Anyone FI because of privilige (Article)

[Time2]

I was on a car trip with my daughter, I was reading on my phone when I ran across this article. The article is about a FI 31 years old. He fully admits his privilege and lists why. I got to the section about why he is privileged and I started laughing and told my daughter, "You're Privileged!" These are the points I was reading.
1. Family support

Here’s some examples of how a supporting family can help:

• Paying all or part of a college tuition.
• Sending you to a private school with upper class networks.
• Allowing you to live in a stable home during rough periods, providing meals and a loving, encouraging environment.
• Providing extra pocket money to pay for random expenses and credit card bills.
• Supporting you through sudden emergencies and medical issues.
• Helping with your first car purchase.
• Helping with rent.
• Helping with your first home down-payment.
• An inheritance, no matter how small.
• And even just the existence of a two parent household brings a ton of advantages. This is especially a disadvantage for people of color, particularly in the Black community where 64% of children are raised in single-parent families as of 2019

She hit about all those points.

btw, she said she knows that she's privileged and is very appreciative.
She's is 6 months away from being a dentist, starting out debt free. Also
Saturday, she got the news that she passed the Boards.

https://medium.com/armchair-musings...ved-financial-independence-at-31-1a2c21084b1d

 

[Extra Medium]

This is great!

I know we all hope to have a Horatio Alger sense of building our lives from nothing (pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps). It's a fundamental part of being an American. But it's powerful stuff to acknowledge the help we've gotten along the way.

It may not be as extreme as "Born on third base, made it to home plate," but being aware of my own privilege helps me to be both grateful for my family and upbringing but also more forgiving of people still struggling, who probably didn't start on the same place.

 

[Sojourner]

• Paying all or part of a college tuition. ✔
• Sending you to a private school with upper class networks.
• Allowing you to live in a stable home during rough periods, providing meals and a loving, encouraging environment. ✔
• Providing extra pocket money to pay for random expenses and credit card bills. ✔
• Supporting you through sudden emergencies and medical issues. ✔
• Helping with your first car purchase. ✔
• Helping with rent.
• Helping with your first home down-payment.
• An inheritance, no matter how small. ✔
• And even just the existence of a two parent household brings a ton of advantages. This is especially a disadvantage for people of color, particularly in the Black community where 64% of children are raised in single-parent families as of 2019 ✔

Yep, definitely privileged over here, judging by these criteria. I will never try to deny that I had lots of help, support, and good luck on my journey to FIRE. I was very lucky to have been born to loving, supportive parents who gave me good values (including frugality) and to have inherited a good set of genes that steered my brain towards making the right decisions.

 

[Kerfuffle]

The FI world is one tailored for spoiled kids for sure, it's one of the things that bothers me most about the movement. Is FI on the backs (and wallets) of well-meaning relatives and friends really FI?

FWIW, I can't imagine my folks ever doing anything on that list for me, and yet still I know I'm privileged just by being lucky enough to be born into a wealthy nation.

 

[athena53]

Yes, I was born on third base. I know that. Mom and Dad saved from the beginning to put all 5 of us through college. I learned about investing when Dad started in the late 1960s, back when it wasn't all that common and you had to go downtown to The Stockbroker. My first husband was a financial train wreck but $100K from an inheritance from his parents served as the down payment on a house which we sold when we divorced 13 years later. My share of the profits was 40% (I'd worked FT the entire time and he was unemployed the last 5 years so I wasn't exactly a gold digger) was $100K, which I put down on another house and sold 7 years later at a $200K profit and moved into a LCOL area.

My family didn't live high off the hog but I was comfortable in good restaurants and the fancy resorts where my professional society met. Reading "Hillbilly Elegy" made me remember not to take that for granted. (When asked whether he wanted red or white wine at a gathering at his Ivy League university, he had no clue.)

I certainly know part of my success was good decisions and hard work but I know I was given a head start- same for my children and grandchildren.

