I need to talk to someone with social mobility experience, and I'm out of ideas
Sorry this is pretty rant-y, I tried I promise lol:
I've posted on here re: topics similar to & leading towards this one, but not in this group specifically, so apologies if this is not the right place but idk where else to put it lol: I need to talk to someone who started life less-well off, whatever that means where you come from, and worked themselves into a better situation, and then actually finally broke through whatever the fuck this is that I can't get past right now.
I am solidly working/lower middle class (low low, like I'm not gonna lose my house but I also could never move, no savings but only overdraft -occasionally-, etc.): education background, higher ed, public service, etc—I got too many degrees & got on some good meds & found out mid-30s I have a lot of marketable transferable high-level skills, setting me on a course to replace all the side gigs with one Good Job. Almost got a couple of -really- good offers (like, verbal, then waiting, then layoffs, then a very disappointing email, rinse and repeat) as it unfortunately just happened to be the worst year to look for a job since 2008 lol.
One of the things I'm good at is talking/listening to people, and one of the things I was lacking in was a good network (the other BA/education grads I knew also don't have very good jobs), so I started talking to anyone & everyone, mostly aspirational/mentor types, they have all done very well for themselves & I think it's self-selectinf but they're all pretty sales-y, which is fine. And as another skill I can usually "spot" people, pattern recognition or maybe autism idk, so I'm only talking to people who have had success but also that I don't anticipate will be telling me to pull myself up by my bootstraps, etc.
So here's the thing: every single one of them has said basically (and I think genuinely trying to be helpful): "Why do you need a better job?", "What do you really want here?", "I had what you're after and it didn't make me happy, it was what you already have that did that for me finally," and so if you are having thoughts like that, thank you for reading, please leave lol, because I just cannot—like of course it's easy for you to say "Oh, a corporate job is just travel & restaurants, that's no way to live" when you've already done it! I want in, dude. And honestly it feels like something a woman in the 80s or 90s would have been up against—like "Oh you're better off where you are," ok sure let's fucking swap then. Jesus.
Ok sorry /rant. So what I need is for someone who grew up pretty low income to tell me that there's even a hope, a shred of a possibility that I can do better for myself & my family, because all I can find is people telling me I should be happy with what I have, and the truth is I am not, I'm spinning my wheels and going insane, I am running at maybe 10% capacity and it's driving me nuts—i can literally hear it now "boy I wish I had that much free time”: yeah? What would you do with it? Expensive shit, I bet. See? I feel like I could have both things, but no one wants to let me in—is it just in-group mentality & self-preservstion? Am I somehow threatening their status quo by being a real life person who could maybe do what they did? Because the closest I've gotten so far is hearing how someone along the way cut them a break & that's how they got their start, except none of them seem to be able to see the irony in saying that to me before telling me to just enjoy it as it comes, take it easy, my god I am going to have an aneurysm. And we're talking a significant sample of probably 15-20 people—is it just boomers? Am I doomed?
The most recent take was: "Well you seem like a person who's comfortable and middle-class, so it'll happen, you're fine." And I'm not, like, giving them the hard sell or asking for a job, I'm just mostly listening. I don't get it, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do when I'm trying to find out how someone got to where they are & they end with "You don't need what I have." Is social mobility even a thing anymore in the US?
Edit: gosh I just want to say how much I love this weird lil site, I am feeling about a million times better than I did this time yesterday, to the point that when the person I spoke with (the one who sent me spiraling & considering just going to bed & not getting out of it lol) messaged me to ask if I'd like to talk some more, I didn't say anything but "I'd love to!" because I didn't have to. Because they don't have to get it, they just have to help me find a job—seems like quite a few of you get it & that's all I think I really need sometimes.
(unless you're hiring then pls lmk lol)
That definitely feels a boomerism. That said, finding who 'cut you a break' is much easier in retrospect. At least for me, that always boiled down to 'finding a new employer' and 'relative dying.' And it's important to remember there are two main requirements nobody talks about to upward mobility: Wealth and Luck. Hard work only gets you so far. You're not gonna be able to start Amazon the way Bezos did unless you have a rich relative to gift you $100k seed money. Sometimes, even if you do everything right, life is still gonna throw a wrench at you and you end up with nothing.
I think a helpful framing for your mental health is to narrow what middle class actually means. Wage is basically useless in this regard because of the gigantic swings in CoL, but financial stability and luxuries are a much better markers. If you're overdrafting your bank account ever, you're not middle class. You're working poor.
And the real thing everyone needs to remember: Social mobility in the US has never really been a thing. The only time it had any significant truth was if you were white in the wake of WWII. Even then, most indicators you would use to judge it have gotten worse since the 1970s.
Social mobility only occurs when the poor have rights. Thats why they gutted union power.
Your link does not at all support the assertion that social mobility doesn't exist.
That's less than half, meaning that more than half of Americans born to the very poorest families do move up the socioeconomic gradient. This is just one citation - there are many saying the same thing.
I'm not claiming there's no room for improvement but we also shouldn't say it doesn't exist.
For what it's worth, your link does not support this either.
People from poor families often learn the importance of a good work ethic, which can go "far" when it comes to improving your financial situation in the working class, but its exceptionally rare for anyone to be able to "hard work" their way out of not having been born into the ruling class.
You can be like my dad and work your ass off for 50 years, and still make less in a year than some 22 year old kid who got to go to a fancy Ivy League school and work for a hedge fund makes in about 2 weeks.
That was kind of my point (linking the wikipedia page was dumb and lazy on my part). Lots of people swim around the bottom 4.5 quintiles if you're looking at income.
Very, very, very, very few accumulate enough wealth to not lose it all to one or two hard knocks. My inlaws ran a successful family business for 50+ years. Then their child got cancer and the 2008 crisis killed their business. Now they scrape by in a rented house collectively earning less than me.
Paul Krugman's writeup is a much better read.
