Agree, I was very interested in electronics as a teenager, but had no money for tools, instruments, or components. I had to scavenge components from discarded radios, used my dad's plumber's iron for soldering and saved up for months for decent wire and a wire stripper.

I did eventually end up getting a scholarship to study engineering, but I cannot help feeling a tiny bit resentful when seeing kids in the news who obviously had a lot of support from a wealthy family.

You should not feel resentment, but you should feel their luck to be born into that.

On the downside: they will never learn the value of recycling, of working with inadequate, broken, uncalibrated and dangerous tools. But you did and I'd bet you came out the better engineer on account of that. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger isn't just about health.

Lately I try to see privileges like that less as an unfair advantage that someone else has, and more an unfair disadvantage for everyone else. I want every kid to have access to high quality education which includes the tools and materials to work with and learn new concepts - that's regardless of the socioeconomic class they were born into. Instead of trying to tear down other people for the opportunities they had that you didn't, maybe we should be attempting to improve the world for everyone so that there's less of those unfair disadvantages going around.

I grew up nearly the same. Built many of my own tools from what I could find literally laying around.

Please take my comment here as my experiences shared in the hope you get something good from them. It's nothing more than that, and it's worth what you paid too.

Fast forward many years:

Today I'm working on an advanced additive manufacturing machine in a company I and a friend started. I'm doing electronics, working with advanced CNC machines, writing some code, and doing a lot of stuff that was hobby type dreaming a decade and change ago.

The team is largely people who really enjoy the electromechanical world, some have gone to school, some haven't. Nobody cares about any of that. We all want to make something cool happen.

When I took my first job, I began to also take up hobbies. Spent a number of years in manufacturing, during which I did a lot of computing on whatever computers I could get my hands on, or seat time with. Next job was CAD related, and I spent time on electronics again.

Wash, rinse, repeat a few times and those hobbies are real!

Each one ended up adding to the set of things I can do and as that set expanded, and as my circle of friends and professional contacts expanded, so did my potential opportunities. Get the skill, look for an opening to do it professionally, do it, get help if you need to, wash, rinse, repeat.

I think about what I can get done now and how it might pay me and those close to me. That stuff is real.

At one point in my life, I could see some real opportunity, but I was going to have to lean into it. So I quit modern gaming. This was big! I do retro, and play the occasional title I find interesting, but pushing that out of the front row in my life both hurt and was amazing!

See, I got bored. And that's how a lot of good stuff starts. The amazing part was finding out that being bored means I'm also receptive to learning new things. And doing stuff is a lot more fun than thinking about it all is too.

If I think about what I could have done, if... I get depressed. And that stuff is fantasy.

So I just don't do that.

Maybe this helps you some.

Look, there is no doubt luck plays a big role in our lives. No joke.

I can also say that if you invest in yourself, network with others and essentially expand your receptivity to luck, your chance of experiencing some goes up and with that come opportunities.

I do take some pride in the fact that I really did get a lot of my skills the hard way. Same with any money. And if times get tough, I really do know how to deal and can do that, am used to doing that, to a much greater degree than many of these lucky people might be. And helping others get things done often lead to them helping me.

We all need a little help. Give and get. That's the rule.

One can have a significant impact on the world, and many people without any of those nice things.

Consider making it all about what you can do and what that can mean. You will be very likely to do more than you think and it will mean more than you expect it to. Ask me how I know. :)

At the end of the day, most people are after wealth to give their children advantages. Either advantages they had growing up, or advantages they didn't have growing up. Granted there is diminishing returns here, i.e. a billionaire's children aren't likely to be much more advantaged than a child from a family with a net worth of $100 million.

Until the US gets away from the idea that education is a for-profit industry and something you pay for, almost all highly accomplished children will come from wealthy families.

Even I retrospect I think of this 2 ways

1. Could I have made that $100 if I did it specifically for the purpose of publishing the app? (For me, the answer is always yes at that amount. I could have easily washed some cars, mowed some grass, etc. I had so much free time)

2. When it comes to business, tech, particularly the early internet boom, probably some other domains; I’m just thankful to be in the minority of the world that speaks English. I’m self taught at most things and it’s hard enough as it is. This value of this one diminishes every year but I find it’s still useful and feel it’s a form or luck.

It's not about making the money, it's about what you spend it on. If 100$ is a significant amount you're not going to spend it on a frivolous purchase, you'll spend it on the absolute necessities. And if you do want to make a purchase purely because it makes you happy, you're going to agonize over it and feel guilty for a long while.

I went on to make 20,000 euros doing freelance over the next five years while in college but it all went to my student loans, rent and other necessary costs while I was starting my career, not anything I actually wanted to buy for myself.

I get that. What works for me, and I tried to point out, is not taking $100 out of my income/savings that is funds for my absolute necessities. It's more so about using the goal as motivation to temporarily increase my income. That extra income is already earmarked for the goal, so it doesn't really take away from necessities.

Obviously, if you're at a deficit on the necessities it will be tempting to use the extra income for those things. That's a different conversation/problem however