 

[Magus]

Paying all or part of a college tuition. NOPE
Sending you to a private school with upper class networks.NOPE
Allowing you to live in a stable home during rough periods, providing meals and a loving, encouraging environment.NOPE, but I would not call this privilege. Folks in the poorest parts of the world do this as well and always have
Providing extra pocket money to pay for random expenses and credit card bills. NOPE
Supporting you through sudden emergencies and medical issues. NOPE
Helping with your first car purchase. NOPE, but again I wouldn't call this privilege if its a beater
Helping with rent. NOPE
Helping with your first home down-payment. NOPE
An inheritance, no matter how small. Small one from Aunt. But I'd disagree with the second part
And even just the existence of a two parent household brings a ton of advantages. This is especially a disadvantage for people of color, particularly in the Black community where 64% of children are raised in single-parent families as of 2019Yup, and you can thank LBJ's great society and other events that came out of the 60s for that. Before 1960, Blacks had over 80% of kids born to two parent homes. This is not a privilege thing - its simply a cultural thing. All other races are moving towards less two parent homes as well as its become more accepted and we have far more social welfare nets today

My parents were poor when I was growing up. I make 10x at 39 what my father did 3 years ago, which was his peak by far.

 

[Amethyst]

1. Born into a stable working-class family, that valued thrift.

2. Although the older generation didn't attend college (some didn't finish high school), everyone liked to read and had good vocabularies. This verbal inclination is very strong throughout the extended family, cousins, etc. One of my earliest ambitions was to learn to read, because I was so annoyed that everyone around me could, and I couldn't!

3. Not exactly angels, but no gamblers, drunks, or similar money-sucking habits. Nobody went to jail, was evicted, or lost a home.

4. Father drove 30+ miles each way to job sites in his union territory, sometimes in shaky areas, so his kids could attend decent public schools.

 

[CardsFan]

As long as we are keeping score

• Paying all or part of a college tuition. No
• Sending you to a private school with upper class networks. NO
• Allowing you to live in a stable home during rough periods, providing meals and a loving, encouraging environment. YES
• Providing extra pocket money to pay for random expenses and credit card bills. Not after college, and even then very minimal
• Supporting you through sudden emergencies and medical issues.Nothing financial. Moral support, sure
• Helping with your first car purchase. NO
• Helping with rent.NO
• Helping with your first home down-payment.A little. DFIL did provide a small no interest loan that we paid back quickly
• An inheritance, no matter how small.A little
• And even just the existence of a two parent household brings a ton of advantages. This is especially a disadvantage for people of color, particularly in the Black community where 64% of children are raised in single-parent families as of 2019Yes. This is probably the most important benefit anyone can get

 

[RetiredHappy]

I was privileged growing up and even got a small inheritance when my parents passed away.

My son is definitely privileged but he is on the autism spectrum. I am sure he would rather be normal and not privileged. He went to an exclusive private college prep school starting from middle school because I wanted to shelter him from public school bullies which he suffered through in elementary school. He also did 2 years in an international school when I was on an expatriate assignment. I paid for his 2 Bachelor degree.

I paid for his first and current car. My son now owns his home outright. He worked for us for 5 years and had some savings which he used to pay for the home and I covered the rest. He gets a funded investment account and yearly allowance so that he never needs to worry about money. He is currently working about 30 hours at a humbling minimum wage job and I am very proud of him. If I get run over by a beer truck tomorrow, he becomes a millionaire.

 

[razztazz]

No to all of the above. I take exception with a couple though. I don't think my parents not letting me lay there and die from acute appendicitis qualifies as a "privilege", and "an inheritance no matter how small."? How does $100.00 bucks from "uncle Larry" one-up the "underprivileged? If they're gonna count it, at least make it something that counts. Sounds like focus grouped creating a narrative. (Fashionable nowadays) Btw, I received no 100 bucks and had no uncle Larry.

And anyway most of that list are not "privileges". Down payments? You're gonna buy a car anyway. Most people do. Or a house if you want one. Almost everybody does somehow. Spotting someone a few bucks for such mundane purposes is hardly a privilege and by and large does not affect outcomes. Two parent home? They're referring to mass statistical outcomes. Individual outcomes are unknown and variable. I had a two parent home. That was the nightmare.

I won't touch the one about people of color for obvious reasons but it wasn't that way 50-100 years ago. See Thomas Sowell's writings on the subject.

There's privilege and then there's simply the things that happen to people along the way. Or are fortuitously avoided. And, as usual, by my observation, personal experience and academic background as an historian and sociologist, many of life's burdens (anti-privileges) are self-inflicted. I see it in my own family. The whole list is strained in my opinion.

 

[MichaelB]

Thanks for an interesting discussion