I saw a video explaining how Starbucks in the 90s was this symbol of yuppie opulence & excess, and so older people still talk about how if kids would stop buying coffee every day they could afford a mortgage just fine, but then he showed the price increases for starbucks since 1995 (negligible) vs. housing (idk some insane percentage), and yeah you could pay rent with a starbucks habit during the Clinton administration but not today.
this was my situation. My father did a lot of hard physical labor his whole life, after my Masters I already made more net than he had as gross pay. And when he got injured at work he got let go and now has to fight to get his retirement.
someone explained to me, and it was painful but it tracks, that the farther away you are from actual measurable work, the more money you can make. And I think when we had decent safety nets (or if you have the benefit of living in a place that still does), it was a better tradeoff, but at this point I'm not sure the gamble is worth it honestly—it's just nuts to live in a world where you trade your knees for enough to pay the bills, and then we have robot knees but they don't pay enough for us to afford them. Something's off.
There are people in this world whose only job is to figure out the best possible way to extract value out of the labor of working class individuals. Their only purpose is to squeeze just the right amount of money out of people so that they just barely survive so they can keep carrying the ruling class on their backs.
The lawyers and accountants and bankers who set up tax shelters in island nations and establish laws that will allow their billionaires to save 1% extra on their taxes will make more money by sucking you dry than you and your family will ever see in your entire lifetime. And that doesn't even begin to scrape the iceberg of how the stock market is literally just an infinite money glitch if you have enough capital. Why is it that the company I work for can be hugely profitable every single year, yet I haven't even gotten a cost of living raise in 5 years? Where are all those profits going? (Rhetorical)
Well, it's more of a zero sum game that gets bailed out periodically. Just that most of the losers are those of us with 401ks.
Though those who own enough stock can use them as collateral for hard cash loans, avoiding the 15% capital gains taxes, paying a pittance of interest.
This is why we need to tax assets more than income.
I understand this discussion is in an USA context but I just want to remind you that most of the losers don't even have a 401 since they don't live in the USA, capitalism is global and the extraction of value too.
man you got me wanting to go out and get signatures or something : ) You're def. right, and it wouldn't hurt as bad to hear except literally the conversation that drove me here was with someone (another retiree ofc) saying "Well you're middle class for sure, you're not working poor because you know how all this works! You're so good at it!" Then why can't I find a job? lol /not lol actually, just a big sigh.
New employer is def. the ticket, and I am all too aware that even that is RNG/luck-dependent—if Taylor Swift's dad isn't a multimillionaire, she's still just as talented & none of us know who she is because we don't live in Reading, PA or wherever she's playing this weekend.
I appreciate both the encouragement and the reality check—I keep picturing Capt Picard saying You can make no mistakes & still lose, doesn't make it easier but it does make it less lonely.
They're wrong. You have no savings, you are not wrong to want/NEED a better job for you and your family.
Credentials: my parents were refugee poor and uneducated but became middle class. So, I grew up poor but am now also middle class. Not wealthy by a metric mile, but able to put kiddo through university and decently on tract for eventual retirement. I didn't do anything you're not already doing, I'm just older than you.
I'm going to give you the first piece of advice, and if you want / find it helpful, I am happy to share more. Advice: you know the saying, don't poop where you eat? The point is that there should be some distance separating your "input" and "output". Ranting is fine and great and necessary. Looking for opportunities is also great. But my first advice to you is do not mix the two.
Never rant to career mentors. Never ever rant to employers, and severely limit ranting to coworkers. Do not complain about one set of people to another set of people.
I've unfortunately found this also to be true for health care providers. List symptoms you have that are relevant for their speciality, and ask directly for solutions, do not ramble on listing every ailment and do not express pessimism or doubt as to the efficacy of their specialty.
Save all of that for mental health professions you hired yourself. Which excludes mental health professional appointed by someone else to evaluate you: be very much on guard for those as well.
Rationale: people in general do not like to be around negative energy, and if you share something sad, they want to try to help, but when they can't, they become frustrated and will look for ways to blame you so they "solved" that sadness and won't have to think about it further. Some of these people who tell you to be grateful are doing so to make themselves feel better.
Heyo! You are absolutely correct & I have probably done that more than I would like to realize, because it all feels so mushed together in my brain—but you're right, the "find a job" people aren't the "complain about the state of finding a job" people. I think I was doing a better job of being positive about things six months to a year ago, and maybe that's becoming apparent to people besides just me... hmm. I mean I think there's a (admittedly silly) part of me who hopes someone will see all this & think "that's just the person we need" lol. But that's not gonna happen.
I think that one is a winner & it feels like it is going to stick in there, & I would love any/as much advice as you are willing to give me.
This person is correct, I just want to add one thing.
When people ask the question, “why do you want a job like that?” It’s actually a test. The person might not be aware that they’re testing you consciously, but it is essentially a “choose your path” and it is really easy to pick the wrong option.
Not sure if you ever played fallout, but if you put a bunch of points in charisma you can get some easy shortcuts, but it will fail sometimes. You will have to keep shooting your shot even if it doesn’t work out every time.
I have lived in every class- poverty, upper class, and middle class. I’ve been able to adapt to all three eventually.
You do not want to seem desperate.
You either need to make a joke and make them laugh and acquire camaraderie or you need to pull some excellent HR speak out of your ass. This is the secret to upward movement.
Final note, I am a little turnt so I am going to apologize if my wording is weird and I will proofread tomorrow. Edit : sober now, said my point well enough lol. I’m leaving it.
I will say though, this is exactly how I have achieved and acquired everything I have ever wanted to get in my life.
For me every conversation is a fallout dialogue tree unfortunately lol—well, for better or for worse is more accurate, I guess. So I def. get that, unfortunately I can't savescum these people : )
I've been trying to find someone who sees what I'm saying & is equally turnt at the end of it, so glad you're here lol. Would you mind telling me what you would say to that question if you were me; I'm trying to think of something that doesn't go too far in either direction and it feels very wobbly
Haha it’s hard for me to whip out an example at random because I would cater my response to fit the person I’m talking to and whatever the job was.
If the person I was talking to was type A, I might say something that sounds similar to the company’s mission statement but add my own truth to it so I can say it confidently without feeling like I’m talking out my ass.
