Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I think people don't like to think about these things, because it makes it obvious how much is actually out of their control. The myth that everyone has bought in is that if only you work hard, you will get all you want. Work is a key ingredient. But a lot of the other key ingredients are out of your control and people don't like that.
“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but at the end there it is.” Winston Churchill.
I think people don't like to think about these things, because it makes it obvious how much is actually out of their control. The myth that everyone has bought in is that if only you work hard, you will get all you want. Work is a key ingredient. But a lot of the other key ingredients are out of your control and people don't like that.
People like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, etc. all talk about luck being a part to where they got to today (I know Steve is dead), yes they worked hard, but like you mentioned, the little things here and there, can make all the difference.
I was reading another thread and it got me thinking. I am doing well in life. I went to a good school, got a good job and so did my wife. We save a pretty good amount and if things continue that well, we will be in a great spot.
However, all of this can collapse in a moment. If I get some chronic disease that prevents me from working, get in a car accident etc. our savings will get nuked. Maybe not in one month. Not in a year. But eventually with the way things are in America you will not be able to pay medical bills or afford insurance.
So basically, I feel that people here overstate the value of discipline and underestimate luck. Yes it is very important, but one unlucky thing can obliterate everything you have worked for.
Unless you are fabulously wealthy, a serious illness pretty much guarantees you are wrecked financially.
The assumption here seems to be that if you haven’t saved enough it is because you drove a BMW, went to Hawaii 8 times a year, and bought a 6k sq ft house.
I feel that’s pretty sanctimonius.
Well, hold on.
There are things one can do to safeguard one's health. Have a proper diet. Don't do unsafe things. Exercise. Mind you, that certainly doesn't protect you from everything. But there's an enormous amount of difference between a 50-year-old who has taken care of himself and a 50-year-old who overeats, drinks too much, never sees a doctor, and smokes two packs a day. If the first person gets sick, that's misfortune. If the second person gets sick, they've practically invited it.
The other thing? When it comes to chronic illnesses, there are disability insurance policies out there. Long-term care insurance policies. They are advertised all the time. Ever seen the Aflac duck? If so, you're aware of the options that are available.
That is not to say those bad things can't happen to even the most prudent, and you seem to think that we're all standing around casting aspersions on those that suffer horrible fates. Far from it. My assistant lived the most straight-and-narrow life imaginable and died of cancer. Her husband, a prince of a guy, also has cancer and is holding on by a thread. But they also insured themselves to the hilt.
On to the notion of luck. Luck is winning the lottery. Luck is not a ready explanation of financial success. Seneca once said that luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Someone in an earlier post mentioned how Bill Gates might have credited luck to his massive fortune. Well, he certainly did catch a break by being in the right place at the right time. But if Bill Gates had not founded a company, persisted, and worked his butt off, do you think he would have ever been able to do anything with the opportunities that fell in his lap? And if that opportunity had not come his way, I'm pretty sure he would have found a different way to make his pile.
Hey, I'm not Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. I'm not an uber-millionaire. But a large amount of what I have in life is earned. I steadily invested my spare cash money in my twenties, even when I was having to work an extra job to make ends meet. I started three separate businesses and often worked around the clock. My wife, no slouch herself, busted it at her job, kept working when everybody else had gone home for the evening and is now the CFO of a sizable company with shares of stock. We've bought houses far less expensive than the mortgage underwriters said we could afford, we buy base model cars and drive them until the wheels fall off, and we live according to a very conservative budget that basically assumes that we live off one income and bank the rest. We don't go out and buy the latest and greatest, and we're not slaves to our appetites. And we have disability policies in case either falls ill. We taught our children to be self-sufficient and to earn their own way in the world.
So don't chalk up our current financial state to luck. It's insulting. If anything, we've managed to get to this point despite some reverses.
Back to the question of illness. To simply say, "Oh, well, I just had bad luck," is to ignore the fairly affordable and prevalent ways to safeguard your financial health in the event of a catastrophic illness.
Last edited by MinivanDriver; 03-09-2018 at 09:47 AM..
