Where do people get the money? (Tampa: credit card, homes, unemployment)

[Florida Vince]

I have an Associates degree from 1993 in mechanical engineering and never really put it to use. I ended up working in the civil field (land surveying) for 12 years then had an opportunity to jump into the telecommunication line of work in 2005 as an independent contractor.

I was making @ $2,300 -$3,000 per 40 hr week within a year at the time, but after a few years of it the work (and heat) was getting harder and harder on my body, so I took a field supervisor position making @ $80K per year with 7% yearly increases. My wife has no degree and works in the dental field making @ $60K yearly. She has excelled in her position, been there for 15 years and is a great wife and mother to our 3 kids.

As our salaries grew over the years, our expenses didn't follow. We have always lived below our means, trimmed our expenses, saved and invested as much as possible. Even with 3 kids, we were saving more than other couples we knew with no kids and similar salaries. As our friends were partying it up for years and years, we were laying low and now it has caught up with them. We are now the ones who are enjoying our lives and looking to retire early while they are foreclosing on homes and going into bankruptcy.

My point is that only you limit yourself in life, wondering how everyone in life is doing better than you when the answer is only one word - determination. We spend so much of our time saying "Why not me...?" when that time could be used to better yourself - but our culture seems to think that they are entitled to everything without having to work for it.

My reply to the OP would be that we used to be the "Why me?" type too. Once we stopped wasting time wondering where everyone was getting their $$$ from, we started to make it happen for ourselves. We are now ages 38 and 40 and have been together for nearly 25 years with 3 young children. We have one Associates degree between us but make a combined $160K+ yearly, with yearly increases of @ 12%.

Yes, I know there are others out there making considerably more, but we're not trying to keep up with the neighbors. Besides, once they default on things, we are there to buy them for pennies on the dollar!

[BucFan]

Originally Posted by Spring Hillian

I dont know how anyone makes a conclusion without data. I think they call that "a hunch"

There will be outliers like Vince's situation (Associates' Degree), but the graph I provide is actual information collected by the Census Bureau reflecting income and unemployment versus levels of education. Clearly the graph shows that the higher education he achieve, the more likely you'll be employed and the higher your income.

[Spring Hillian]

Great story. Before determination you need ambition. As your have learned, it depends on the individual, not the state they live in.


If you are stocking shelves in Chicago or stocking shelves in
Orlando, your life won't be too much different. However, living it here is going to be so much better.

Originally Posted by Florida Vince

I have an Associates degree from 1993 in mechanical engineering and never really put it to use. I ended up working in the civil field (land surveying) for 10 years then had an opportunity to jump into the telecommunication line of work in 2004 as an independent contractor.

I was making @ $2,300 -$3,000 per 40 hr week within a year at the time, but after a few years of it the work (and heat) was getting harder and harder on my body, so I took a field supervisor position making @ $80K per year with yearly 7% increases. My wife has no degree and works in the dental field making @ $60k yearly. She has excelled in her position, been there for 15 years and is a great wife and mother to our 3 kids.

As our salaries grew over the years, our expenses didn't follow. We have always lived below our means, trimmed our expenses, saved and invested as much as possible. Even with 3 kids, we were saving more than other couples we knew with no kids and similar salaries. As our friends were partying it up for years and years, we were laying low and now it has caught up with them. We are now the ones who are enjoying our lives and looking to retire early while they are foreclosing on homes and going into bankruptcy.

My point is that only you limit yourself in life, wondering how everyone in life is doing better than you when the answer is only one word - determination. We spend so much of our time saying "Why not me...?" when that time could be used to better yourself - but our culture seems to think that they are entitled to everything without having to work for it.

My reply to the OP would be that we used to be the "Why me?" type too. Once we stopped wasting time wondering where everyone was getting their $$$ from, we started to make it happen for ourselves. We are now ages 38 and 40 and have been together for nearly 25 years with 3 young children. We have one Associates degree between us but make a combined $150K yearly, with yearly increases of @ 12%.