If I’m in a casual situation and the vibe is fun and the person is fun, I could potentially make light of some part of the job that is somewhat annoying. For example, i’m a nurse. “You kiddin’ me? It’s always been my dream to be around people projecting liquid out of their ass and mouth at the same time ;)”
What I would never say for example, is “it’s a job that I can make 50+ dollars starting with only an associates degree” lol. Even though I do identify with that to a certain degree I would not stick my neck out for someone in fear of my own reputation.
Gotcha—ok I'm good there then, because neither would I haha, mainly because I've had that type of conversation with coworkers I've been at it with for literal years, so they're already on the inside & it still comes back to bite you somehow.
You got this, bud, you're already meeting so many people and they like being around you, just gotta "close the deal" so to speak.
@Kale is exactly right on their entire comment, especially don't seem desperate. When someone is rich, their entire life gets divided into (a) "these people envy me and want something from me, they're always guilt tripping with sob stories and 'I just need one break' whining" and (b) "these people are safe, and make me feel safe". Sometimes they'll hire folks in (a) if they really need to and have no safe choices from (b), especially if they can easily financially handle/limit any wants from (a). But choice opportunities, referrals to other rich people, and ones that really provide mobility, won't be given to (a). Think hired help vs a peer.
Think of how much middle class people hate seeing signs of poverty, need, and being asked for spare change / have people squeegee their windshields / seeing panhandlers on the sidewalk. That's what some of them think of us.
Second piece of advice, work on promoting yourself as the best candidate to solving their problem -- their problem, not yours. Akin to what @Kale said here:
The unspoken reason is this: instead of looking for them to design, designate duties for, and arrange to have a position for you, sell yourself as the perfect candidate for a position they have already been desperately trying to hire. From what you said you should be able to do this, you're an edu major and you're excellent at research. Sometimes that position is "fun guy at the club".
Look at their lives, identify a problem they have that they're not able to solve, and present yourself as already being an expert for precisely that and say, let me solve that for you.
This works great at job interviews too: never answer why should we hire you with sob stories, always answer with "I will solve X Y and Z for you, beyond the tasks outlined in the ad". Employers are crazy allergic to hiring needy people who are just there for a paycheque, esp one who might ask them for an advance.They want "go getters and problem solvers". Go getting means having the initiative to discover problems and bringing solutions to the table without being asked. Which brings me to my third piece of advice:
Bring solutions, not problems
Again this works in every area of life. You know the dreadred "what do you want to eat" "I don't know, what do you want to eat" circular conversation? The eligible character from romance novels don't say that, they say, "I'm making Y for us, how spicy do you like it", or "I got us a table at a nice place, grab your coat".
For work, whenever you see something wrong, think about what is needed to solve this before bringing it up to your manager. If you really have no clue that's fine, present detailed troubleshooting steps you've already tried, and present it as "this is where I have gaps in my knowledge, can you show me how to bridge it". But asking for that is what separates a lead from a junior: you want to demonstrate that you're mid career already, with ability to handle small crises on your own.
Basically, managers don't want to hear there's a fire, they want to hear you've got your fire extinguisher ready and are on your way there, or better yet, it's taken care of now here's how to prevent it.
The reasoning behind this is that people hate feeling bad for something they can't fix. If you tell a manager, oh we're out of printer paper and I couldn't find a parking spot this morning, that makes them feel awful because now they need to find time to fix the printer, and they can't do anything about the company being cheap with spots. They might lash out to even out the bad feels. Or they might hold it in, but internally learn to associate you with bringing them problems without solutions. (Solutions: "hey I reloaded it with paper I borrowed from Dept X for now, who do I speak to to order more?" / "Btw I found a cheap lot up the slope from here")
This is great, thanks so much—I'll be honest, I can't imagine a situation like this popping up but maybe it's because I haven't been looking for them, so I will work on keeping an eye out for sure!
I just wanted to say that I think you’re doing the right thing - you keep putting yourself out there. That’s how I’ve mostly found my “luck.” Luck has rarely, if ever, fallen into my lap without me doing some footwork. And you’re also trying to learn how to keep putting yourself out there. I’m reading your responses and seeing things like, “yes, you’re right, I could do that better.”
Getting myself to a place I wanted to be was not a straight line, and it was often demoralizing and fraught with self doubt. Sometimes I needed to pause and decompress and recharge. Sometimes I just went nuts for a bit. But our experiences are accumulative and can enable us to overcome much adversity.
Keep putting yourself out there and keep being teachable. I believe it pays off.
Good Luck!
i am crying reading this dude, thanks a bunch—one of the things I'm learning is that even if things are easier for me than others, it doesn't mean they're zero-effort, and it's easy to get more tired than you realize, even from doing good work. I don't know what you've got going on but I hope you have a great weekend.
I get to rest this weekend, it’s going to be awesome. I see chips and a comfy couch in my future lol.
Don’t forget to enjoy as much of the ride as you can. I hope your weekend is a satisfying one!
I'm not your person, I have not really experienced social mobility.
I just wanted to say 3 things:
Best of luck and usage of your skills!
Socially, it can feel like a bit of a faux pas to talk about how much better your life is, so "you're situation is as good as mine really" is an easy opt-out from having awkward discussions about money.
But overall, those questions are useful. Social mobility is definitionally hard - if it wasn't, then there wouldn't be poor people. Not like anyone wants to be poor. The three bottlenecks are inheritance, luck, and scarcity (due to some combinations of unique skills, intelligence, or natural physical ability). Obviously inheritance and luck are not controllable, so on to the third.
Asking about your interests and what you want to do is ultimately pretty important. A priori you could say something like:
You could self-study the LSAT, take it, do well, go do a decent to good law school, take loans, get internships during law school, get hired as a lawyer, and then you're making above middle class income.
Obviously, easier said than done. And the practicality really depends on whether or not this is something that interests you.
