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Yeah, right. Nobody is jealous of me retiring at 42 with millions.....
lol right, boo hoo, how dare you retire with millions and enjoy your day as you see fit instead of work a career that you kinda love but still wouldn't do it for free if you didn't need the money!!!!
Please come back to the rat race, we miss you! You're one of us, come back to the heard!
"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" Ozymandias -- Percy Shelley
Meanwhile, I can only speak for myself, but I certainly would not trade with you. I worked for as long as I could and relished every minute of it. Now I'm retired and relish every minute of that as well. Win-win. But of course that's just me.
What's your point dude? You did it your way, he did it his way! To most people work is just a means to an end. Most people don't live to work or find true passion in what they do but they do their work to survive. Retiring with millions doesn't eliminate this man's options, it only frees up his time even more so he can spend that much more time on his hobbies and past times.
the answer is everyone of us needs to do what we need to do to find a way . sitting back and floating like a cork in water to wherever you get pulled in life and accepting where you land is what cubby hole's people in dead end jobs.
most people are not motivated enough , creative enough or smart enough to cut their own path to being a bit more successful .
it happened to me in the 1970's being a professional drummer . i saw the handwriting on the wall .disco music was taking over venues and clubs and dee jays were coming on the scene .
i was going to be obsoleted . i didn't know anything but drumming .
i could have taken the easy path and rolled the dice and did nothing . i could just float from one gig to the next and hope they last . but hope without a plan is just a wish .
instead i thought long and hard about what i could do where i would not be easily obsoleted again ..
i did find a way and it gave me a 40 year career never being unemployed with good pay .
jobs have been leaving us ever since james watt invested the steam engine and we were mostly farmers .
what changed is how adaptive people want to be and the effort they want to put in to solving their problem .
as sam kinison said in his skit , don't send people in the desert food and aid . send them carts and wagons , so they can move where the food is , nothing grows in sand .
A cork drifting in water.....great analogy.
I agree you have to swim against the tide to get ahead. Always have.
I guess my problem with today’s environment is that you can “do all the right things”, but the currents change so abruptly these days, you can be left up the creek without a paddle anyways. It’s like being lucky enough to guess which way the jobs market is going to go is way more important than ever.
You saw the writing on the wall and switched to a career that lasted 40 years. You did the right thing and were rewarded. How likely is it that today’s young people having to read the tea leaves will be able to land in a career that lasts 40 years? Very unlikely, because there just aren’t going to be many careers lasting that long. They will have to read the tea leaves again....and again. Sooner or later, there will be a misstep.
I agree you have to swim against the tide to get ahead. Always have.
I guess my problem with today’s environment is that you can “do all the right things”, but the currents change so abruptly these days, you can be left up the creek without a paddle anyways. It’s like being lucky enough to guess which way the jobs market is going to go is way more important than ever.
You saw the writing on the wall and switched to a career that lasted 40 years. You did the right thing and were rewarded. How likely is it that today’s young people having to read the tea leaves will be able to land in a career that lasts 40 years? Very unlikely, because there just aren’t going to be many careers lasting that long. They will have to read the tea leaves again....and again. Sooner or later, there will be a misstep.
Good point, you can do all the right things, get the safe secure job, buy a home, save in a 401k and still be left behind nowadays. Our world is moving faster and faster then it use to thanks to technology and what works today may not work tomorrow.
Right you are again sooner or later there will be a misstep, success isn't just work 1 job your whole life lineal line going up at a 45 degree angel at time passes anymore, it's a crazy mother f-ing roller coaster ride now!! Coming from a 29 year old...
I agree you have to swim against the tide to get ahead. Always have.
I guess my problem with today’s environment is that you can “do all the right things”, but the currents change so abruptly these days, you can be left up the creek without a paddle anyways. It’s like being lucky enough to guess which way the jobs market is going to go is way more important than ever.
You saw the writing on the wall and switched to a career that lasted 40 years. You did the right thing and were rewarded. How likely is it that today’s young people having to read the tea leaves will be able to land in a career that lasts 40 years? Very unlikely, because there just aren’t going to be many careers lasting that long. They will have to read the tea leaves again....and again. Sooner or later, there will be a misstep.
the key to making your self not obsoleted is to change with the times evolutionary .you can't do much that will stay status quo for decades.you need to adapt . most of the time you are in the drivers seat and have to take the initiative to learn about where you want to migrate to using what you already have under your belt . just expanding it out a bit . .
it is just as true today as it was 40 years ago .
in my case i evolved from being an hvac tech which i ended up hating but i put a lot of time in to learning trouble shooting complex control systems on my own which i liked , so i migrated to a mall climate control system specialist . from there i went in to selling motor controls - to migrating in to factory automation and designing pump and fan control panels , since i already had the knowledge from other areas i was in . . eventually i became a motor control and variable frequency drive specialist .
it was a constant change to going to where others weren't. i had a high school diploma only .
but i grew up in a nyc project . it was never going to be an option for me to go back so i was driven to stay a head of the curve .
