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Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

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Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#31

Post by Roark66 »

vertis wrote: post #16

I went through a few years of unstable income in my early twenties (circa 2000), it wasn't altogether bad, just very very sporadic. When I think back on those years I had all kinds of bad behaviours that were not rational. For example, not paying bills because something more urgent might come up. Not looking at balances because it was easier to not know. I would go from feeling rich one month because a freelance clie…

>It took years to shed some of the residual behaviours, even after I started earning decent money. Despite having savings and reliable income I would still let bills run until they were overdue.

You wouldn't believe how many "wealthy" people do the exact same thing including not paying their subcontractors etc. My dad used to do electric installations in new built homes. Usually the larger the house and the wealthier the owner more excuses there would be when the time to pay came.Some of those "clients" took 2 years to get money out of them. Doing that to a small contractor you owe is pretty bad behaviour, but at the same time I can understand prioritising your outgoings if you have let's say an annual gas bill review and you know they'll not come after you until you're 3 months late. In such situation paying 89 days late is perfectly reasonable. Nothing bad about it.

Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#32

Post by virgilp »

coldtea wrote: post #18

Cue the "I was from a poor family and I got into Stanford, everybody should be able to it" from people who don't understand how life, statistics, outliers, and relative effort required (for a middle/class rich kid playing in "easy mode" to succeed, versus a poor kid playing the "extra hard mode"). People who confuse what's possible but 10x more difficult for some income groups/backgrounds, to be the same as being equ…

I wonder if it's "fixable", though. I come from a lower-middle-class family, so does my wife; we're upper-middle-class now. Our kids are nowhere near as "driven" as we were... but, to the extent that we can, of course we're going to use all our resources to make them more successful than they "deserve". It's basic human nature, yes the game is rigged, because if you come from a family that is both stable & well-off, your family will naturally provide much more support than the society could provide to the average Joe. I'm not sure how that can change ever (or even if it's desirable to try to change it).

The downside of being raised in a well-off family (at least anecdotally/ from my circle of friends) is that the children already have almost everything they could desire, and they take this stuff for granted, and as such they tend to put less effort into "life". Yes they need less effort to be successful - but they are also used to "less effort", so they don't try as hard. This balances the game a little, for those less fortunate. But I can totally see how if your background is too bad, the game is actively rigged against you, and it's not humanly possible to overcome your condition. That's probably where the society needs to focus the most.

Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#33

Post by celticmusic »

coldtea wrote: post #18

Cue the "I was from a poor family and I got into Stanford, everybody should be able to it" from people who don't understand how life, statistics, outliers, and relative effort required (for a middle/class rich kid playing in "easy mode" to succeed, versus a poor kid playing the "extra hard mode"). People who confuse what's possible but 10x more difficult for some income groups/backgrounds, to be the same as being equ…

Here's a crazy idea.

Instead of spending all that time and effort invalidating the opinion of those who have successfully made it out of those circumstances, why don't you ask them how they did it and what they think can be done to help those who haven't?

The problem with keyboard warriors is that it isn't actually action. It's akin to the studies showing that people who talk about what they're going to do get the same emotional satisfaction from actually doing it.

What you've managed to do is dismiss the very people who have the most insight and made yourself feel better to boot. What's not to like, right?

Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#34

Post by chr1 »

Onanymous wrote: post #11
scotty79 wrote: post #8

Poverty harms children. It's possible it harms young adults as well. The sooner we dismiss the notion that we need the poverty to motivate us to work and adopt some form of basic income, the better. It might be cheaper too than current system when you consider all the harm that poverty does to economy and workers.

Giving money to poor you only create more of those. People should be given a chance, not money.

Exactly, but if basic income becomes reality, it won't happen because people will want to help the poor, but because the amount of work required to produce food will become so small that people by their mere existence will generate more value, similar to the way people can get email accounts with gigabytes of storage for free.

Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#35

Post by RobertRoberts »

coldtea wrote: post #18

Cue the "I was from a poor family and I got into Stanford, everybody should be able to it" from people who don't understand how life, statistics, outliers, and relative effort required (for a middle/class rich kid playing in "easy mode" to succeed, versus a poor kid playing the "extra hard mode"). People who confuse what's possible but 10x more difficult for some income groups/backgrounds, to be the same as being equ…

>...the game is not rigged against those from poor backgrounds

Rigged isn't a fair word, it's just reality.

Also, as another commenter pointed out, there are people that are successful in a wide range of ways, money is just one of them. And those that had it easy early on often times don't do well later in life when things can get hard.

Edit: I spent time on the streets as a teen (yes it affected me) but my siblings did not, but they are worse off then me. I hit bottom and bounced back, they are still struggling in many ways. (not just money)

Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#36

Post by bryanrasmussen »

celticmusic wrote: post #33
coldtea wrote: post #18

Cue the "I was from a poor family and I got into Stanford, everybody should be able to it" from people who don't understand how life, statistics, outliers, and relative effort required (for a middle/class rich kid playing in "easy mode" to succeed, versus a poor kid playing the "extra hard mode"). People who confuse what's possible but 10x more difficult for some income groups/backgrounds, to be the same as being equ…

Here's a crazy idea. Instead of spending all that time and effort invalidating the opinion of those who have successfully made it out of those circumstances, why don't you ask them how they did it and what they think can be done to help those who haven't? The problem with keyboard warriors is that it isn't actually action. It's akin to the studies showing that people who talk about what they're going to do get the sa…

Well the ones dismissed where those who said I Did X anyone should be able, which is not exactly a very deep insight into the difficulties of doing X when hobbled.

Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#39

Post by bryanrasmussen »

helpPeople wrote: post #13
tiku wrote: post #4

Well it could be a lot of different things. No money for good food, sports and a lot of stress that accompanies having no steady source of income etc..

Sure, eating flour mixed with water is cheaper than vegetables. But I don't think people do that. Instead people wrongly think fast food is cheaper than home cooked food. Not sure your point of "no money for good food" Source- calories and protein and vitamins per dollar Edit- fast food is not necessarily faster. Carrots and protein shakes are faster than waiting in line for example.

I'm pretty sure that if someone thinks fast food is "cheaper" they are working off the "time is money" assumption.

Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#40

Post by bryanrasmussen »

Onanymous wrote: post #11
scotty79 wrote: post #8

Poverty harms children. It's possible it harms young adults as well. The sooner we dismiss the notion that we need the poverty to motivate us to work and adopt some form of basic income, the better. It might be cheaper too than current system when you consider all the harm that poverty does to economy and workers.

Giving money to poor you only create more of those. People should be given a chance, not money.

the thing that gave me the most chance out of anything in the absolute turning point of my life was free money. After which it was access to free schooling (which is a type of money), landing the first job a year later that I used to build my two decades career was on me though.

on edit: no wait, actually landing the first job required me getting advised to go to a particular place from a person that was a contact of someone from my last free schooling place. That guy later turned out to be a three counties class asshole but I guess I have to thank him for this.

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