Jane over at Boston Gal's Open Wallet is a top, top personal finance blogger. Focused, disciplined, and with real financial goals for herself. But this post of hers stopped me cold:
Every so often you hear about someone who has received an amazing gift of good fortune. They won a lottery, received a large inheritance, or obtained a job with crazy stock options that have made them millionaires. Basically, through shear luck, they have managed to leap frog into great wealth and early retirement. But these are the rare exceptions. Most of us will never be that lucky.Now maybe it's because Jane is a New Englander, but man is that a grim view of life. You have to slog your way through a joyless existence at a job that sucks, never getting what you want, until one day -- long in the future -- just as your teeth rot out and your vision goes, you can finally enjoy the fruits of your labor.
For the majority there are no short cuts. Getting ahead requires hard work, steady employment, evolving skills, delayed gratification, life-style compromises, spending hours, months, years in jobs we don't particularly like, prudent investing, increasing savings, and on and on. Eventually, if we work hard enough and save long enough, we reach the day where all of our efforts have paid off and we can retire our stresses and worries and support ourselves in our golden years.
Like this poor dear:
who didn't get to smile until it was too late.
3 comments:
I just don't get why folks like Jane (whose blog I love!) feel that working is mostly about money, and that slogging away for years at a job one barely tolerates is worth it financially. I don't suppose I'm a good example since my finances are in disarray, but that's because of poor financial decisions I made in my thirties and forties. I've worked in my field for the past 35 years. I love it. I'd do it even if I made less money than I do now (which is small enough as it is!). Life is too long and retirement too short to have spent the past 35 years doing something that rewarded me only in dollars.
I don't think Jane actually thinks that this is the best way to live life, but rather that she believes this is the reality for many people.
It would be great if everybody enjoyed their jobs, or had the courage/opportunity to seek out jobs that they might love, but many people are stuck in their ways. They have bills to pay and may not be lucky enough to even know what they want.
Grim, yes. But I feel worst for the people who are stuck in their ways, AND who aren't aware of how to maximize their long term fiscal success with proper management/know how in the present.
Also, there is the reasonable hope that retirement lasts longer than a single smile.
I take offense at the New England crack. The truth is, if you haven't stopped to look around, this country is currently a financial disaster. People ARE working at jobs that they don't enjoy, because there may not be alternatives. Just because you don't necessarily understand what it's like to go through the motions to keep yourself afloat financially does not mean that the vast majority of people in the middle and lower classes aren't experiencing exactly what she's talking about. Our Puritan work-ethic in the U.S. doesn't give a crap about job and life satisfaction. The goal is getting work done, and aside from the poor economy, this is the other reason for widespread dissatisfaction with work and working conditions in this country. Our society doesn't value art, music, writing, and various other vocations which are highly valued in other societies, and therefore doesn't pay people who choose those paths well (on average). We're a finance-driven society. Whether or not Jane is from New England has no bearing on the fact that she's speaking truth and you would have to be in a vacuum not to understand that.
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