I missed 2 questions as I recall. I don't think the thing would even give a score above 150, it was at that point "off the charts" by their standards.
You usually just need a particular high aptitude and interest and a little bit or a lot of luck in your chosen field to be highly successful at it. I don't think most of the wealthy people I know are geniuses, but they are very hard working people, who were willing to do anything it took to succeed (not in evil ways, I just mean working weekends, long days, always learning, etc.), and ultimately wouldn't take no for an answer when it came to their businesses.
So many good responses in here. I wouldn't even know where to begin so I'll add on others' comments.
Quote:
Originally Posted by s1alker
Yeah, more and more people are being forced to relocate to quite high COL areas in search of work. Many of them don't make it and become part of the growing homeless population.
Mostly gone are the days where good paying work in a cheap small town or rural place was widely available.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ocnjgirl
To me the two main things that make it much harder to be 30 now than in my day (56 now) is student debt, and the cost of health care and health insurance. When I graduated college in my mid-30's, I had student debt that was about $150 a month and paid it off by 45. The new grads where I work (therapy) are in massive debt. The OT owes over $100,000, and the speech therapist $200,000. When I started working, my portion of my health insurance was $5.00 a pay, now at my company it's over $200 a pay, and salaries have not risen by much in those years (my per diem pay rate has been the same for about 10 years). Even my niece, who is a teacher, pays almost $1000 for her share of health insurance for her, her husband and 2 kids.
Costs of living are a serious issue. If good paying work in a small towns is not available, more people move to cities. Not everyone can have a good job in a city though. Try working at a grocery store in San Francisco. You will be homeless soon. The only upside to smaller towns in lower costs of living.
Larger commercial banks have generally customer unfriendly policies. Try smaller, locally owned banks or regional banks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ranredd
I agree on the hometown thing. I can be 30minutes or so from home, but home itself doesn't make sense. Unless its San Diego. I'd never leave San Diego if I grew up there / lived there.
San Diego has some really good points. If you can get a decent job, there are some great recreational opportunities. It has an ideal climate for outdoor exercise. However, San Diego is part of the high cost of living, high tax state that is California. California's governmental policies are unfriendly to businesses and also unfriendly to the worker. So there's reason to leave to San Diego.
Quote:
Originally Posted by reneeh63
You do all that moving around when you're just out of college and can move with the smallest Uhaul truck because you only have the stuff that you had in your dorm room. You move before you are married and certainly before you have kids. You get to a "good place" and THEN when you feel rooted with a decent job and lifestyle you find a relationship and get married.
Hey - there's no women in those small towns anyway! You don't want to live there because there's nothing to do, anyway! So get out, get a good job, and THEN get a life. I don't get why people who hate their hometowns move back there after college and expect things to be great for them. I KNEW while I was in high school that I wouldn't be sticking around.
I think it is a better life path if it is at all feasible to make it in your own hometown. For that to occur, a lot has to go correctly. Many children move a couple of times or more between birth and high school graduation. What is their hometown? Are they rooted anywhere? For someone who moves around a lot from ages 0-18, there's really no incentive to live one's adult life in a hometown.
It's difficult to date and/or have sustainable relationships is towns with a population of less than 100,000. The only people I've known to have ever had successful relationships in an area of less than 100,000 made it work with a high school sweetheart, or they attended a smaller college in a smaller town, and made it work with someone from their college.
Quote:
Originally Posted by concept_fusion
The never married statistic is pretty shocking. Complete change in society.
There's a pretty dysfunctional and toxic dynamic that is guiding the way the sexes interact with each other in the mating marketplace. It doesn't really benefit either sex. On the surface, the second poster's quote about relationships depending on the people in them is true in a very narrow sense. In the broader sense, in a decaying culture that doesn't provide a healthy ecosystem for romantic relationships as a whole, it isn't true. Expecting relationships to survive in this decaying culture is like putting plant life out in the middle of the Arizona desert. Only plants adapted to survive a harsh desert climate can survive. Most plant life can't survive the Arizona desert.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stockwiz
Religious values that allowed beta men to have loyal wives are gone so what you have now are branch swingers that use provider males for resources before cheating on them and taking them to the cleaners while going to screw around with the bad boys. Marriage for "good men" is risky without a prenup as women are genetically wired to want bad men (or as they call it "fun") and they have a lot of legal power.
I'm 37, single, with around $500k laying around. Living the peaceful life... I've accepted my situation that the whole fairy tale life with a loyal wife and stable family isn't happening. I've come to embrace it.
Unfortunately, most men are beta. It is extremely difficult to move up to the alpha/sigma male mode, which is the mode a male needs to be successful in this "Arizona desert" mating wasteland.
I have often wondered, why work a lousy job in a big city? I mean in all honesty here. Is it for the hope of some magical down the road opportunity? If my only job opportunities were low wage or minimum wage work why wouldn’t I move to a small town with cheap rent, maybe even get a roommate there, and save up my money while going to night classes for some skill that will help me land a better job. Then maybe later when I’m more skilled and educated, I move to the larger city, no? Like I don’t get the incentive of why anyone would live in SF unless they’re a tech worker or otherwise making 6 figures. We have a family friend who is SFPD and he makes very good money. But why on earth if I was uneducated and poor would I stay in such an expensive city rather than just moving? Minimum way is not much lower if any in rural OR for instance just up the road. Yet cost of living would be 5-10x less. I must be missing something. Don’t say family or friends, poverty isn’t worth being close to friends or family - we have FaceTime and email and Facebook lol
If you have an IQ of 145+ and an enterprising spirit you can do all that. I have to wonder what opportunities exist for someone of a little below average ability.