Last edited by mathjak107; 12-21-2017 at 09:45 AM..
today i have the opportunity to work and consult as much or as little as i want in retirement as there is still demand . so i teach controls to newbees at a distributorship 1 day a week .
i reinforce to them to never stop learning and watching for new opportunity where they already have the basics .
as new areas open up , hone the skills you have , add what you are missing to your knowledge base and give it a go .
I am as well -- just within the context of the important history that brought us to now. About 30% of mothers of young children are SAHM's today versus about 50% in 1967. The difference is those who have chosen to work today because they in fact have the option to do so. For those only marginally attached to a job, the costs of working are enough to dissuade them over those early child-rearing years. Many will however return to the workforce as soon as those needs have been addressed. Staying at home merely to eat chocolates while watching TV starts to lose its appeal after a while.
the answer is everyone of us needs to do what we need to do to find a way . sitting back and floating like a cork in water to wherever you get pulled in life and accepting where you land is what cubby hole's people in dead end jobs.
most people are not motivated enough , creative enough or smart enough to cut their own path to being a bit more successful .
it happened to me in the 1970's being a professional drummer . i saw the handwriting on the wall .disco music was taking over venues and clubs and dee jays were coming on the scene .
i was going to be obsoleted . i didn't know anything but drumming .
i could have taken the easy path and rolled the dice and did nothing . i could just float from one gig to the next and hope they last . but hope without a plan is just a wish .
instead i thought long and hard about what i could do where i would not be easily obsoleted again ..
i did find a way and it gave me a 40 year career never being unemployed with good pay .
jobs have been leaving us ever since james watt invested the steam engine and we were mostly farmers .
what changed is how adaptive people want to be and the effort they want to put in to solving their problem .
as sam kinison said in his skit , don't send people in the desert food and aid . send them carts and wagons , so they can move to where the food is , nothing grows in sand .
I was simply making a point about comparing jobs 50 years ago to today. Of course individuals have freedom of choice. This doesn't change my point about how the loss of manufacturing jobs and factory jobs and the lunch counters that supported them has led to a decline in the middle class.
you can make all the comparisons you want . we had just as many dead end jobs back then as now .
in every generation there were choices . in fact there may be better opportunity today because we have so many new growth areas where it is possible to come in on a lower level and work your way up to better positions .
it is all going to be individual choices and motivation at the end of the day .
we can all talk in straw man terms but what you don't know is how someone else in that situation would have handled it and their outcome
I know I am old, but trust me, people were not "making wagon wheels" 50 years ago, either.
The manufacturing jobs are what really hurt the middle class, and those have not been replaced, or they have been replaced with low paying service jobs. Here in NJ, Camden is the worst city, with extreme poverty and crime. There are few jobs in Camden, and the few that are there are fast food or service related jobs that do not pay well. The good jobs are often far away, in an area where many people do not have cars.
50 years ago however, Camden had Campbells' Soup, RCA, a Navy Yard employing overt ten thousand men. There were dozens of locally owned small businesses that thrived catering to all these workers. Now it is a ghost town, and all those jobs that allowed people to be self-sufficient and more importantly allowed local small business to flourish, are now replaced with a handful of fast-food restaurants paying min wage.
I work in a very rural poor area. 50 years ago, aside from the thriving farms and ranches, Dupont had a huge factory there, there were several Glass factories and other smaller manufacturing plants that paid people a living wage. None of these jobs have been replaced with any sort of equivalent jobs for people who want to work hard but don't have a degree or a specific skill set. These are the jobs whose loss has led to a steady decline in the American Dream and the middle class.
I witnessed similar growing up in Oakland CA... when the auto plants closed down, GE moved out, Safeway moved and the list continued for decades... then it was the machine shops and the final blow was the base closing...
Walked passed a lot of boarded up homes on my way to school... some were taken back for owed taxes and could be bought for $1 if you moved in for 5 years and made improvements... a new roof, paint, fixing the windows was often enough.
Fast forward to 2017 and those $1 homes now sell for 400K....
Just because it is down doesn't always mean it is down forever.
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