Where have you developed this sense of “victimhood”…. seriously…

I know so many people that started life out dirt poor in Appalachia or the inner city, or a third world country and today live very good and comfortable lives. Some did through their wits, some through the skills of their hands, and others simply working their asses off picking up garbage, painting houses, washing cars, cutting lawns…

In America if you are willing to work hard you can do okay. I remember as a kid working in a McDonald’s and having the owner of the franchise ask me if I would like to go into McDonald’s management program. Why? Because I was the only employee that when he sent me to the parking lot picked up the cigarette butts.

Speaking of the garbage man, one of my daughters and the garbage man’s son both the garbage man and I attended the same church and our children knew each other, both went to college together at the Univesity of Florida. My father owned a business growing up, one of his employees worked two jobs: as a furnace operator for my father and janitor for Rutgers. The employee could not read or right because he grew up in the segregated South, but everyone of his children got to go to Rutgers free (he had 12 children!), because he swept floors at Rutgers.

You have this deluded idea that you can’t get ahead in America working hard or you can’t provide for my family if you are not born into white priveledge. The truth is this is a great country where there are so many people who want to help. My wife and I have helped three families over our lifetimes to buy a home… we are not special, there are many people like us. As an employer, I offered internships to the children of my employees, not because I needed summer help, but because I wanted them to have a summer job.

Ask any employer how hard it is to find dependable employees at every skill level. I was blessed and eventually I rose to run a company with 42,000 employees. I used to apologize to my managers who ran entry level departments, because as soon as they found a good hard working employee, I would steal them and promote them to a higher paying more critical job in the company… for most jobs you don’t need to know a great deal… you just have to be willing to learn.

You ask a good question… why don’t we have the pensions of yesteryear… the simply answer is to many companies went broke and people like your aunt are the problem… God bless her. As an employer how do you know how much money to put away for an employee if you have no idea how long they will live. The reason pension plans disappeared is that most companies put them into effect when most people died before 70… so they put away enough savings for the employees so last the five to ten years past retirement that they were expected to live. Then people start living well into their eighties and the fund runs dry and the company is trying to survive competing with cheap labor from China.

So now most employers can only count on “now” and so rather than leave employees high and dry when they go broke… they contribute each year a specific amount of money for the employee’s retirement. As someone who lived under both plans… if I annuitze my 401(k) this September it will pay me more than twice what my two combined pension plans will pay me for two reasons… over the years my 401(K) plans earned greater returns and I “vested” almost immediately in my 401(K) plans but those old fashion pension plans took five years to vest… for someone that changed jobs more than 12 times in my career, that is not exactly a good deal.

So far the point you made that is absolutely true is that we live in a more complex world. Just as I rely on a doctor when I get sick to make me better, I need to rely on someone as a financial adviser if I don’t have good financial skills. Picking a good doctor and financial adviser are both important choices.

I am married to a woman from Asia… her parents never owned a credit card until they started to visit America. They only have it because the country limits the cash you can bring to the US when you visit. So they use it when they visit their daughter (my wife). They still live under the premise that if you can’t afford it, don’t buy it. I got in trouble with credit cards when I was young and stupid. I took me less than two years to get in trouble and almost five years to dig my way out. After that I only borrowed for cars and houses… and eventually I began to pay for cash for those things also. Avoid credit for consumption… I do think schools do a terrible job teaching people about how to use credit… so maybe we can agree on that.

My wife and I gave away 10% of what we earned. People asked me how can you afford to do that… my response was I give away what most people pay in interest for things they really did not need but wanted.

I do believe many people handle credit poorly and get in trouble because of it… the credit card issue is a serious one… give people to much credit and many misuse it and become slaves to it… don’t give them credit and they feel discriminated against. I have known people so committed to saving that they saved even when they were living in their cars and all of them eventually succeeded in life. I also know physicians who I have handed checks of $1 million dollars to who have come back three years later asking for a loan.