The answer is that opportunities diminish rapidly as a person falls outside the upper 10%, or even 5% in terms of ability. I can tell you that working in a profession like law, that some law firms pride themselves on only hiring from the top 10% of a law school class. Its a dynamic that I've seen spread to virtually every field. My wife works in public health and it used to be that a nursing degree and maybe a master's degree in health education was a dynamite combination. No longer, what she has seen is that nurses are no longer desirable because of salary issues and thirty or more applicants with a health education degree will apply for every opening at the health department. Employers seek out the very best and believe they are entitled it even for entry level positions that pay inadequately. If they can't get their definition of "the best" many will put hiring on hold indefinitely. Its one reason why employment opportunities for entry level workers are so limited in America.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JonathanLB
You don't need an IQ of 145 to do much of anything except maybe extremely advanced scientific research, unless you're talking about one of those skewed online IQ tests where everyone magically has a 125 IQ. I've taken an IQ test and scored 135, I literally think I missed 2 questions as I recall. I don't think the thing would even give a score above 150, it was at that point "off the charts" by their standards.
You usually just need a particular high aptitude and interest and a little bit or a lot of luck in your chosen field to be highly successful at it. I don't think most of the wealthy people I know are geniuses, but they are very hard working people, who were willing to do anything it took to succeed (not in evil ways, I just mean working weekends, long days, always learning, etc.), and ultimately wouldn't take no for an answer when it came to their businesses.
I'm not sure you read the post that was being responded too. That person has a particularly rose-colored view of opportunities in today's world. How many high school age kids can write software? How many fifteen year olds can attend college? That's what was asserted. The "145 IQ" comment was a reply to that. High aptitude, in a particular field, can substitute for not being a genius. However, that is only if the aptitude is in the right field. What if your high aptitude is in music? You play better than almost all the kids in the high school band, but you're not good enough to be a professional musician because only the truly gifted and exceptional person can do that? There will be always some people who thrive in any system. Some thrived under communism in the USSR. However, I think I would argue a system is a failure if it does not provide decent opportunities for the average person. Decent does not mean foreign travel and a brand new home. It does mean being able to afford food, shelter, medical care and transportation. That is what is missing for so many entry level workers today.
Some people really do not want to hear that things are tough for younger people in America. They have been fed a narrative for years about how America is the greatest country in the world and that all the other countries are "socialistic" and hate freedom. Than, for some reason, they are successful. They cannot accept any argument that there is a problem that needs to be fixed. In their mind, the problem is always with the individual seeking work. He is "too lazy", "too demanding", "too unimaginative" etc. The problem could never, in their minds, be with the system itself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JonathanLB
I have often wondered, why work a lousy job in a big city? I mean in all honesty here. Is it for the hope of some magical down the road opportunity? If my only job opportunities were low wage or minimum wage work why wouldn’t I move to a small town with cheap rent, maybe even get a roommate there, and save up my money while going to night classes for some skill that will help me land a better job. Then maybe later when I’m more skilled and educated, I move to the larger city, no? Like I don’t get the incentive of why anyone would live in SF unless they’re a tech worker or otherwise making 6 figures. We have a family friend who is SFPD and he makes very good money. But why on earth if I was uneducated and poor would I stay in such an expensive city rather than just moving? Minimum way is not much lower if any in rural OR for instance just up the road. Yet cost of living would be 5-10x less. I must be missing something. Don’t say family or friends, poverty isn’t worth being close to friends or family - we have FaceTime and email and Facebook lol
Totally reasonable questions. However, what this kind of analysis overlooks is that there are costs in terms of moving. What if you take a job in a small town and than get laid off from your low wage job in six months? It maybe difficult to afford even the expense of relocating. Many people are reluctant to leave an area because of family issues. Maybe Mom is sick and Dad has died and she needs support. Maybe the person gets by partly by being invited over on weekends for family dinners. I'm not saying you are wrong here. I'm just saying it is a complex picture and its a picture that was not a big issue for many people forty years ago.
I have often wondered, why work a lousy job in a big city?
I agree with you, there really isn't that much of an obvious reason to work a lousy job in a high COL big city. In terms of economics, you get more for your money in a low cost area if you work a low wage job. The different between working in the warehouse at Walmart or as a cashier at McDonald's is minimal when comparing a high cost city like Los Angeles to a smaller town like Barstow, CA just 2 hours away.
From a social standpoint, men have a worse deal out there than women. Big cities have ferocious dating environments, where a guy working a low end job has a tall order for seducing women if he's an honest and hard working guy. If he's a deadbeat with a spotty work history, he'll probably generate more interest from women. In the modern mating environment, women are most attracted to extremely high status men and irrationally confident low life deadbeats. The guys in the middle struggle. For females, if you are working a lousy job, it doesn't much matter so long as you can find a way to attract a man of reasonably high status. However, females working low end jobs in big cities often end up with irrationally confident deadbeat men as mates, which doesn't help them from an economic standpoint or a quality of life standpoint.
You do all that moving around when you're just out of college and can move with the smallest Uhaul truck because you only have the stuff that you had in your dorm room. You move before you are married and certainly before you have kids. You get to a "good place" and THEN when you feel rooted with a decent job and lifestyle you find a relationship and get married.
Hey - there's no women in those small towns anyway! You don't want to live there because there's nothing to do, anyway! So get out, get a good job, and THEN get a life. I don't get why people who hate their hometowns move back there after college and expect things to be great for them. I KNEW while I was in high school that I wouldn't be sticking around.
I don't know about "no women," but there certainly isn't much night life. Just a few bars. Could be 10 miles to the nearest Starbucks. I know a guy who accepted a job in a rural area. Making good money, but bored. Goes into major city on weekends he doesnt have to work.
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