Yeah, I've come to understand that because of my experiences as a kid & an employee, I am way more open to talking about money than most people—"it's not about the money" is another one that used to tick me off, and I think I understand what they meant now, but also I thought taking the "I want to improve myself/give my kids a better life/grow professionally" would be a better tactic for avoiding that, & it seems to get me the same answers. I definitely could have chosen... maybe not "better," but definitely "more lucratively," education-wise—the most frustrating part is that 3-5 years ago I was blissfully unaware of any of this, happily just going to work to do whatever for the amount of money they paid me, and now I'm faced with: I could do more/better, and additional income would be almost secondary but definitely part of that equation, but because of the way things have turned out, I kinda just... can't? Like there is not an exit that I can find. And I think I was hoping that talking to people who did it would help, if only to be reassured that there is in fact an exit lol
That sounds really frustrating. A couple of questions to start (this is not the sort of issue that can be immediately assayed from one essay):
What's going on with the job situation? Getting multiple offers followed by disappointing emails is not normal. It could be that the market is bad (if you're in software, it is pretty bad right now) but to be frank with you, mostly when I hear people say this it turns out the problem was them. Are you 100% sure you're not misconstruing things/something else weird is going on?
Can you go into more detail about how many mentors you've met with and what specifically the context was for them asking you all those questions? It's not bad advice, necessarily, so it could be being delivered straight - or they could feel that you're asking them for jobs, they don't want to give you one, and they're letting you down softly. It could also be related to this:
That's not good. Can you go into more detail?
Of course there is. It's extremely possible! I would say - and again, we all need more info before we can give advice that's worth anything - but the first step is likely to get your finances to a spot where you have some savings.
thanks for asking in a kind way lol—it definitely can read like "oof, this guy," but I was half a dozen interviews in at a HNW financial institution, and the top guy I had spoken with finally called & apologized because they had cut the position, he had tried to keep it going, thus the delay. It was a rare bird for sure, and I wasn't looking for a winning lottery ticket, which is why it was pretty devastating to then have it evaporate like that, but I was batting pretty high—at any rate I don't know what I could have done better, it's just hard to get in the room with someone these days period, plus I'm almost necessarily looking at changing fields, so that's at least two strikes. But I 100% get it, I felt the same way, that's part of why I'm here lol.
I have talked to probably 8-10 people, at length, who are all early retirees, or working when they want to, or in their second "for fun" career because they were bored at the lake house, about career paths, insights, specific positions, general advice & paths forward, etc—I have a great personal network, just not a professional one, and so I definitely (especially early on) could have confused a kind/polite "how can I help?" for an actual "tell me what you need," but it's continued to happen that way seemingly no matter how I adjust what I'm saying. So I would love for it to be me, for either of these first two, because then I could do something about it! I mean that, it would be a relief. But I have no idea. I want to do something I feel good about, and I feel like I am skilled enough that I could be making more too (& here I have had career coaches, recruiters--not that "recruited" me, just people I know who do that but again are not hiring me), etc. agree).
2b) I know right? lol—basically I am good at fitting in with whoever (aka masking, but it doesn't really take anything out of me, it's just what happens when I'm talking to someone), but I can't fake the financial part, so there's always the feeling I'm going to run out of money, and I mean it's like 20-25% of households so I def. recognize it's no good, but also there is not a lot I can do to mitigate besides "more income": pretty low COL area, no huge monthly expenses beyond the basics. A lot of it is one emergency rolled into payments for another emergency, x4 or x5 right before it's paid off, then a January after Christmas it all hits the same week, etc. I'm not struggling to buy groceries or anything (I have been within spitting distance of the poverty line before but that's why I have multiple jobs now), and in the past I have def. splurged where I shouldn't have on a vacation or something, battling the post-poverty "spend it while you've got it" mindset, but the margin is pretty narrow and when you're working 10-20 hours at multiple places, none of them are aware of or impressed at what you're doing at the other ones, so it's just a series of dead ends. Which brings me to
After further review, yeah, I am not giving anyone much to go on—I don't know how much PII I can put out there without doxxing myself, but i'm sure it's hard to make any guesses based on what you have. I'm a BA grad with a doctorate in education & 15 years experience in adult ed, training, research (got an MLIS in there), and a bunch of other unrelated things that equal "I'm a quick & efficient learner & a good communicator," but that first near-miss I had hiring-wise was the first time anyone said "Wow, you were in grad school & working doubles and got a 4.0, this'll be a breeze for someone like you." Got my hopes up : )
For sure.
I say this purely in the interest of helping you - something is not adding up. My guess is that you're sort of fuzzing details for any one of a thousand legitimate reasons, but it could be something more serious. My point is that If you have a PhD and are working only part-time jobs (am I misreading that?), either we're missing a piece of the puzzle and/or something is fundamentally wrong. If you're in an area where you can have 8-10 professionally successful mentors obviously you're not living in a dying town or something, which would rule out maybe the most obvious cause.
Got it re: the first job where you got to the end and it didn't work out; that's shitty but it happens. What happened with the other one(s)?
Yes. Broadly, PhD scholars are criminally underpaid.
And since OP is talking 15+years experience in teaching with a masters and/or PhD, that'll land you a nice solid 'just barely above median' wage, the kind you need to take a second job to pay off the rest of your student loans.
bingo
the saddest "bingo" lol
Yeah i'm not trying to be coy but again i get that, I can def. dm you whatever answers I can provide—college town, just a BA boy in a city full of BS grads; I do have a full time "day job," then all the part-time stuff on top. And like I said I know a lot of really neat people, just not the right ones for networking in this particular weird case I guess. I've had two other failure-to-launches, both tech/training: one was 3/4 solid interviews & they made a hire before I got to the last one (i suspected internal), the other was set to be hybrid/remote but they switched to on-site in a much higher COL city before I signed anything, so it would have been a lateral or even negative move, unfortunately. What's encouraging is that, truly, every interview I've had has gone well (and I do understand how easy it would be to misinterpret that on my end & just feel great despite doing a shitty job lol, but I promise that's one of the things I'm good at--I think if I had gotten all the way to #4 at the other place that one would have happened, but alas).
Part of the trouble may be that people don't know where to put me (or I don't know where to put me)--I found the rough position title area/niche I need, typically enablement/relationship manager/adoption consultant, etc, but those positions are at a crazy variety of companies, so even just searching on linkedin feels very scattershot & they absolutely do not know what spam to send me, so many options lol. And I don't know anyone at any of those places, so it feels like even more a shot in the dark--thus the networking, and here I am, I guess basically doing a more natural-feeling version of that, if networking is yelling "am I insane" into the void lol
Got it. Best of luck moving forward!
