No! People get married to obviously incompatible people for stupid reasons all the time. I see it everyday in my friends. This is not bad luck - it’s yet another poor choice!
Thoughts on retirement savings in the US
- Thread starter ATex7239
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So you "worked" to meet your wife? I'm curious how that works. I need to know how to "work" harder to meet a wife.
Seems to me nearly everyone I know who is married, basically somehow randomly met their spouse and "random" = "luck."
OFFS…sure there’s luck none of us were born in Ethiopia but boo ****ing hoo…maybe your life is what it is because you believe bad luck is why your life sucks and not your poor decision making. Just a thought…
It's the long time frame that works in your favor. I actually bought just before the market fell so I was under water for several years but I didn't dump the properties when they were under water, just waited it out. Didn't have to dump them because the rents covered the expenses. Had bad tenants too, probably done over a dozen evictions over the years not to mention the several tenants that left on their own so I didn't have to do evictions. Now the market has just gone nuts in the last 5-6 years where I've bought. Is that luck or business acumen that tells me to hold on because I know it's cyclical and will recover in the long run. All my gains now could evaporate in the next few years as interest rates go up. But I doubt it as they're not really building anything new where I'm at now.
And if I didn’t meet her and I didn’t meet another compatible person then instead of marrying just anyone I wouldn’t get married at all and the kicker is I’d be even wealthier!
While I agree there are terrible choices involved in marriage, it is also true in a huge % of cases that divorces occur b/c of various external uncontrollable or unpredictable events and no amount of "work" can resolve those. I know many divorced people who claim their spouses just changed - politically, sexual preference, emotionally, etc. after many years of marriage. Or people who had their spouse die from an accident or illness.
I think you might try to demonstrate a little bit of humility in the fact that you are, frankly, in at least a 50/50 situation or in a minority situation where you are apparently happily married and very successful. Friend, that's not predicated or the entire result of your work ethic. That's a lot of divine lucky intervention. Deny it if you like, but I'm done repeating myself.
Um, not particularly impressive b/c nearly 1/2 of that is principle and over 20 years to "save" $16,000 is not going to make any real world difference whatsoever for most people. And, FYI, that would be eaten up in the last 1 year of our current runaway inflation from bad government policies. IOW, you make sacrifices and work hard for 20 years and 1 moron in government eats up 20 years of savings.
How about this…you keep moping about your life and your bad luck and I’ll keep living my amazing happy life with my good decision making and we’ll see how it all ends up? You’re literally the person with the miserable failed life lecturing the person with the amazing happy life when you should just **** and listen to people who figured it out. Which, amazingly enough, was the entire point of my posts - do what successful people do! Instead, you want to argue that the successful people play no part in their success. How’s that working for you so far?
Marriage is generally one of the best paths to financial security, as it turns out. You have division of labor and generally splitting costs. IOW, the biggest expense is the house, which you're dividing between two people working together donating time, money, energy, resources, etc.
As a life long bachelor who did not "work hard enough to meet the right spouse," I can assure you if I don't do the shopping, or the cooking, or the painting, or the laundry, etc. it does not get done. I do everything, run business, work, shop, laundry, housework, home improvements, lawn care, auto maintenance, earn all the money to pay all the bills (housing easily the largest), etc. There are not enough hours in the day for 1 person to do it all. But a division of labor and costs and time, is a massive savings for married people.
You make your own luck. Yes, part of it is making good choices. I drove the same car I had in college for 3 years after I graduated. It had over 100k at the time which was a lot back then. College was much cheaper back then and I worked my way through it, at the time, that particular college had lots of people who worked their way through it. I guess I was lucky enough to teach myself how to type and be interested enough in computers that I could get temp jobs at the time that paid 3x what minimum wage did at the time. I don't think you can do today. Not saying it's 0% luck, but it's not 100% either like you make it out to be.
No need for your personal attacks or for you to be a jack*** here. You didn't "figure out" anything. You went to a party by luck, and met a woman you hit it off with, and she didn't cheat on you or steal your money or lie to you, and you got married, and it has SO FAR worked out b/c she didn't get hit by a train or die from a bee sting or snake bite or get cancer and die. About 99% of your life success, is in fact, luck.
"Do what successful people do..." Okay.
Tell me, how to I "work hard" to meet my wife who is going to be an excellent loyal person. Me, and the rest of the world, would really like to know the secret of "hard work" to meet your spouse.
I bought a beautiful house in a great area. The government screwed it up and I lost money.
I invested in solid companies, but the government screwed that up with the scam-demic and I lost a mountain of money when the market collapsed and I got out so I didn't lose everything, only for market manipulators to scam the entire stock market.
