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Maybe you meant to say that but wrote something else! Anyway,while it does greatly increase the chances, there's absolutely no surety that it will/does. Ending up in a comfortable retirement is multi-factorial and depends on many inputs....luck being one of the factors!
Some times you make your own luck.
Awhile back there was a thread on housing costs in retirement. I stated how low mine were and how inexpensive it was to live here as long as you paid cash and had no mortgage. Some posters said "but some people were renters and did not have a home to sell and use that money to buy there." That was a choice they made.
We are mostly older. But in some threads people say they don't have a pension from a time that pensions were commonplace. They could have worked in a place with a pension but chose not to. My doing a job I was not that fond of is forgotten the first of every month.
Getting married to an idiot and losing half your stuff was a choice.
Thinking of cars as more than a tool to get from point A to point B is a choice.
Keeping up with the Jones' is a choice. Haven't we all read The Millionaire Next Door by now.
There are times things happen beyond your control. People get sick or injured. Disasters happen. But honestly what percentage of the population are affected by those?
Most people who have a nice retirement didn't get there by luck, they got there by hard work. That's how I got there.
If by hard work you mean diligent at cutting costs and saving all you can, then yes. If hard work means physical labor, no, plenty of hard working low wage earners out there don't have a nice retirement.
A guy from "back home" just posted a picture of him and his buddies from the late 80's and in the conversation online, they decided it was summer of 1988. These guys are all a few years older than me. The picture shows they were hanging out in the parking lot of the local Hardee's back home.
During the summer of 1988, I was working in the Netherlands starting up a galvanizing line. We worked 12 hours a day with every third weekend off. That was after the military and college.
If you think that I got there by luck, you'd be sadly mistaken. Delta Airlines took me there.
Location: Formerly Pleasanton Ca, now in Marietta Ga
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I know people that may be in a bad way. Retirement age without a Penney to their name. They will have social security in a few years. When their job offered a pension match they turned it down wanting the money in their pockets instead.
If by hard work you mean diligent at cutting costs and saving all you can, then yes. If hard work means physical labor, no, plenty of hard working low wage earners out there don't have a nice retirement.
Hard work starts early. Perhaps if between the ages of 6 and 22 they had been hard workers at what they were supposed to be doing (school) then they would not have had to work a demanding physical labor job that did not provide a decent retirement.
If by hard work you mean diligent at cutting costs and saving all you can, then yes. If hard work means physical labor, no, plenty of hard working low wage earners out there don't have a nice retirement.
By working hard, I mean working a lot. Overtime at my civilian job and being in the Air National Guard as a second job. Unlike the traditional one weekend a month and two weeks a year people associate with the Guard, as aircrew I had to participate much more than that. We never cut costs or had a budget because it simply wasn't needed.
That's about as much guessing & speculating as I've ever seen in one post. So not sure where you're going with this or what or why you're asking?
Thanks for the compliment!
Not "going anywhere" with it....just bored and speculating 'cause I knew zero about retirement until I came to this forum, so wondered if this was "in the ballpark". I see I was right, and maybe even low on my estimate.
I'm "asking" because it's CD and this is what we do here. LOL.
I think it's "OK" to wonder about one's relatives. Like my other BIL who is a retired firefighter and part of the pension package bankrupting my ole stomping grounds---CA.
Have you spent much time in and around Birmingham in the last few years? Maybe they just like to be able to walk to the best restaurant in the country.
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So not sure where you're going with this or what or why you're asking?
