<p>There is an old saying- " Who is rich? He who is happy with what he has." Some people have millions and are still miserable. Most of the really wealthy people I know don’t need to show it to prove anything. They look pretty normal, until you see their house. Some people are trust fund babies, and some people work really hard. Some people just get lucky. Being happy is what it’s important. Be happy with what you have.</p>
<p>I’m quite happy with what I personally have; I can’t help but wonder, however, whether the cost of all those “soft skill” professionals is passed on to the consumer, more or less in a self perpetuating way…</p>
<p>Many of the very wealthy are working when no one’s looking and sometimes that work is unconventional.</p>
<p>For instance, my husband’s a CEO, and…</p>
<p>The trip to a tropical island certainly looked fun. Who wouldn’t like to stay out in a bar until 2 am? It’s not as fun when the people you’re entertaining are customers, not friends. You can’t leave until the bill comes and most of the time is spent listening to complaints or gathering information. Then you have to get up at 6 am to run meetings. After 4 days in a row of this he invariably comes home sick.</p>
<p>The dinner with the bankers was similar. Sure it was a nice restaurant but he would much rather have been home watching the playoff game with a beer in his hand instead of politely wrangling over a quarter percentage point on the interest rate until midnight. </p>
<p>Yes, he came home at 4:30 to coach the kids’ soccer team. He then worked at home until midnight. He took Thursday off and you might have seen him running errands around town. Saturday through Tuesday were spent putting 1,200 miles on the company car driving to various warehouses out of state.</p>
<p>He does his charitable work quietly and discreetly. On our last weekend away I drove so he could spend the entire time on the phone raising money.</p>
<p>We travel a lot. DH has a ton of frequent flyer miles from spending so much time on the road. We don’t spend a lot on clothes or jewelry because that’s not our thing. Those earrings you assume are diamonds are $30 cubic zirconiums. </p>
<p>I’m not saying we live a hard life. We’re fortunate but getting where we are wasn’t as easy as it might look. DH started with nothing. He was admitted to an Ivy League university undergrad but couldn’t afford it, even with an excellent scholarship. For four years ramen was his friend. Our first apartment had no shower, a single burner stove and a couch bought from Goodwill and held together with electrical tape. Without my income he could never have paid for grad school. The job he held when the kids were little had him traveling so much that a number of women in the neighborhood thought I was a single mother.</p>
<p>Now we’re quite comfortable. We have the big house, the gardener and the cleaning service. I don’t feel guilty. We don’t spend beyond our means. I shop at Costco and I made sure to get the most for my CVS and BB&B discount coupons. Right now (Sunday afternoon) DH is gone for work.</p>
<p>Everything is relative. Some people just enjoy working…even at low wages.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/at-99-a-st-petersburg-man-finds-meaning-in-the-working-life/2132028[/url]”>http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/at-99-a-st-petersburg-man-finds-meaning-in-the-working-life/2132028</a></p>
<p>While I’m sure there are really wealthy people who got their money by unethical means and proceed to live at the country club rather than be involved with their families, being poor or middle class is no guarantee that one is ethical, honest, plugged in to family, a good world citizen, or any other number of positive qualities.</p>
<p>We hope that we have grounded our girls in values which will shine through no matter their eventual income. I want them to be honest and kind, contribute positively to the world, love and be loved, and appreciate all the good things which come their way. If they come by it honestly, I also wouldn’t mind if they were financially secure. :)</p>
<p>Having money and resources allows more choices. When you can live below your means, whatever they are, you just have many more options available to you. It certainly helps if you have a great education and skills so you qualify for more jobs, but living in a low cost community and having simple wants and needs can allow for less chasing of $$$$ and more time and resources for other things. </p>
<p>Because H has always loved his job and we were able to make sacrifices to live on his income, it has allowed me more flexibility to be there for our kids, work part time, and now start a nonprofit that I feel is really making a difference, even tho the pay is very limited. </p>
<p>If you don’t have many skills and much education, you really narrow the types of work available to you. In this tough economy, being flexible and nimble is good. As was said, money certainly isn’t everything, but it certainly is helpful to have enough to have more good options.</p>
<p>Beyond $75K is said not to result in too much more happiness according to this 2010 article (except in HI, where its said to cost $78K for a family of 4 to live modestly for a year). </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2019628,00.html[/url]”>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2019628,00.html</a></p>
<p>I have no issue with work, or with the results of hard work; but as a card carrying European American I don’t think I agree with yet another outcome that is pushed upon working stiffs by the “achiever” or “job creator” class… And by that I mean the extra hours for no apparent reward other than keeping one’s job…</p>
<p>Our European subsidiary team has much better job safety than we do, and by 5:01 PM the place is empty… Yet they finish their projects on time just like we do, with our far less job security and our much longer hours.</p>
<p>So, I would have no issue or reason to question how anyone affords the beemers, except when those hyper-achieving “job creators” who do benefit from working 60 hours a week expect us to also work 60 hour weeks but get paid for 40…</p>
