[_nrv9]

I think you can have your experience while understanding the massive disparity.

I am the same as you. Purely self-made. Handed nothing.

Here's a situation I saw which changed my view from yours to the person you're replying to:

My friend is successful. He did not go to college since he couldn't afford it. Rather he worked after graduating high school and attained a senior engineering role before his peers had graduated college.

Well...the company he was working for folded. He desperately took whatever the next job was because he was young and did not have much savings to fall back on nor a college degree. That next job was across the country and in his words "was a waste of two years". He stayed at that dead end job for resume purposes in a city he hated but had to relocate to.

Now I have another friend. That friend graduated college, moved to a new city. His parents paid for the first year of rent in the new city while he looked for the best possible job in software. He got a great job.

You see the massive disparity? The first guy essentially threw away two years of his youth working a cubicle farm job because he did not have inherited wealth to fall back on. Today, he's doing very well but that does not change what happened to him.

Seeing that first hand changed my "boot straps" thinking. The world isn't fair although I agree, you can make it more fair.

[castlecrasher2]

Certainly true. My main point is I have friends like your latter example, and the time I spent frustrated they had what I didn't left me further behind financially and emotionally. Changing my attitude to "what do I need to do to get what I want" and working towards my goals has left me happier and better off.

[_nrv9]

Yep, we agree!

[username90]

The first guy worked as an engineer long enough to get a senior role but didn't have any savings? 100% avoidable problem. It isn't like the second guy would get senior engineer pay for the whole year from his parents, and if the first guy lived cheaply like a student he would have more than enough to survive a year or more.

[imtringued]

The point is that you don't have to "avoid the problem" if you are rich. You'll do better despite your failures.

Meanwhile when someone is poor they are expected to have zero failures in judgment and the poor generally have better judgment but when they do have a lapse the effects are catastrophical.

[_nrv9]

>Meanwhile when someone is poor they are expected to have zero failures in judgment and the poor generally have better judgment but when they do have a lapse the effects are catastrophic

You are 100% right.

And to respond to the other commenter -- the first guy didn't have much in savings because he was sending money back to his parents.

That's how bad it is. When you are born into wealth, there's a sort of "rubber band" helping you move up the ladder. When you are born into poverty, that rubber band pulls you down instead of propelling you up.

I can speak to this myself, I have helped my parents/family enormously at cost to my financial wellbeing.

And by the way....when a son/daughter does well, gets into software, makes a healthy $150k salary in SV, that does not change the financials at home. That $150k salary has to keep coming and you have to keep giving it to your family to make a real difference over time. At the same time, you have to pay SV rent, you have to buy a car, go on dates with your significant other, have a life of your own, etc.