Yes, I know there are others out there making considerably more, but we're not trying to keep up with the neighbors. Besides, once they default on things, we are there to buy them for pennies on the dollar!

[The Villages Guy]

Originally Posted by BucFan

There will be outliers

I love how many times people claim anyone doing well here or liking it here is an outlier. I think I have read that response to the last 15 people who have said they are doing well here or enjoy it here.

So if you hate it here or are doing poorly here, you are normal. If you like it here or are doing well here, you are an outlier.

[BucFan]

Originally Posted by PriusH8r

I love how many times people claim anyone doing well here or liking it here is an outlier. I think I have read that response to the last 15 people who have said they are doing well here or enjoy it here.

So if you hate it here or are doing poorly here, you are normal. If you like it here or are doing well here, you are an outlier.

Way to take the content of a thread out of context. The outlier was the gentleman and his wife who attained very little education (Associates Degree and High School education) but still earned a significant income.

Try to keep up.

[The Villages Guy]

Originally Posted by BucFan

Way to take the content of a thread out of context. The outlier was the gentleman and his wife who attained very little education (Associates Degree and High School education) but still earned a significant income.

I know what the context was. We are outliers too. And a lot of people we know here are outliers as well.

[mrviking]

So judging from the ten pages of answers, we now know who lives in the majority of middle class(plus) homes in Florida.
Retired people as well as outliers. Everyone else must live in the trailer parks or section 8 homes and or apartments.

[BucFan]

Originally Posted by mrviking

So judging from the ten pages of answers, we now know who lives in the majority of middle class(plus) homes in Florida.
Retired people as well as outliers. Everyone else must live in the trailer parks or section 8 homes and or apartments.

You forgot people with education.

[Pragmaticus]

Originally Posted by bavariantransplant

If you use a graph to help you through life you will always be stuck in the median.

When I say wake up and be successful (work, home, etc), if you run to a graph, you have no clue what I am talking about.

You were just showed how education level is negatively correlated with unemployment percentage.

What exactly is your point? Are you disputing that fact?

[Florida Vince]

I agree with the ambition reply. Combine that with determination and guidance and anyone could attain the "American Dream", educated or not. I believe that people tend to use things (family dynamic, environment, race, bad luck ...) or statistics like whats shown in the previous post to justify their lack of ambition. For whats its worth, I think that we would have become successful (our own definition of it) no matter what state we lived in or what career fields we ended up exploring.

I have always believed that people put a person with a paper degree on a higher pedestal than someone who is financially educated without the degree. How many people do you know with good salaries (say $75K+), advanced degrees (bachelors, masters ...) or specialized positions (engineers, physicians) that are living on the edge of BK and have no significant retirement or savings accounts? I know a few and where they live at or the economy is not the reason for their troubles.

The reasons we have done so well with a lower level degree is that 1) we've always worked hard and pressed forward 2) we never got ourselves into debt early on with expensive college tuitions and 3) we've always lived below our means, saved, invested and spent less than we earned (basically were financially educated from early on).

Quick story - a few years back we were looking for a house. The realtor was a person who was a friend of a friend and seemed like a normal person. After getting to know her, she would put her personal life out there for everyone to see.

She would talk about the bad economy, the bad housing market and how she and her husband were talking about filing for bankruptcy due to the lack of income from being a realtor, even though through the boom she made a pretty good income ($100K+ yearly).

We were looking at some homes from Viera Builders, a Duda owned company (major ranchers, farmers and landholders in FL and across the US), who had their beginnings as humble farmers and ranchers many, many years ago and are now worth hundreds of millions of $$$.

Her response when looking at their models was "Why would you want to buy a house from those stupid, uneducated farmers?" We immediately released her from representing us as she clearly had no grasp of her own situation and could never have had our best interests in mind.

After all, the "stupid farmers" were doing quite well in the bad economy and the guy with an Associates degree was going to put some bread on her table while she was getting ready to file for BK. Lol.