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I’VE BEEN WRITING FOR and reading HumbleDollar for more than six years.
I’m struck by the number of articles and comments that talk about things like divorce, job loss, health issues, adverse financial events and caring for elderly parents.
When articles discuss such experiences, the pieces are typically well read, with numerous comments, including many expressing empathy. The amount of personal information shared is amazing. No doubt readers can relate to many of these events. After all, for most people, such events represent key moments in their life’s journey.
But I find myself thinking: How did none of this happen to me?
I married my first girlfriend, and it’s now been more than 55 years. I never lost a job, except a position I held for one week when I was a teenager. There was never a year I didn’t receive a raise. I enjoyed my work for nearly 50 years. Both my parents died in their sleep, with no expensive, protracted end-of-life care. We found a way to ensure our four children graduated college with virtually no debt, and then helped them pay off what little they had borrowed.
A few health issues—while scary at the time—were resolved by good medical care and insurance that minimized our cost. The only exception has been Connie’s eye injury a few years ago. Her eyesight, unfortunately, will never be the same again.
We raised our family on one income, while Connie did the hard work of managing the family and volunteering in the community. We lived the first 30 years of our married life quite modestly. We worked together on the goals we set. Disagreements—especially about money matters—have been rare and quickly resolved.
I didn’t hit the income jackpot—meaning bonuses, stock options, stock awards—until I was age 60. Still, in retirement, we have financial security, thanks to a pension and Social Security.
I’d like to take credit for some of our good fortune, but I’m hard pressed to do so. The best I can come up with: We tried hard to avoid poor decisions.
According to the Mayo Clinic, expressing gratitude can deliver a slew of benefits, including improved sleep, mood and immunity. Gratitude can also reduce depression, anxiety, the risk of disease and difficulties with chronic pain.
Here Connie and I are, with a combined 164 years of life behind us. It’s almost like we lived in a 1950s sitcom. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet is my favorite. I don’t know why we have what we have or why things happened as they did. But we are indeed grateful.
Dick,
Reading others’ financial journeys is always enlightening, which makes HumbleDollar special. But reading stories of gratitude are also welcomed. Appreciate your recognition of avoiding much of life’s troubles and expressing gratitude for that bit of luck.
Also btw, to jack facts and all the readers I offer a respectful correction — Evel K attempted to jump the Snake River Canyon not the Grand Canyon.
Thank You Sir Richard. Yes, we are the product of being ourselves. I was raised on a dinky farm in Montana to be very conservative. Receiving and using old stuff is just fine with me. Not spending on foolish unneeded stuff does provide for a boring life, and my X wife couldn’t stand being bored as such.
However, delayed gratification DOES work and I am very blessed with almost no debt and plenty of income in my retirement years.
I’m glad the writer has been so lucky. But the article itself felt a bit less engaging to me than most HD articles. (Clearly I’m in the minority, as it received terrific response!)
Many of us tried to make the best possible decisions throughout our lives, yet timing, genetic health issues, unexpected events out of our control resulted in bad luck or poor outcomes.
I guess that’s why I’m most drawn to writers who overcame challenges and shared their journey. I tend to value their advice the most, as they’ve not had an easy, lucky road.
That’s why I am grateful and recognize our good fortune because I understand the life others experience, inckuding several family members.
Using one of our era’s heroes as a metaphor, it was more important for Evel Knievel to not die in the Grand Canyon than it was to arrive on the opposite rim. Never bet the ranch on red or black. Yes, avoid disasters to live another day.
Beautifully said!
I had a boss who said that sometimes your value to the organization may be more about avoiding making bad decisions. I was an IT director for a large organization my last 22 years of work. I made a few bad decisions in my career but some of my best decisions were avoiding bad decisions that were the supposed next hot thing in tech.
I’d say at this point, you didn’t just “try” to avoid making bad decisions, you “succeeded” in avoiding them. Which is what everyone should be trying to do.
To a certain extent, being mostly successful in avoiding bad decisions gives you the resiliency to make “some” bad decisions without hurting you in the long run.
By what percentage did the “income
jackpot”, increase your pension.
i understand that many pensions
use income from the last few years
of employment to determine benefits.
