Quote (AspenSniper @ Oct 8 2014 05:50pm)
I was at Chipotle today and a kid, maybe 10 years old, sees a Lotus drive up, looks at his mom and says "wow mom I want one of those when I turn 16!" his mom replies "you really want to be a person who only cares about money and nice cars?" I wondered why the mom didn't reply "work hard and you can earn that if you want it!"
I just turned 25 and have a nice house in a nice area, a new car and I do alright for myself, nothing super fancy, but i'll pretty easily retire around 40-45 years old. I hope my kids grow up wanting to reach for the stars. I just far too often see my colleagues sitting idle with their college degrees making $30k-40k a year that will probably never make more than $45k a year for 10 years because they don't have the drive to go the extra mile and earn a raise/promotion. Then I see those who do pretty well for themselves and they spend it on a stupid amount of rent and going to bars every night so much that when I ask if they want to go out to lunch they literally can't until they get their next paycheck.
I know I'm a bit old school, but am I the only person who has the goal of frugality and being able to live a bit simpler now so that I can have a wealthy retirement and so my kids can go to college and be more successful than I even hope to be?
Imo that's great for you, but many people are hopelessly adrift on economic undercurrents they'll never understand let alone control.
There's no reason to say everyone can't reach that place through effort, but I think its better to just focus on one's own efforts than to care about others' efforts. If they want to change they'll do so on their own.