How to I "work hard" to overcome destitute single parent poverty that I could not escape until my 20s?
This is like talking to someone who won the scratch off lottery about their work ethic made them rich and happy.
My wife doesn’t work and if I wasn’t married I wouldn’t have kids. I’d literally have hundreds of thousands more dollars.
Differences.
I was so poor, I did not have a car until my last year of college, when I got a pile of garbage for $300 which was all the money I had in the world. It literally lasted until it died, 2 years after college. So I had the car during the literal last 3 years of its existence before it rusted thru and was a total loss. I worked all thru college, and every dime was spent on survival. I worked every holiday, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, all the breaks, all summers, nearly every day of the week, when all of my peers where having fun.
Posers pretend they know what poverty is, but it's easy to spot the differences. A 19 year old cannot "work his way out of poverty." If you can, you are not truly in poverty. You are in pretend poverty. Someone is paying your way, and you're working for your entertainment, pizza, and beer money.
I worked so I could survive, eat, buy basic clothing, use the phone, etc.
So, when you come home from your 2 businesses that you successfully run, you do the laundry, vacuuming, you do the grocery shopping, you do the cooking, the dishes, you manage the household, you do all the household filings, the housework, do or schedule the repairs, the yardwork...?
You are a delusional whiner who doesn’t want to take responsibility for your poor choices.
Meet people, be honest about their faults and your compatibility - do not get married unless they are compatible.
Diversify your investments so anyone company going down isn’t a hit. Don’t ****ing sell in a down market. Invest in index mutual funds - no one lost all their money but you!
There…fixed all your problems but again you made dumb decisions.
It's not impressive because you fail to understand the math involved and your math is off. The default example giving is $50 for 20 years at 7%. S&P 500 has returned more than 7% over 20 years. I like to use this calculator:
https://dqydj.com/sp-500-periodic-reinvestment-calculator-dividends/
If you do the $50 example, over 20 years, average rate of return is 11.8% and your principle is 12k not 16k and you end up with 44.7k not 26k in the example with just 7%.
And just keep in mind, inflation is 6.8%, S&P 500 is at 27.58% year to date so investing is still outpacing inflation for now.
I do a fair bit of house work, yes. It ain’t all that difficult. If I wasn’t married I’d hire a cleaner and even I can go grocery shopping. FWIW…my wife doesn’t do much of that either - she has an easy life.
Ok you win. I only paid 2k for my car when it had 100k, but it lasted 5 years, included 3 years past college. Blew the head gasket so I ended up getting another car after that. I didn't have to work as much as you, maybe because I was "lucky" enough to make 3x minimum wage as a typist/word processor at the time and did regular office work in college. But that was because I taught myself how to type and that was purely luck, I met a guy at a summer job that I had and he could do 80 wpm, I thought that was pretty cool and learned how to type myself and got up to about 100 wpm. Maybe that's skill and not luck? Or just lucky that I have 10 fingers that work fine?
@CharlesInCharge it sounds like you have had numerous hurdles to deal with you in your life. I wish you luck and keep on keeping on.
In my case, I will agree that I had luck. That luck was being in Silicon Valley.
I had plenty of chances in my life and turned my back on every one of them.
I started drinking regularly at 13 and had destroyed my mind, body and spirit by 22. Years of homlessness.
By 29 I was a broken man. Many friends had done joint time, died, became wheelchair bound from accidents. All tied to alcohol and drugs.
I started back at night school one more time. Cut back on the stuff and a friend got me a minimum wage job in the shipping and receiving department of his company. I lost that job due to cutbacks but they liked me and sent me to another job where I made $5 an hour.
Somehow I stayed in school; sometimes failing sometimes doing great. Took some computer programming lessons along with business classes.
One day I asked "Who runs the computer dept and where is it?" I went over and introduced myself, long ponytail, scruffy clothes and all.
The next thing I know I was being offered like $7 an hour to work grave, do backups, data entry and distribute reports. Did this for years while continuing school in the mornings.
At 33 I got yet another DUI, even though I was living better than I had in many years. I was so low, so defeated, so done.
Among other things, the judge sent me to 2 meetings of AA.
A few years later I bought a cheap condo with the $5,500 I saved up. 10% loan. Incredible. Impossible dream.
Long story short, I ended up in a growing SEMI company writing custom business software for operations, corporate forecast and more.
The executive staff declared my work mission critical and gave me golden handcuffs. I got to meet and work with some of the leaders in the Valley.