So I'm not sure if this counts, but I started out extremely poor, didn't even finish college, and I've had to pave my own trail as far as getting my career going with very little help. I'm also 35 so the experience is relevant and not ancient boomer advice. lol
I also struggle with ADHD and I'm on the spectrum but with relatively low support needs.
Now with that being said, I'm not currently in a position of happiness, I've been dealing with burnout and depression recently, but I'm doing better than most others I know. I'm single but if I was dating someone who had a job and salary similar to mine, we'd both probably be in a much better financial situation.
But at the end of the day I was born in a small town in Texas to poor drug dealer parents, and worked my way into the entertainment industry, then into the commercial printing industry.
WITH ALL THAT BEING SAID:
My personal belief is that my next move if I want to further my class position, is that I need to become a business owner.
I'm consistently working alongside people 10-20 years older than me getting paid the same as me but are fine because they got their houses 20 years ago and their mortgages are less than my rent. I've looked into the salaries of managers and upper leadership positions, and even then it's not looking great for me as a renter. Better, but not great.
But what I have noticed is that people who own businesses, despite saying they're always hurting for money, always tend to be the ones buying homes and nice things. It's frustrating because I too have asked business owners for advice and they all unanimously say "Don't do it, it's not worth it." Frustrates the hell out of me because they say that as they're buying their second home while I'm a couple missed paychecks away from being evicted.
Anyways, I chock it up to them having an entirely different baseline and lack of understanding into my reality. Like they just can't comprehend it.
So as I said, my next step is probably to start my own business somehow and work from there. I have quite a few ideas, but I'm still trying to survive so it's a slow process. A few of them are very lucrative too, it'll just take a lot of work to get there.
And I'm not sure if any of that answers your questions but I hope it helps. Oh, and I AM NOT trying to make anything about me, my communication style is to share personal anecdotes to hopefully inspire ideas or lessons to help you in your journey, so not intending to use this platform to just talk about me.
I think you hit on a few gems there. Much of financial mobility is about limiting expenses more than making more income. And it's much easier to do so when one owns a home and a business.
There's a reason so many immigrants buy homes: they know what it's like to own nothing, to have the rug pulled under you, and the power of passive income. Many would buy a house and rent out every room to afford it but they make it work.
Owning a business can be a risky money sink, but if one limits the business expenses to within what it generates, it can also be the only ticket out of being working poor. Many small indie businesses fail not because they don't make enough but because they are spending too much
TBH if you can save up enough to buy a home when the next economic crash occurs, that'll put you on the right track.
The beauty of economic crashes is that all the people with enough down payment money get to leverage that for incredibly low interest loans.
FWIW, I'm an elder millenial now at 42 and the first of my friends to buy a house didn't start till they were 33. I had boomer relatives asking why I didn't have a vacation home yet........
is there not some way we can Office Space all these boomers into pitching in some of this money they don't need? I don't care if they call it taxes or socialism, I want in
thanks, personal anecdotes are literally our oldest & most favorite form of communication & I am here for it lol--and I get what you're saying, for sure: believe it or not I've kinda half-assed tried it myself, and I did not like it lol. I don't want to be responsible for all that, I love the idea of running a shop or store or restaurant but I know I'd be one of the ones who was just over it & closed up the first year or two, and I think all the good stuff that a dude in their garage can invent has already been invented lol. But you're not wrong, I've got an MBA friend who is constantly paying $35 to start an LLC to do... something, i don't even know, and yeah eventually I guess something takes off--which is kind of how this feels, & at least then you're your own boss and all that? But I've done self-employment taxes before & I don't ever want to have to do that again lol.
And I think they're just trying to cut down on the competition! : )
Sorry for the necropost, but I'm just getting around to replying.
Trust me, I'm with you on that, and that's been my constant struggle with myself and thinking about starting to work for myself.
On that note, I did post a topic about exactly that here, asking for like business or creative partner advice and input, so when I talk about working for myself and running my own business, that's the angle I'm approaching it with, where I'll need help and have a partner where we can play off each other's strengths.
I ended up posting an ad looking for a business partner like that on both Reddit and Craigslist, and I was overwhelmed with the response. So overwhelmed in fact I kind of shut down and haven't pursued it which is entirely on me, BUT at least I know the option is there and there is a lot of willing people ready to help out with the parts that I struggle with.
You'd be surprised! I've got a couple ideas that while not entirely original, build upon established ideas in unique ways that I haven't seen and fills a niche in certain hobbies. It's the kind of thing that makes the idea unique enough to get customers interested over other options.
Kind of sounds like they're applying for grants. I also know people who do this and they have moderate success, but they also apply to all sorts of small or startup business grants. I'm not sure if they're deliberately trying to game the system, or if they're just using the resources available to them, but I know they need an LLC or something to apply to grants.
It's great that you're trying! Also yeah it's tough lol.
I wish they were applying for grants, I can appreciate a good scam, but no they just register their business idea, make a website, and then keep paying those fees every year or whatever for... three or four ideas now. I think that's just the part some people enjoy.
Also do not have advice because I think we're in similar boats, just chipping in amongst others here to say that I hear and feel your frustrations even if the folks you try to talk to in life do not
One thing I am curious about though based on one of your responses: you mentioned talking about this with early retirees, folks bored at their lake house, etc. At this moment, how close to the moon are you trying to shoot for? Because to me, being able to retire at all in, say, the mid-60s (which may be considered "early" now but let's just say that's the ideal expected age) is already extremely lucky. I have a close friend who is doing well for himself and he worked very, very hard to get where he is... but his parents retired in their early 60s, because of a fat inheritance, and that inheritance is doing work for him now. I can't talk finances or social mobility with this friend because his financial woes might be having to sell the 4 million dollar home he grew up in. And yes, I did hear the "this isn't all rainbows and sunshine"-esque line too. I'm sure it's not, but let's be real lol - over the years I've known that the biggest reason it wasn't rainbows and sunshine was because of pure lifestyle creep and it's a blessing that they still have a significant amount of assets.
