In my experience it's much more about how you manage the money you make, i.e.:
1. live below your means
2. invest the difference - put your money to work for you
For example, in the last week there was a bank that accidentally deposited $120,000 in the account of a couple. The couple immediately went on a spending spree, buying all kinds of very expensive items. By the time the police got involved, the money was gone.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/09/08/bank-acc...
Criminality aside, the "gee I have some extra money, let's go shopping!" is how one remains poor for life.
Not to mention people are encouraged to do zero planning for the student debts and get pressured by family to buy new cars.
There’s so much of wealth that comes down to lifestyle and educating people on personal finance which would go way farther than just telling people to get a $100k degree and ‘study hard (for rote testing)’. Here in Canada where I live the debt levels are still insane and didn’t decline like the US did, even without the healthcare bills excuse.
Politicians love blaming external factors and rich people/big corporations for all our upward mobility issues, which obviously play a roles but it’s hardly the full story, I’m curious how far we could improve things through culture and how we teach our kids to spend money. This was a personal finance culture that was far more popular in the west in the recent past eras which we people constantly romanticize about and point to different single things to explain it all away (ie unions).
My girlfriend is amazing with money and saves everything, both her parents do the same, which is the opposite of me in my early 20s before I read into it and my parents growing up too. I’m convinced parenting combined with culture (she’s Han Chinese and they tend to be thrifty similar Scottish people and Jugaad in India[1], among others) has a significant impact on these trajectories.
I've inherited not spending money from my (not Scottish) parents. It's taken an effort to spend money in social situations, so I'm not seen as miserly.
They either start their own company/contracting, become highly specialized professionals, or get a degree and take some boring white collar job that pays better.
Managing finances is just a gimmick when you have zero disposable income. That's basically 24/7/365 crisis management.
Sure, if you manage to get some savings/credit-score together it's very important what you spend it on. (Eg classes/moving or finally doing that trip to Vegas you always dreamed about.) But if you can't increase your income significantly, then investing or spending it makes no difference. (Because investing it is just continuing the saving, for whatever purpose, let's say to have a rainy day fund, or medical emergency fund, amd spending it just decreases the years you spent saving up, but your overall lifetime income will not change much, thus your range of possibilities won't either.)
I've been a software contractor for the last ~18 months. I do it because it affords me the ability to spend my time exactly how I want to, mostly reading and researching. But I also have reduced my contracting time as much as possible and this year my income will have been ~30k.
I've gotten to the end of my rope, and it's stressful and weighs on me 24/7, especially with my fear of an upcoming recession.
I decided to find a job again and in just a month I've been able to get multiple offers lined up for 5x my current income.
On the one hand, I use my position to its fullest--and I've spent the better part of a year learning things I never would have learned in a University or employment setting.
On the other hand, I recognize that this is an incredibly privileged position, one which I don't feel very deserving of. I understand the market forces, yes, but I can't help but feel a tinge of guilt knowing that I can be somewhat irresponsible financially just to pull myself out within two months of a new paycheck.
My parents were careful with money, but not necessarily frugal. I think part of it was the fact that my mom (and probably my dad at least at one point) had a pension to look forward to. I've thought before a lot on how that probably changes the calculus quite a bit.
I seem to have picked up some pathological fear of not having enough, so I probably live excessively below my means.
Growing up, I didn't even know that normal people could invest money in the stock market. Even now, I have friends that look at me sort of funny when I mention having a significant amount of money in the market. Usually they ask why I don't do something useful to it like buy a nicer house, car, etc.
If you're highly driven to achieve the goal of spending-consuming, that's unlikely to get you anywhere particularly interesting.
My dad is 71 years old (I'm 28) and has been doing autobody repair work for 55 years (still working to this day). He has mild arthritis, but he's in remarkably good shape.
On the other hand, I'm starting to develop a gut after 7 years of full-time programming. I genuinely believe that if I were to keep up my current lifestyle, I'd be in for a bad time by the time I hit 50.
Ideally, I should be doing more physical exercise, but the difference is that it's a choice that I have to make whereas it's not a choice for my dad, and it's hard for me to find motivation to go to the gym.
So, in terms of health, I suspect that:
Desk job + gym > Physical labor job > Desk job with no physical activity
That's mostly diet. With a better diet and 20 minutes of working out a day, you could make yourself healthy. Hell, run just a mile a day, and do pushups, pullups, and planks every other day. It's amazing how short workouts done consistently can actually keep you fit.
I don't have any trouble at all keeping my weight under control, but in order to stay strong and flexible I still need to work at it constantly.
To that end, I have a weight bench, barbell and dumbbells in my lounge room, and a pull up bar hung between two door ways in the hall.
I find 'working out' tedious, incredibly boring. But I'll walk by the pull up bar and do 10 pull ups multiple times a day, or grab a couple dumbbells and do a few sets here and there.
> I work in metal fabrication and my I'm lathe.
I’m saying this as a office worker who’s lost 15 pounds by diet change small walks. Looking to add some days at the gym soon.
I have an uncle who is a plumber of a similar age and is in pretty great shape for his age. My understanding is that most of his aches and pains are related to a car accident he was in when he was young and reckless.
I've worked in metal fabrication on and off for over 20 years, and my observation is that's a cultural thing combined with long running fatigue from working too many hours standing up. That and metal fabricators aren't known for their diet being particularly great.
I'm fairly active, both mentally and physically, never really drank much, and never smoked cigarettes. I could kick most of the guys I work with in the head, whereas most of them wouldn't be able to lift a foot above their hips. People usually guess my age between 6 and 10 years below my actual age.
Metal fabrication doesn't have to be hard on the body.
I entirely agree with you that the number one determining factor of how far you'll get in life--and by that I mean how well you'll do setting and achieving your own goals--is how driven you are.
And highly driven people tend not to hang around the workshop floor for very long, so the workshop floor tends to suffer a driven-person-drain by attrition as the highly driven people drive off to greener pastures.
There are no guarantees. There's ample opportunity in this field for atrophy or strain to take its toll. Take care of yourself, pay attention to the complaints and do something about them.
I expect there are jobs that are "medium duty" that are actually health-enhancing. Somewhere between back-breaking labor and sedentary engineer.
Maybe being a mail carrier and walking most of the day.
- Wake up early -- not too many chances for late-night drinking then feeling bad about it.
- Walk a long way, whatever the weather. The post office supplied excellent waterproofs (this is Denmark).
- Walk up so many stairs. Many apartment buildings have the letter boxes in each apartment's door.
- Occasionally run away from a dog.
"If you want to feel old after 42 years, keep dropping the hammer and grinding the gears"
My dad did blue collar labor his whole life and his body hurt. He would take something like 6 ibuprofen every morning with breakfast. To do that kind of work requires you putting your family above yourself, which is a noble thing. I think what people miss in the old "you could support a family doing this" was that it was very much you actively harming yourself so that your family could be better off.
It's the same thing with coal miners. They get all sorts of terrible health consequences from the work, but it is a noble sacrifice to them.
My dad was adamant that we were going to college and living a more comfortable life than he did. So here I am, a software engineer with plenty of worries in the world, but at least a job that won't leave me broken and in pain after I do it for twenty years.
I didn't read this article word for word, but it seemed to have a bit of an agenda to it. The number one determining factor of how far you will make it if you're working class is how driven you are. If you are lazy, you'll struggle your whole life. There isn't any family safety net to keep you ignorant of that.
It's important to give people access to opportunity, but it's up to the individual to be self-motivated enough to take it. Education isn't some magical panacea.