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No one here CAN brag out loud. And life choices are continually being made. We choose how we want to react to unfortunate things in our lives. We all do have unfortunate incidents in our lives. If not now, or before, then unfortunate things will at times happen in the future. It's life.
If we choose to be bitter or negatively aggressive with others, it can compound our own unhappy feelings. The converse is true as well.
I'm thinking that this implication is not fair. Mathjak contributes much helpful information on the retirement forum, generously explaining how things work and how to make good decisions about finances.
I read his posts frequently and never do I get the feeling that he is bragging. More that he is just really into and smart about finance.
He certainly is generous, and has been for a long time, with his knowledge. Ain't nothing wrong with that.
Just to be on topic, we have a roof over our heads and enough to eat. Which puts us in a better situation than lots of other people.
Last edited by LilyMae521; 08-25-2020 at 05:57 PM..
Where I grew up, which matches your moniker reference, it was considered flat-out rude to talk about money at dinner or other purely social gatherings. Ditto for politics and religion.
I have some in-laws who routinely send msgs about things they bought or vacations taken, both small and large in dollar amount, none of which they can afford. They are in bad financial shape from repeatedly not making or sticking to a budget, and this has been going on for decades. So after all the msgs talking about their shopaholic attainments, when they blatantly “hint” at needing monetary donations for yet more things they want, it falls on deaf ears. And yes, they do it at dinner. Literally every one of the rare get-togethers we had (I hope it goes from rare to never), at least one of them would put the touch on.
Maybe you mean New England? Because here we were taught to not discuss money, religion or politics except with a few very close friends or relatives. Those are just not acceptable topics of conversation for a group.
I talk about religion with one friend who is very religious, talk about money or investing with another friend, and lately more people do discuss politics, although you have to be careful.
I guess I've never known people who waste money big time as you mentioned. Most people don't live beyond their means but maybe that's a New England thing too. We are known for being frugal. (I've never lived outside of New England, as you can probably tell.)
Once in a while someone will move to my town from elsewhere (not even sure where) and will build a huge ostentatious house that no one else likes. And sometimes you will get show off types no matter where you are--often they are people who were poor and are now trying to prove that they aren't poor anymore. They are the nouveau riche. In the 1960s I had a friend like that--her dad was really nice but he worked in a factory. Poor guy. His wife was out to prove she was rich and so she needed a Cadillac and a mink coat, lol.
There were a lot of really rich people in town, people who didn't need to prove anything to anyone. They would be fine driving a Chevy.
I wish I could remember the one particular incident back in high school that impressed me so much--someone I knew was very humble and nice. And then I found out through the grapevine that this person was really SOMEONE or had made some great accomplishment, I don't remember which. But the fact that the person was so accomplished and yet had never said even one word about it, really earned a lot of respect from me.
People who really believe it's all their fault don't make posts like yours.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TNSLPPTSO13
I don't really blame anybody for my issues that caused my financial suicide, as some people here have referred to my previous posts.
Yeah, I bet you actually do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TNSLPPTSO13
So,I'm curious as to see if any contributors here on City Data have had similar issues and life events as I've admitted here...or has everybody here always been smart,financially wise and perfect in every aspect of their life and always done the right thing,pull themselves by their bootstraps and re-use their dryer sheets??
What I notice about people who have underlying anger/jealousy/resentment is they tend to talk in very black-and-white terms as you do. They say things like "I'm obese and a gambling addict. Sorry we can't all be perfect like YOU are".
People who actually own their decisions typically don't sound as angry/resentful/jealous/bitter as your post does.
Regarding the highlighted part of your post: would like to introduce another point of view.
Your indirectly calling the OP's life a failure - simply implies that you like many others measure "the success" vs "failure" in life by mostly the measure of the money the person does or does not have.
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I have a well off friend who got the money part right, but he didn't get the rest of his life right and he's been pretty depressed for most of the last 12 years since he retired, but he won't do anything about it. It's been tough to watch.
I find threads like this one so much more uplifting than reading threads about how much money people acquired. One thing that most people with money conveniently leave out is how much help they got along the way. If you're born on third base, you did not hit a triple. If your parents hover over you and send you to the finest schools throughout life and pay for tutors and leave you with no student loan debt upon graduation from college, you had one hell of a head start in life.
I really enjoyed reading that a teenaged mother with a ninth grade education graduated college, and that the odds of someone doing that under those conditions was 2%. Well, I will throw a mini humble brag into this thread: My mother died when I was 7 years old of breast cancer, and my father became a raging alcoholic. It was not long after that I would go into foster care, where I would remain until I joined the Army. Ran with the wrong crowd, surrounded by bad influences, kicked out of high school. But after 6 years in the Army I learned discipline, as well as a far more rounded outlook on life, as well as traveling to foreign countries where I saw some dire poverty, and knew I could do better, and that I had to get a college degree. And I did. The odds of someone who never finished high school who grew up in foster care getting a Bachelors Degree, I once read, is less than 1%.
I learned the value of a dollar, as well as what hard work in this country can do for you. The odds keep decreasing, but the fact still remains, anything is possible in this country if you have the desire and the determination to accomplish your goals.
This is how I've always thought.
I've posted on this board for years and followed the posts of many frequent retirement board posters for nearly as long. Not too long ago, C-D allowed you to see something like 120 pages of posts back. When I worked in the office, I would often get bored during slow times and read pages of previous posts from engaging posters. That limit is now roughly 30 pages.
You can generally get a good idea of who someone is with that much material at your disposal. A little Googling here and there, tied back to info from the posts, would give a very educated guess to a lot of real identities, if not a concrete pinpoint. Of the people who do not post their real identities, but whom I've figured out (at least on this board), all are who are they appear to be from their posts. I have found a few posters who are extremely interesting to me whom I cannot figure out who they are, but I believe that is because it is either outright falsification or things are spun in the posts to the point that it's hard to tease out the real story.
With that said, I think a lot of information gets left out. I think you could probably find studies that prove that retirement and personal finance message boards (and probably message boards in general) tend to attract people who are wealthier than the average person on the street, or at least better informed and educated.
What we're not typically hearing about are the folks who grew up in New England or some other now similarly pricey region whose parents bought a house for a song in the 1950s/1960s, and the (now retired or nearly so) child inherits then has an instant half-million in equity. Same thing goes for current, living long-term incumbent property owners in those areas now retiring elsewhere.
In a way, the same thing applies to government pensioners because they were often guaranteed $X/month, while having to invest little to nothing of their own money beyond the mandatory contribution, and most private retirees don't end up that well on a safe-withdrawal adjusted basis, even contributing a far greater amount of money.
As for me, I've managed to save a good bit over the last six years (~$100k), with relatively modest income and am now debt-free aside from a small mortgage and a too-high car payment. When I look at single peers in my area (few comps), I've done relatively well. If I look at a lot of the posters on here or the personal finance board, I'm so far behind that it's impossible to catch up.
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