But my point is, I'm trying to achieve financial independence, which I suppose translates to social mobility, and I'm not trying to get to my friend's financial position. I've been thinking about the question of, "how do I make more money?" a lot lately because I'm no longer splitting costs with a SO, which makes me anxious about my finances even though on paper I am doing Okay in terms of savings and projected costs with my current lifestyle. You mention the occasional overdraft and that is already giving me secondhand anxiety through the roof - I don't know the full extent of your financial position and your income stream(s) and costs, but going straight to what I consider to be extremely well off folks seems to be skipping way too many stones along the way.
To end my own rambling... also agree with the other comments reinforcing how big of a deal Luck is. Hell, my current job was luck - my old boss poached me from our previous company and he only did that because I made good use of an opportunity at work that skyrocketed my value as an employee (which was Luck), and I only got THAT job because I interned with someone from a coding bootcamp who was impressed with my work ethic. I wouldn't be surprised if folks felt cagey about talking about "how did they get there" because it might feel weird to admit that they were lucky. At which point I'm reminded of the phrase, Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. It gives me some measure of motivation/consolation because we can't just change our positions in life with pure elbow grease and effort, but I do want to make sure I'm in a position to grab opportunities when they do arise.
Good word, and I appreciate it—yeah one of the most frustrating factors in all this is that I'm talking to people where their itemized deductions would probably eclipse my combined income lol, which I assumed meant "gosh figuring out some way to work for a tiny slice of the pie should be easy, right?" and thaaat may not be the way, yeah. I think my favorite thing I have gleaned was from someone who was a financial advisor, obv. doing quite well for himself now, but he said that people who have plenty of money (like your friend it sounds like) don't see it as a valuable resource but just something to manage—another problem to deal with, so he said they were always relieved to see him because he could help with this problem. Of having too much money. I can't get my brain around what that must be like.
I'll keep this short rather than wade into philosophical nonsense:
The best way for the average person make more money is to keep job hopping. Once about every 2ish years. It's dumb, but it's the economy we've built.
Your current job will likely never value you at what you're worth after 2 years of skills growth and the new job will hire you to undercut the current person who's in the same position.
It really fucking sucks because it basically means your most valuable skills are networking, LinkedIn, resume building, and interviewing followed by whatever you need to do to not get fired for the 2 years you're somewhere.
Beyond that, yes knowing people helps. People hire people they know are good. This is sadly where the salesy bullshit of it all comes in, but if you can get to expo's and classes and the like of similar people that can also get you in front of the right people to break out at a higher level.
edit-
And to add, yes, this means that your REAL job for the back 6 months/year of any job is gearing up/finding the next one. 100s if not 1000s of applications and wasting time on that plus interviews. It's not fun, it makes no sense, but it's basically the only real leverage you get. If you're lucky and made a good impression somewhere they can say "well hold on we'll match or elevate" but if you don't have something else lined up then you're not likely to see it.
You know, I'm going to disagree here slightly and say that this is true for the average outlier. Meaning for the average tildes poster or whatever. But most people don't have skills in that sort of demand: only 44% of EU citizens aged 25-34 hold a uni degree. 44%.
That does not make them bad people - far from it. But if you don't have an advanced/in-demand skill set you're likely better off getting regular cost of living raises (or whatever) as you work your career at the same big multinational company. A very smart move for you would be to get a job at Volkswagen and stay there for your entire working life. If you're a software engineer or whatever it's a completely different story.
I guess my point is that your view of what's average is probably quite skewed towards people that are statistically well above that. I know this sounds very pedantic but I mention it because I've mentored a few people who just didn't have the skills to successfully switch jobs every few years or follow other common advice to wealth (get a STEM degree!, etc)... but tried and basically set themselves back 10+ years and with a mountain of debt.
I think this kind of raise has become the outlier. I know many people, skills regardless, who are lucky to get COLA and often get less. Point being that if you're getting less or near inflation you might as well hop. You're much more likely to see 5%+ even for similar skills at a similar job just because they have to adjust pay with inflation to get new hires. Many companies have people who just started higher than people who've been there for years.
Oddly I also feel that on average UNI degrees have wound up paying more, but only because of the extreme end of people I know (lawyers/doctors), while if you bounce them out, uni degrees have basically paid less than similar things (teacher with a masters vs friends in labor fields, union or otherwise).
Switching jobs frequently would not be a net gain for me unless I really didn't care about either the work I did, my reputation, or coming out of this with a pension on top of my social security.
Even then, a lot of pay in my field is stagnant, and switching industries would probably lead to even lower pay or work I deeply loathe. And I have a Master's degree. It's definitely advice that is specific to the field(s) someone is in.
Pensions are a half forgotten advantage most people have not dreamed of, so yes in your situation job hopping is not an applicable strategy. I feel like society would be so much more stable if we brought unions and pensions back. All this hopping, who does it help ?
The classical_liberal / free market argument is basically that a highly motile labour market allows workers and companies to allocate resources most efficiently.
There's a quite interesting argument that the biggest part of the difference in innovation between Europe and the USA is that it's much easier to fire people in the USA - and this seems to hold across Europe as well. (Scandinavian states are more innovative, and in some of them it costs even less to fire a worker than it does in the USA.)
The trick is to get this efficiency while also maintaining strong social safety nets - very few Europeans would be interested in the American welfare system. Some European countries (france, Germany) put that burden on the companies and, seemingly, suffer for it in terms of innovation. Others (the Scandis, Switzerland) have it done by the state, which seems to work better.
That's a very broad overview; if you're interested in having your views challenged I'd highly recommend the article I linked. It's quite good.
The pension is particularly unusual other than I'm a state employee, and having worked here for over a decade I'd be foolish not to go for the goal. I have been lucky enough to be promoted here but due to moving from a live on position to a live off, I net less than I did before.
But even before this job my prospects were pretty similar. Probably worse? I'm not interested in hopping - I don't have kids but I own a house and have a family for whom that would be a very negative experience.
I think American society keeps forgetting the value of stability.