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Seneca (Roman philosopher)
I do believe that's true insofar as what you can control. Of course, your health falls partly into that category. You can choose to eat well, exercise, etc. and that's generally going to impact your overall health and help prevent certain diseases and ailments, but we all know people who do all the right things and yet still get cancer, or have a massive stroke, or have some other genetic condition that was just part of their family history/genetic lottery. So like most things in life, there is a gray area. As they say, all you can do is prepare for the future but plan for the worst. I'd rather do that than be cast into financial ruin and leave my family in a terrible situation.
As if on que, a boomer regales us with a story of their lone struggle of personal greatness.
Pshaw. I'm just pointing out the idea that one's position in life is mostly the result of luck is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Worried about devastating diseases, like the OP? Call your insurance agent.
No, you can't guard against every eventuality, but you sure as heck can mitigate risk.
Pshaw. I'm just pointing out the idea that one's position in life is mostly the result of luck is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Worried about devastating diseases, like the OP? Call your insurance agent.
No, you can't guard against every eventuality, but you sure as heck can mitigate risk.
It is the dumbest thing you have ever heard because it doesn't fit the American Success (tm) narrative, which makes us feel exceptional. It is always nicer to be better, more disciplined and smarter than other people than luckier.
Pshaw. I'm just pointing out the idea that one's position in life is mostly the result of luck is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Worried about devastating diseases, like the OP? Call your insurance agent.
No, you can't guard against every eventuality, but you sure as heck can mitigate risk.
I didn’t see a single person attribute success mostly to luck. I said hard work is the largest factor, but it’s far from the only one. Anyone who can’t admit that is an arrogant person with very narrow life experience. It’s very very frequent when the people who have the largest advantages are the most unwilling or unable to see them. I’m not saying that’s you, but I’ve seen it over and over in the bootstrapper crowd.
What if your kids had been born to parents who didn’t care about education? Or who were addicted to drugs? Instead of having proper nutrition growing up and being forced to do homework, they came to an empty house? Maybe they were around people their entire life who didn’t have positive attitudes and etiquette that taught them how to behave and that would allow them to get good jobs when they’re older?
What if my dad didn’t put in 60 hour weeks? What if my mom wasn’t a loving and caring stay at home Mom who forced me to do homework. Encourage me. Read to me as a youth. Would I be a CPA today?
What if your wife’s company had been acquired and gutted by a larger company? What if venture capital fund loaded it up with debt and made her stocks useless? What if someone took debt to start their own company and 3 weeks later the largest employer in their town closed up operations? Maybe they’re an excellent entrepreneur, but it still doesn’t matter. Or that business suddenly became obsolete from a totally unforeseen breakthrough in technology developed in a lab 1,500 miles away?
Two people can work just as hard or harder and end up with a **** outcome. Take the standard older worker who grew up working for a large Fortune 500 company as a blue collar worker. They get a pension and had stability working at a large employer in a small town. A differerent worker so happened to work for a company like say, Enron, and had their stock and pension crushed because executives and fraud ran rampant. Is that their fault? Or one of them was caught in a corporate merger that “synergized” the operations? The new owners are cut throat and slash the pension. Was one person any harder working than the other? Or like workers today...we don’t even have a pension at all. Costing us hundreds of thousands.
For example, in my personal situation my family growing up lost our home. We were in a car with no place to go. I was a child. I had no control over it what so ever. That effected my ability to focus in high school. It affected where I went to college. It drove me to work harder, but what if it didn’t? What if my personality was to shrink from challenge and to become discouraged? Yet, there will be bootsrapper kids who have their parents pay for their college education and say “I did it on my own”. They will look you dead in the eye and say I stood on my feet and went and got a good job!!!!
And even my situation could have been worse. Far worse.
Life is grey. Just because you did the right things doesn’t mean you can’t get slammed. And not everyone starts on the same footing with the same advantages even if they’re blind to them.
Last edited by Thatsright19; 03-09-2018 at 11:09 AM..
Pshaw. I'm just pointing out the idea that one's position in life is mostly the result of luck is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Worried about devastating diseases, like the OP? Call your insurance agent.
No, you can't guard against every eventuality, but you sure as heck can mitigate risk.
Your story is pretty typical of a high earner. As any story a lot of what matters is the POV from which it is told and what the narrator chooses to emphasize.