<p>Ok. Im thinking of things I can make that people will buy. I can do video conferences and get people to work from home so I don’t need to get a office but theres other things to work out. And I know some rich people drive normal cars but most don’t.</p>
<p>“Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait for a very, very long time.”</p>
<p>I am going to put this quote on my fridge.</p>
<p>If hard work correlated to money, then those guys in the field picking lettuce must be raking it in. Most of the wealthy I know wouldn’t last a day out there.</p>
<p>Many of the more comfortable in my town got it through Microsoft stock options in the 1990s. A friend of mine retired at age 28 after only 6 years there. They just happened to have a boss who felt that if the collected labor of his employees resulted in huge financial gains, he would share it with them. They were not working “harder” than those in tech fields without stock options.</p>
<p>It is the conceit of the well-paid that says money comes from hard work.</p>
<p>Cash grows surprisingly quickly when you have a good job, and even faster if you have a spouse/girlfriend working as well. </p>
<p>When I was in high school and college, $1000 seemed like a boat load of money to me. Heck, my entire savings at that time was around $200! Now that I’m out of college and in a comfortable working career (I’m 28 now) I manage to sock away over half of my paycheck, and have a very nice nest egg developing. </p>
<p>Your parents were right all along. Good jobs give you a good, comfortable lifestyle.</p>
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That’s what I plan on doing the first five years out of college! I can’t wait to see those numbers. :)</p>
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<p>I’m curious about what advice to your children flows from your observations.</p>
<p>I get Magnetron’s point - lots of money does not always follow simply from hard work. I would bet a majority of those who work hard are not wealthy! Don’t know about his/her advice to children, but ours has always been to find something they like to do for work. (This coming from me, who ended up choosing a major based on making a lot of money to pay my loans, and ended up hating my job.) We also model living within our means and saving for the future for them.</p>
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<p>The OP seemed to have the idea that many people with money spent little time working for it as all they do is swim, drive their BMWs, and hang around the house. Might well be true for those people you know who made their wealth off their stock options and on the backs of their hard working employees, but that is just not the reality of any of the financially successful people I know.</p>
<p>When my DH started in the business, he worked 7 days a week, often 12 hour days. He still works long hours. He might not have been doing physical labor like a logger or a lettuce picker or a nurse ;), but nevertheless he worked damn hard to get somewhere in his business. His job is very stressful and requires a very determined personality in order to keep morale up and not give up when lots of effort is put into deals which never make. I would never say working hard guarantees wealth, but in his career, if you want to be paid well, you must work hard. He owns his own business and works on his own with no employees. If he doesn’t work hard, he makes zero. That’s exactly what happened when he had cancer. He couldn’t put in the hours to make the deals, so during that time, his income shrank. Since his recovery, by virtue of working very hard, utilizing his talent, persevering, and impressing his clients with his expertise and integrity, his income has recovered as well. We aren’t wealthy like some of the people we are describing, but we’d make a lot less if he worked less hard.</p>
<p>I have friends in other industries. They often put in 80 hour weeks or more. In my book, that’s working very hard, and these people are very well compensated if they are good at it. I have no desire to work that much, and my income reflects it.</p>
<p>I guess my point is that working hard doesn’t guarantee you will be rich, but most rich people I know work hard and wouldn’t be where they are if they hadn’t. Obviously not talking about trust fund babies or those who have made so much money they are now free to live on the golf course if they wish, but regular self made men and women who won’t make the Forbes 500 list, but who by most standards are very affluent indeed. I guess a lot of this is relative to what someone considers financial “wealth.”</p>
<p>People who live like that and earn millions of dollars a year with no debts are probably athletes. I wouldn’t say they deserve such money, but they work hard and deal with media and other psychological issues.</p>
<p>Advice to my kids is probably just about exactly what others on CC give to their kids. We also have had dividend-paying stocks - make money but no work at all on my part. Our family and social circle has spanned a large swath of society. Growing up, the hardest working people were probably the small dairy farmers, all now out-of-business. I consider the " work effort is proportional to income" argument as a durable American myth.</p>
<p>One of my parents’ friends who has never worked a day in her life was complaining about having to pay taxes - her grandfather “worked really hard” for that money and already paid taxes on what he had earned. Anything she made from his legacy, according to her reasoning, should be tax-free. I did my best to keep a straight face.</p>
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<p>I haven’t seen anyone actually make that argument here.</p>
<p>Some inherit loads, some inherit some, some work and some do not, some work a little, some lots and some are lucky, whoppee! Some are not so lucky. Life is amazing and changes rest in shadows. Enjoy it because, we who are here are blessed no matter what circumstances. Be thankful, do your best and smile.</p>
<p>Personally, I am banking on winning that big Powerball jackpot … ;)</p>