I have dual citizen Canadian American family who keep boasting about how little taxes they pay, but when I look at their roads, their no public libraries, and how much they fret about healthcare, I really wonder why they hate taxes this much.
You have a pension: guaranteed income. And you have a house and an established network for supporting your family. These are worth a ton of money
Yeah, more income would be nice, it would definitely relieve stress. But it would cause so much more upheaval and side effects and I like the work I do.
So I heard for years about the "golden handcuffs" where you're not going to hit it big working in state/federal, but you also won't be able to afford to leave & do as well anywhere else—I also wasn't looking to get out, ever, until a financial advisor looked at what I had put into the system that I could port over if I quit for a corporate job, what I'd get from the state, & what I could get from a 401k or whatever maintaining that amount monthly, and he was like "oh yeah you can def. do better than the state my guy." So here we are lol. They do have me on healthcare though, which is why I'm having to aim higher outside government jobs...
I worked for a big, awful, corporation, but not in a "big job" and I am not interested in selling my soul.
I love the work I do, and I'm not interested in a PhD or hopping around student affairs becoming associate dean or director of career services. I am not coming from an angle of being handcuffed by a pension. It just would be stupid not to stay in the system even if I did move jobs at this point. And I am location locked by my house so unless a new state university pops up (unlikely) I'm good here. My cost of living is higher than average due to a disabled partner but lower than larger cities with higher paying jobs.
I could be a clinical therapist or do private practice on the side and I'm just not interested in that. I'm underpaid but that's mostly a function of how society doesn't value social work despite literally saving lives. I can't give you advice on the ladder, because I detest the hierarchy and the number of times I've been asked about getting another degree.
But it's absolutely possible to job hop up here. If you're struggling to move up within a civil service system then that is different perhaps than the corporate realm.
Heard lol. I already have too many degrees in the wrong things, and I asked but they said I can't respec this late in the game : )
DMing you, we've run into each other on tildes before & I feel like we have a lot in common...
you are 100% not wrong lol. The trouble is, that's all corporate & I'm stuck in government/social services/education, and I can't find an exit door to even be able to job hop—I told my manager and their manager I was excited about growth, opportunities, etc. and it did not go well, I've talked to other agencies/depts, no dice, stay where you are & keep your head down is the name of the game. And that's great if you're making 150k with public servant-style insurance and benefits, but there doesn't seem to be a way up or a way out, where I'm at. I'm fine swapping out every couple of years, if I can ever out of this system & into that one.
Yeahhhhh that matches my government experience/knowledge. Just to clarify can you not find an entry/exit into the private sector or don’t want to or something else?
Generally you can exit gov into private just at a trade off of benefits for pay.
Right, the #1 option: I can't get anyone in corporate to bite. I am pretty confident I could learn most of any "desk job" in 2-4 weeks, but instead of that feeling wide-open for opportunities, it seems like it's too broad & I'm going to have to find an "in" ( just for ref. I was looking at taking lots of FINRA exams for one of these previous ones & was passing practice tests between interviews—I would have gone ahead and taken the tests, but no one I don't know is going to hire me with no actual experience there, I'm afraid).
Honestly, benefits were definitely keeping me stationary for a while, & maybe that early momentum would have been helpful, but they are not as great as they once were, so higher pay would be fine—but that means I'm limiting what's available, & not in a way that's helpful to what I mentioned in the last paragraph, because at that level I'm up against their current internal applicants, others already in the field, etc. I know the transferable skills, got those, but it feels sort of like the "Do you have a documented disability?" where it's not technically to rule you out, but maybe that's how it works anyhow?
I just want to put a quick sanity-anchor out there: The higher up the ladder you climb, the more out of touch the people around you will be. It's up to you to keep your head on straight and not forget where you come from, and apparently having money makes that hard to remember.
I work with people who will, without blinking, ask "why don't you buy a new car?" They're wonderful people, I will 100% vouch for their character, but the concept of no savings and loan-debt is literally invisible to those that have had it easy in life. You need to be careful that any 'mentor types' you're talking to aren't going to lead you in a direction that'll drown you because you don't have the financial padding they do.
And they will always downplay where they sit in comparison to you. Because for you this is a do-or-die moment, and for them this is a quick convo before they gotta pack for their flight to Fiji over the weekend.
You got it—I always knew that about cops or paramedics or whatever, it's the worst day of your life & they're just finishing a shift at work, but I never thought about it from the other end, wow. And it totally makes sense that people don't want to talk about things that make them uncomfortable (except no it doesn't, I'm uncomfortable with this & I want to figure it out so bad I am here talking about it lol, but that's me not them).
I’m currently on a similar path to you, and currently I’m in a place where I’ve aggressively reduced my spending and also have a decent paying job, and last year I finally hit the milestone of more $ going into “life savings” every month than I’m paying rent each month. I figure currency conversion might make numbers misleading, but this ratio is, I feel, a good place to be.
I’ll admit that luck has played a part in my first step. I was able to pivot from a low wage supermarket job into a corporate job, because I took a (possibly irresponsible) leap in 2022 because everyone was talking about how it was totally an employee’s market. Even then, I quit my old job before I had a new one lined up, and ended up living off savings for three months, which is why this could have been a much bigger risk if it didn’t pay off. Even with the skills I’ve developed since then, I don’t think I would be able to pull off the same attempt in 2026, so lucky timing (or “grabbing the opportunity when it presented itself” if I was more of a bootstraps boomer) is a big part of how I took this first step.
However, not long after I made that step, I watched a video by Economics Explained which described how entire national economies develop, and how they transition to what we call “advanced economies”. I can’t remember which video it was, because it’s a concept that repeats in a number of videos as they examine different countries. The general arc seems to be that countries go from natural resource/extraction economies (mining, oil drilling, farming etc) to processing/synthesis economies (smelting, manufacturing, construction etc) to knowledge/service economies (finance, engineering, advanced manufacturing etc).