Here is my brief life story told in two different ways. One is the way you tell yours and one is what is actually more realistic.
I was born in a poor country. After a massive economic crisis, my family moved to the US with $5k. We lived in a motel and my dad worked at McDonalds. My mom taught at a very challenging HS and came home crying every day. I worked my butt off and got accepted to a top 20 university with a scholarship and financial aid. While there, I worked menial jobs to supplement my income. I worked my butt off, while my classmates were partying. I got an internship at a top consulting firm. Worked my butt off. Got a full-time offer. Started dating my wife. Graduated with Honors because I worked my butt off while my classmates were partying. Crushed it at my job, because I worked harder than anybody. Switched to finance. Continued to be a top former. Sacrificed. Never took more than 7 days of vacation through all of my 20s. Because I worked so hard, I kept getting promoted and didn’t have to pay for business school. My wife saved meticulously and bought a house in San Francisco, which has appreciated 40% since where we bought. My friends instead chose to get on ski leases and drive BMWs while we drove a Honda. If you work hard, you too can achieve what I did.
And here is actually how I actually view my incredibly lucky life.
I was born in a poor country to a very educated family. My mom taught me English when I was 6. After a massive crisis, we literally won the lottery – got a green card through the diversity lottery that Trump now wants to shut down. When we came to America, my mom was lucky to get a teaching job that was highly paid because she is a PhD and had benefits and a pension. My dad worked at McDonalds only for 2 months and then got a repairman job at a hospital that had benefits.
I had no idea about American universities and was planning on going to my local state school until I happened to watch a football game that involved my future college. I looked up the school and decided to apply. Because of my good study habits developed by my smart, hands-on parents that I didn’t choose and awesome genetics that I also didn’t choose, school was pretty easy for me. I put in half the effort as my friends and got better outcomes. As a result, I had time to get jobs without sacrificing grades.
I got my prestigious internship after cracking a joke. I was the last interviewee for the day and they later told me they had already decided to hire somebody else. However, my joke, which was a direct result of the specific way a question was asked resulted in me getting the internship. My credentials were just as good as the other people and personality is essentially what it came down to. My personality showed itself because of a fortuitous way that question was asked. I would answered it completely differently if it had been asked differently and probably wouldn’t have gotten the job.
I graduated one year before the finance industry collapsed. People who graduated over the next 3 years had a much harder time getting those jobs. They are still under earning compared to me. I literally was born at a the right time.
In my job, I happened to be placed on a team run by a very powerful person within my company who made sure I got noticed. That was pure luck. My friend who was just as smart and more hardworking than me worked for this total dud of a senior person. When layoffs started, his whole team got blown out because his senior person sucked and had no power. My senior person was awesome and powerful. I got a raise and got promoted.
And that house?? I was lucky to have worked long enough and have savings to take advantage of the market. My colleagues who work with me now and are the age I was when I bought have zero chance of buying. Market has ripped. OH, and guess what. I lowered my interest rate by 50 bps by running into my loan officer at a sandwich shop. he had switched banks and told me about the rates. I wasn't even looking!!! Bam, tens of thousands of savings over the life of my loan, because I was getting a late lunch that day.
So you see, how you tell the story matters a lot. People like you love to emphasize all the things they did right. It makes them feel good about themselves. Superior to others. You are disciplined, hard-working, a saver, a sacrificer, a planner. The others are lazy, entitled, spendthrifts, didn’t buy insurance. You DESERVE what you got because you EARNED it. I am not saying you didn’t. You did. And so did I. But I acknowledge all the lucky breaks I got and you minimize them. You MADE YOUR OWN LUCK.
I did a lot of things right. I did all of my homework, never missed a deadline, got great test scores, saved a lot of money, worked hard. But there are a lot of people who do all of these things and never get ahead. My friend who got laid off had his career set back 2 years only because he was placed on a crappy team. I had my career super-charged because I was placed on a good team. My parents were smart and hands-on. I had nothing to do with that.
Last edited by HappyinCali; 03-09-2018 at 12:27 PM..
^^^^^^^That was probably one of the best posts I have read on CD in the last 11 years I been on here!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
