Posted on 09/02/2007 12:24:41 PM PDT by wagglebee
“Life is a competition. You compete with what IS today. Not with what WAS yesterday.”
Life is not a competition. Once you learn to be happy with what we have than to be angry about what others have you can start being happy. Since you (and I) will never be as rich as Bill Gates we will never have more than everyone else. If you have enough to be comfortable and take care of your needs and wants (not those that your neighbors are pursuing) then you can spend the rest of your time doing what makes YOU happy, rather than trying to impress others. That is the path to happiness - IMHO
You remind me of an uncle of mine. Educated above and beyond. He knew the answer to darn near every question I ever asked him but when it came to actual investing, the average waitress knew more than he did.
Yet, he fully understood finances and how the various aspects of our economy worked. He knew which companies were financially secure, ie good investments but he hadn’t invested a miserable 10 grand in his lifetime. If he had, I am sure that he would have taken an interest in making more money than he was paid at the university and become a multimillionaire.
Maybe because his brother was wealthy he knew that he would never be wanting. I don’t know.
I don’t care what I have. I’d be happy with a tent and a place of work that values my skills if it was only me. But I don’t want to be alone. I want a family. I’m the last of my line. The family I have is old and soon for the grave. Soon I will be all there is. If I’m to get a family(and I think time has run out on that chance), I need more wealth than what I myself consider bare minimum. Women have greater needs than men in terms of comforts. Children have even more needs(or I should say women with children up their expected level of living). The tough old ladies like my grandmothers don’t exist anymore. The newer generations of women need more stuff or they get crabby and leave.
I been there, done it, know from experience. Older gens don’t understand this fact, I know. But that’s the way it is now days.
My wife and I are raising 4 children on a graduate student’s income - and she is staying home with the children. Good women are out there - you just have to look in the right places like someone else posted. You just have to find one who cares more about her values than about “keeping up with everyone else”.
What branch of engineering is your degree in? I am surprised you are having such difficulty finding suitable employment. If your degree is mechanical, civil, or electrical you should investigate the mining industry.
Structural.
I’ve been trying to find work in a nuclear powerplant lately. No takers. I can’t do a job where I have to stare at blueprints 12 hours a day or run calcs over and over. I tried that. No can do. I’d love to do something in the midle east...iraq or whatever. But you need years of specific experience for that, apparently. I’m single and no attachments of any kind. But I’ve never had so much as a request for a face to face interview.
I don't know but that seems to be the top item on their shopping lists. Medicaid patients ask me for medicine samples because they "can't afford" a THREE dollar copay, but have plenty of $ for booze and smokes and cell phones and manicures and tattoos.
When you say a grad student’s income, you mean the income you get from having a master’s or higher degree, right? You don’t mean your wife stays home and you go to school on an assistantship, do you?
I can’t do a job where I have to stare at blueprints 12 hours a day or run calcs over and over.
Have you considered becoming self-employed? If you lived a year off of your savings you must be somewhat thrifty.
Just a thought.
I guess it depends on what you consider your “Priorities...”
;-)
You’re right. I have three healthy kids- all on the skinny side. My teen boys eat a lot, too. My secret is homemade food and a sit down supper with whomever is home, every night. Sure, every one’s not there every night, but most nights most of us are there. The kids who eat on the run are still eating homemade leftovers.
I'm not trying to make light of your situation, but I'm single, don't own my own house and I only have ONE (old)car. I also don't have AC. We didn't have it growing up in Ohio in the '70s. Midwest summers can be frickin' hot, too. I must disagree that you think you have to compare yourself with what wealthy/poor is compared to other Americans in 2007. If we had in 1976 what the "poor" have now I would have been considered upper middle class. And we we're pretty average. You sound really down on yourself. What do you NOT have materially that you really want or need? I have to be honest, you are way better off than my mom is; she works full time as a medical assistant. But she isn't needy. Sure she could use a nicer apartment, but she has pretty much everything else she needs.
Or because of shoddy money management.
Kinda like when Angelina Jolie went to Thailand and was “shocked” by the poverty. I still ask, how the freaking heck do you not know that there poverty of that level in the world? How damn insulated from the real world do you have to be to be that unaware?
“Poor” as defined by liberals is someone who doesn’t have whatever possessions he or she WANTS.
Another key point: A significant percentage of the “poor” are that way by nature and there’s nothing you can do to change it. Which Rockefeller said if you divided up all the wealth in the nation and distributed it evenly among the population, within a few years the same people would be rich and the same people would be poor? He was right.
MM (in TX)
I would go so far as to say that Americans are not poor at all compared to what I have seen in my travels and reading threads like this give the impression that Americans have in fact become fat, lazy and spoiled.
At this point I am a PhD student. In the past I’ve made much more and in the future I hope to do so as well. But we’ve “taken a vow of poverty” for 4 years to get this accomplished.
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