I've seen cases where the engineer who brown-bags his lunch, and folds the bags for reuse, ends up in a 7-figure divorce. I've seen the fellow who blows $20 on sit-down restaurant lunch every workday, and then gets take-out Chinese for dinner, and who shows up with Starbucks coffee every morning... amass and maintain a very healthy sum, because even if he's profligate in the small, he deftly avoids blunders in the large.
Yes. Two things can be true at once.
Heh, heh, who's laughing now??
I was Navy submariner, an engineer, and then a lawyer. I packed my lunch every day in my grandfather's lunchbox (almost always leftovers from dinner the night before). My grandfather was an iron miner on the Mesabi Range in Minnesota. That lunchbox became famous among my office mates.
You are living up to your user name.
Smith is adrift because he didn't have a strategy, a plan. He had it happen to him, rather than expect it, or at least, go out on his own terms before it happened. That's the point. Don't get gray-hair-riffed, unless you are getting rif'd as part of your strategy (which is what I did, but I will never go gray).
Well, yes. But if I may, with specifics:
One of the four dams above my city might break and flood the entire city killing thousands.
I'm not suggesting that we should have overwrought dread of edge-cases, stymying our lives just-because. What I am suggesting, is that there's a kind of insidious law of nature, where the well-prepared are as it were punished, while the dissolute and flighty are somehow nurtured, as if some guardian angel has mercy.
Thank you for sharing. I appreciate hearing other people's world views. I just don't happen to hold your view. I think it is much better to be wise than a fool. Here is an ancient proverb I like:
Same here. We bought our first house because DW got a small windfall (enough for a 5% down payment and closing cost) and we didn't know what to do with the money, so we bought a house! Research says that homeowners have a higher net worth compared to the renters. My theory is that homeowners have to run a tight show (at least early in the homeownership journey) so they get used to spending less and saving more (and making more!). I remember few months after we bought the house, we realized that we barely have any money left over at the end of the month (after 401k, mortgage, etc.). That is when I started looking for a better job. I doubt if I would be that motivated if we didn't buy the house at such a young age.
Old buddy at w*rk would hear someone trying to come up with that old saying and he would always offer: "You can lead a fish to swim but you can't drink a horse" whereupon everyone would throw something at him.