I believe if I lived anywhere else I would likely been relagated to a rougher life due to my actions, mistakes, life choices and alcoholism.
I tell people, if you can't make it in Silicon Valley, with this boundless opportunity and schools, you can't make it anywhere.
I never wanted to pay rent again as long as I lived. I drove and fixed used Hondas and Toyota pickups. I maxed out 401K and took advantage of stock purchase programs. No vacations. I also helped my parents on weekends as they dealt with health and other issues.
Am I lucky? You bet I am. Left to my own devices I should have been dead a long time ago.
In my case, I will agree that I had luck. That luck was being in Silicon Valley.
I had plenty of chances in my life and turned my back on every one of them.
I started drinking regularly at 13 and had destroyed my mind, body and spirit by 22. Years of homlessness.
By 29 I was a broken man. Many friends had done joint time, died, became wheelchair bound from accidents. All tied to alcohol and drugs.
I started back at night school one more time. Cut back on the stuff and a friend got me a minimum wage job in the shipping and receiving department of his company. I lost that job due to cutbacks but they liked me and sent me to another job where I made $5 an hour.
Somehow I stayed in school; sometimes failing sometimes doing great. Took some computer programming lessons along with business classes.
One day I asked "Who runs the computer dept and where is it?" I went over and introduced myself, long ponytail, scruffy clothes and all.
The next thing I know I was being offered like $7 an hour to work grave, do backups, data entry and distribute reports. Did this for years while continuing school in the mornings.
At 33 I got yet another DUI, even though I was living better than I had in many years. I was so low, so defeated, so done.
Among other things, the judge sent me to 2 meetings of AA.
A few years later I bought a cheap condo with the $5,500 I saved up. 10% loan. Incredible. Impossible dream.
Long story short, I ended up in a growing SEMI company writing custom business software for operations, corporate forecast and more.
The executive staff declared my work mission critical and gave me golden handcuffs. I got to meet and work with some of the leaders in the Valley.
I believe if I lived anywhere else I would likely been relagated to a rougher life due to my actions, mistakes, life choices and alcoholism.
I tell people, if you can't make it in Silicon Valley, with this boundless opportunity and schools, you can't make it anywhere.
I never wanted to pay rent again as long as I lived. I drove and fixed used Hondas and Toyota pickups. I maxed out 401K and took advantage of stock purchase programs. No vacations. I also helped my parents on weekends as they dealt with health and other issues.
Am I lucky? You bet I am. Left to my own devices I should have been dead a long time ago.
$50 per month x 12 months x 20 years is $12,000 principle. The example shows a $26,000 total. If over 20 years at 7% you manage only $26,000, that's far from an impressive return. It barely beats inflation in normal years. And, if you did that example from 2000 to 2020, in 2021 our current real 25% inflation would have eaten away most of a 20 year investment... so it's not impressive at all. Because, like I've mentioned, the government pencil necks do stupid things that can instantly destroy decades of work and sacrifices.
Point #2, you and that other guy from Massachusetts do not really know what poverty looks like. If you can save $50 per month in your youth, then you have no concept of what poverty is. That is a class of person who pretends to be in poverty to impress his friends about how he is "self made," but poor people cannot manage to save $50 per month b/c we are putting gas in our car, and eating, and paying unexpected bills to survive and not be homeless.
I vividly remember when I was in college, I had a small notebook to track expenses and my DAILY food expenditures had to be under $2. Daily. If I splurged on Monday for $5, then I had to not eat Tuesday and Wednesday. So do you think I had $50 extra per month laying around to invest for some time in the future?
And, also, this assumes I had access to some mythical stock market 7% return. Show me where, in the 1980s and early 1990s, a poor kid has access to invest in 7% returns in money markets or mutual funds without broker accounts and fees, which tend to have expenses and minimums of many thousands of dollars principle. So it's just more of how some of you are just totally out of touch with reality. Poor kids in that era did not have Ameritrade accounts or Reddit or Robinhood. You had to have a Merrill Lynch account, probably $5k minimum to invest, and a portfolio manager charging a % to put you in various vehicles to get 7%. No chance a poor kid living on $2 food money daily is going to have access to such things in that era. Ya'll are out of touch and did not grow up poor as you claim.
As I've mentioned, I've faced 3 foreclosures, and had to repeatedly liquidate any savings and IRAs and 401ks due to extreme financial hardships. Was this a game do you think? Do you think I just had this big piggy bank of money sitting around collecting interest while I was facing economic ruin and crisis, foreclosure, destroyed credit?
Wealthy entitled people who did not grow up poor, do not understand poverty. It's very hard to escape without some LUCKY breaks.
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