My plan was average highest years in the last ten. Only my cash bonuses added to my pension, but they were half my base pay or more.
I made some lucky investments and was able to stop working full time at age 50. Still, I think my financial success was due more to avoiding terrible decisions than making outstanding ones.
Regardless of luck, we can make our lot better or worse through our financial decision making. “avoiding poor decisions” is apparently a superpower that many do not possess. While we all make mistakes, some never learn from their mistakes. Many never realize that they are making mistakes.
I certainly learned from my own mistakes. Sources like Humble Dollar also let me learn from other’s mistakes before I made them myself.
Fine reflections, Mr. Quinn, and congratulations to you and your wife!
Age does (often, anyway) allow wisdom doesn’t it!
And as your words suggest, too, I think the essence of wisdom is humility and gratitude, and one other thing, which is the ability to imagine greater and smaller scales of time and distance than those we usually experience.
For example, with regard to our consideration of the degree to which we’ve managed to avoid bad / make good decisions, we might zoom out and consider how the time and circumstances of our births, and who are parents were, affected not only those abilities but the very presence of the choices before us. In (some of the possible) other words, of all the possible places and times in the history of humanity to be born, just being an American born in the 20th century alone (or combined with many other strokes of luck we can think of) was an incredible bit of good fortune. Wisdom allows gratitude for such things, no?
Apologies if I seem pedantic here – this is just a subject I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, and Mr. Quinn’s essay got me going…
yes…I sure wish my parents were born here…their entire families were murdered due to religious persecution. I would have had grandparents, aunts, uncles, had they been born here. 🙁
Few Americans today realize how lucky they are.
Well said. With one major exception, the same can be said for our family. No matter how difficult the situation, there are always things to be thankful for, often more than we can imagine.
In the book of Job in the Bible, Job was an extremely wealthy man. In one day, his entire family perished and he lost all of his wealth. In Job 1:21, Job says “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord”. A pretty amazing response to adversity.
I think you are correct about not making bad decisions: bad decisons can totally screw up an otherwise good life.
However, I think your attribution to luck is not high enough: even the best decisions cannot overcome really bad luck.
MPlate below gave two examples of this: a special needs child or an elderly parent needing care. Of course we do what we can to help family, but those are two things that can derail a person financially.
Others include having your career or employment disrupted through no fault of your own—changes in the industry, bad management, whatever. I have a young professor friend who just found out this week that she’s not getting tenure and will be out of a job despite a stellar record because the private Catholic college she works for is having hard financial times. Years of preparation and hard work up in smoke. Finding a new academic position is no sure thing; competition is fierce.
Or, of course, a debilitating illness or accident. If you’re the breadwinner and you become disabled in, say, your 30s or 40s, then what happens to you and your family?
I’ve been relatively lucky in my academic career. But I was minted in November of 2007. The job market, never great for those with PhDs in English, disappeared for about three years. Sometimes, generational cohorts get very lucky. The post WWII generation was very, very lucky. Gen X? Not so much.
And even the worst decisions can turn positive with the right amount of luck. All the best things in my life over the past 20 years are a direct result of the dumbest decision I ever made, which was to marry my first wife. It’s an odyssey too long and boring to relate, but trust me — blind stupidity can be a positive thing. Just don’t forget to be grateful for that too!
I can totally relate Mike. Had I not made the mistakes in my youth I wouldn’t be where I am today, which is a really good place to be.
Well said Dick. For most of us, trying to make good decisions, avoid making bad ones, and being grateful for our good fortune is wise.
You are fortunate, Dick, to recognize and appreciate your blessings, and to have found a partner early in life who shared your values. It’s clear that you have generously shared your gifts and wisdom with others, including, of course, here in HD. I always appreciate your insight and kindness.
It seems to me that you learned while very young to avoid making those bad decisions, a skill that usually comes with maturity at a later age, or maybe never comes at all. I know it took me a while to get there.
The path to true wealth is indeed paved with good fortune. Continue to enjoy your blessings!
The random luck factor of life. One never knows who will have a special needs child, or an elderly parent needing help.