[caver]

Sounds like a lot of poor life choices.

[CGASMIA68]

“Sounds like a lot of poor life choices”

Use a broad brush a lot ?

[miss marmelstein]

Maybe. I can still have sympathy for them.

[buckalfa]

"Sounds like a lot of poor life choices."

That is the bottom line. Thanks to my wife, we own or home, have no debt, with a modest nest egg in the bank. She made prudent life choices which kept me out of the gutters. Still, the wanderlust of youth still tempts me into doing something stupid and winding up like the folks in the article.

[amihow]

Looks like a lot of poor life choices?

Good Lord. Where have you been?

I know of people like those described.

The poor choices were not theirs. They were those of the elite who bailed out the banks, etc. Remember???

[PIF]

Sometimes life choices are right, but other forces destroy the job/profession leaving the worker with nothing or near nothing to use to recover a decent life.

[patriot08]

But that's ok. Throw open the borders and let in the hoards of hostile invaders from Mexico and South America for us to support- and how about the millions of Muslim 'migrants' or 'refugees' ( actually COLONISTS) let into this country for us to support?

Read recently Muslims are on the verge of overtaking the Jewish in America population wise.

We are going to lose our country.

[GBA]

Sounds like a lot of poor life choices.

Maybe, maybe not. A person’s world can be entirely changed in a heartbeat, so it’s best not to take things for granted. Like many of life’s lessons, I had to learn this the hard way.

I was taken to the desert, so to speak, in 2008 and the hits just kept coming for a few years or so after that. It’s taken until 2017 for me to feel like I’m in a good place in life once again.

Now when I see human suffering of any kind it’s like the saying says, “There, but for the Grace of God, go I.”

Amen and Thank You, Jesus!

No matter what one is experiencing in life, every soul should keep praying and never stop being grateful to God, “even now”, that He has blessed you as He has.

Keep that spirit and you’ll pass all of life’s lessons and testing.

[HotHunt]

Exactly.

I am 70 years old and live more comfortably now than I did during my working careers and raising a family.

That's because I saved my money, didn't put it all in the gambling stock market, worked hard at whatever job I had to do and learned to not live beyond my means.

No big, expensive, fancy cars. No big, fancy extravagant houses. No fancy, expensive toys. Paced myself and my lifestyle, knowing I would need to live on some of my money in later life.

To your point about bad choices, the only former classmates of mine from high school in 1966 who are down on their luck nowadays, are those who wasted their money on drugs, drank heavily, partied their money away, wasted money every week on lottery tickets, and went on luxury vacations with nothing to show for it. Bad choices. Now they bitch that someone needs to help them. They couldn't even help themselves when they were able to.

If you didn't plan ahead, life's a bitch when you run out of options.

How did John Wayne put it? "Life's tough but it's even tougher if you're stupid."

[Garth Tater]

"Sounds like a lot of poor life choices."

There was a time when a workingman could save for retirement and then expect to live comfortably in his old age. If you had put half of your savings in a bank account making 2% and half of your savings in the stock market making somewhere around a 6% annual return you would have a blended 4% return on "safe" investments and every dollar that you saved when you were 16 would become 8 dollars by the time you were seventy. But now, with the Fed's ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) and with banks testing the waters on negative interest rates and with inflation running somewhere around 3% per year (and don't forget to factor in an occasional stock market crash or a short bout of high inflation) every dollar you save when you are 16 will be worth only 25 cents when you are seventy. In other words - saving for your old age in the traditional manner doesn't work. That life was stolen from us. To say that people arriving in their old age with insufficient assets to live comfortably is the result of "a lot of poor life choices" are the words of a lucky man and a man that does not know what is happening in the world.

[ottbmare]

Sounds like a lot of poor life choices.

Not necessarily. Prudent people can sometimes have their careful plans and wise choices derailed by catastrophe. A child's cancer. An auto accident. A hurricane. Death, divorce, disaster. I sometimes think that God permits hardship to some of us who are feeling comfortable and secure.

I do notice that many Freepers are very critical of people who end up in sad circumstances. Sometimes, it's true, bad choices play a role. But it often appears that Freepers are very defensive about these events; they seem to believe their planning, their work, their decisions guarantee against falling into pitiable conditions. And that's just not true.