I’ve been starting to apply this same model to the possible trajectory of my own career, and in broad terms it seems to be applicable. In general, physical jobs like warehouse or factory work tend to be lower paid, and difficult to turn into higher paid jobs. However, within my supermarket job, I was able to move from shelf stacking to more customer service type roles, which didn’t necessarily pay better but had more of a career trajectory into 2IC and management type roles. And from my customer service role, I was able to move into the junior levels of management. I believe the reason I was able to move into the corporate world was because customer service included transferable soft skills. And now that I’m on the bottom rungs of the corporate world, I can see a pathway to specialise and eventually climb up to better paying roles (albeit probably not up to c-suite or executive positions) by picking up experience rather than entirely from retraining and education.
With all this said, I’m not sure if the pathway I’ve identified is something you’d be interested in, having a much lower ceiling that plants me firmly in middle class income levels. But I find it to be a helpful framework to think about things — a poor country with abundant resources cannot switch into a manufacturing or service economy overnight, but it’s certainly a trajectory they can aim for and build towards. For my own life in particular, slow and steady growth with more certainty is much more attractive than explosive but risky growth, but I somewhat get the impression you are approaching this post with more urgency than my ideas would offer.
Yeah, I do feel that if I had started this in 2024 instead of 2025 I'd be set now, but at that point I thought I had great opportunities lined up internally... whoops.
It sounds like you've identified a great path, and I'm glad it's working as planned, good on you for plotting & executing—because even if it was easier in 2024 than now, it still would have been way easier still to just maintain, believe me I know lol. That future pathway you're describing, where you can basically decide to exercise agency & "level up," just unfortunately doesn't exist where I am, being crushed to death under bureaucratic sediment layers, so like I was telling @Eji1700 if I can just find a way out...
I'm not actually sure if I grew up lower middle class or poor, but it was somewhere in there.
My story is probably less hopeful than you'd like, but it does offer some perspective.
I got lucky and picked a lucrative degree, but i didn't want to work in some giant faceless company so I stayed with small companies, at one point taking a gov job for a few years because they were willing to move me to a much higher cost of living area.
When one of those small companies was acquired by a larger company, the employees got new job offers from the acquiring company instead of the jobs just transferring, part of this was their completely different pay structure. Some people got pay raises and x shares of stock, others got pay raises and y shares of stock, some stayed the same and got y shares of stock. Nobody had any idea how to figure out if their offer was any good or not. In order to help gauge this, someone started a spreadsheet of current pay/demographic info and what their job offer was.
Holy cow what a mess. There were zero women in the company in the highest pay scales. All of the offers to women were lower than those of men, even with comparable time in the company and job responsibilities, sometimes with higher job responsibilities. I was leading teams with men who were making $20-50k more than me, their offers gave them big pay raises and thousands of shares of stock with the new company instead of the - I think it was a couple of hundred shares I got. It was a take it or leave it situation and we were supposedly going to keep doing the same jobs. That of course ended up a lie, but there was no way to know at the time.
Anyway, as much of a mess as this was, I did pretty well. I had stock options that got turned into enough to make a down payment on a house in a nearby city with a lower cost of living. Later, this company was acquired by yet another company. I was laid off but made enough in severance to live on frugally for a few years.
So I'm in the "I got lucky" camp. I found the original job that started the chain through a friend I'd met on reddit. I seriously loved that job and kept it for years, it's too bad that entire area of the company was wiped out. I knew I was being paid under market, but was ok with that because of how much I loved it there. I made enough to save money with that job, but not enough to save up for a house.
I graduated college over 20 years ago. The path I took left me worried about if I'll be able to retire or not. Add to this watching my dad retire and only be able to really enjoy it for a few years before his body and mind started breaking down. A different path would likely have me comfortable and confident about my future for at least a decade, even without finding work.
Now I've been unemployed for nearly 2 years and am starting to realize that my specialties are very likely going to go away because of AI. Even without that, the market is brutal right now and I have no idea how many jobs I've applied to that weren't even real.
I've been looking around at the people who appear to be doing well. We can never really tell if anyone is doing well financially or not, but we can try. Aside from retired Boomers, it seems to me that the only folks who seem to be ok right now are those who have always been what I consider rich and those that work in sales. I'm including Youtubers and podcasters in the sales group, because they make their money via advertising. Even the government has proven to be an unreliable employer. I don't have the personality for this kind of work, so I'm now looking to see if I can do some piece work that I can sell, because contract work is now as hard to come by as a standard job. If I can do well at that, maybe I can build a small business out of it. Hopefully I'll at least be able to wait out this mess and see what comes after.
Times of big changes are always a time of opportunity. We always hear about the winners from that, but there are also always folks who chose wrong and failed. It sounds like you have an idea of what you want to do. Someone else suggested figuring out what you'd consider success, and I think that's good advice. Make a list of the things you see as signs of success.
You don't need to answer these questions here, but think about them.
Once you have a list that seems at least somewhat complete to you, you'll have an idea of how much you'd need to make today to make this happen. If it isn't possible to make as much as you need at the very top of your current position, it may be time to start looking at something else that can get you there.
Thanks for sharing your experience—yeah it def. seems to be the 80/20 (90/10?) rule where some people do great, most people do not. One of my previous jobs had their "HR" lady send out a budget spreadsheet that included salary info that was "protected" (it was not), similarly spicy discussions but in the end really nothing changed from what I hear, other than I left lol.
I have most of the things you listed nailed down; fortunately I was able to buy a house when they were semi-affordable, so one checkmark there, but that also means I would probably never be able to afford a house anywhere else : ) Not super high COL though--retirement-wise I would get bored so fast, even if i was old, and I'm not doing anything I can't keep doing for a good while. Vacations are a huge motivator in all this, I want to take my kids to all the great places while they're still young & at home, for sure; I've never worked anywhere with super-restrictive leave policies, but unless there's a trip I also almost never take a day (maybe that would help lol).
I'm so glad you asked about charity, because when I thought I'd be making way more for a minute, the thing I was the most excited about was being able to have things & cash on hand to just give away, like during the holidays, send some cards sure, but have a box of like surprisingly nice... something by the door to just hand to the mailman, the UPS guy, your neighbor, etc. I'd love to have enough to be able to be pretty ridiculously generous. If you want to take a stab at a goal # I can send you whatever info you would need, but based on my math 130-150k sounds absolutely luxurious.