I’ve seen the graphic below a few times over the last several weeks. I understand its message and have essentially tried to follow the hard decision path for most of my life, while imparting the same advice to my three sons. I’m sure they got sick of me telling them that no matter what amount you make, if you spend less than that amount, you will get ahead in life financially. Of course, this graphic is too simplistic to describe the real world, where medical misfortune, bad luck, bad investments, or bad people running the country can and do prevent many hard working honest families from ever achieving the “easy life”.
We all know life is never easy, but it can potentially be easier if you make enough right decisions along the way. The graphic reminds me of a quote sometimes attributed to John Wayne, “This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.” I think that captures the truth better than hard decisions lead to an easy life. It does seem the level of stupidity across the general populace has risen to astounding levels over the last couple decades.
I was lucky enough to join the full-time work force in 1986, when the country still had a growing economy and short-term hard decisions would usually lead to an easier life over the long-term. Neither of my parents graduated high school, but a father driving a gasoline truck for 40 years and a stay at home mom, could raise three kids in a 900 square foot row home in the suburbs outside Philadelphia, and they could all graduate college with little or no debt. Those days are long gone. My parents made hard decisions their entire lives, to make their kids lives better than theirs.
I think another name for “hard decisions” are decisions to delay gratification. For me, decisions about my career, kids, real estate, and not keeping up with the Joneses, constituted my hard decisions. Out of college, I put in two years at an accounting firm, even though I hated every minute, because I needed two years of CPA experience to get my CPA license. I didn’t want a CPA license other than to put it on my resume to get a good job with a corporation. I was 23 years old and wanting to have fun every weekend with my buddies, but I made the hard decision to spend 10 weeks totally dedicated to passing the CPA exam, and I did.
I knew an MBA was another stepping stone to a better paying job, so when the corporation I had joined made it clear an MBA was not valued there, I left and went somewhere it was valued. I then proceeded to work my full-time job, including many weekends, and get my MBA at night at Villanova. It was hard and it took three and a half years, but it was worth it, as the Treasurer position at IKEA came available, and my CPA and MBA allowed me to get the job.
Just as I got the MBA and the new job, our first child was born. My wife had a good job at a social services organization, but we made the hard decision for her to stay at home and raise our kids, as two more sons were born over the next six years. Our overall family income was lower after my wife left the workforce, so we delayed buying a single family home, took vacations with our parents, drove used cars until they died, and rarely went out to restaurants. We managed to live beneath our means, contribute to my 401k, put the kids through Catholic school, and spent quite a bit on hockey equipment, because the boys loved hockey.
Many of my hard decisions when it came to my career most certainly did not lead to an easier life financially. I refused to lie or shade the truth at IKEA, resulting in my termination, because the unqualified female diversity CEO was too stupid to grasp the facts I presented. I realized the willful ignorance to my projections of the CFO at Toll Brothers in 2006 made my position untenable, so I took a substantial pay cut to move to Wharton. After 13 years of dedicated service, the new CFO turned out to be a despicable human being, and I took another pay cut to come to my current, and hopefully last employer.
So, from my perspective, not all hard decisions lead to an easier life financially. But the hard decisions I’ve made have kept my integrity intact. I’ve never lied, cheated, or done anything I considered unethical in my entire career. I also choose to no longer become friends with co-workers outside of work, because I’ve been stabbed in the back too frequently by people I thought were friends. My blog is my outlet for my anger, depression, and desire to tear off the veil hiding the treasonous, evil, corrupt, and psychotic actions of the government, media, banks, and Deep State.
I see what my kids and honest hard working people across the land are up against at this point in history, and I know hard decisions today are not likely to lead to an easy life ever again. At least, not until we go through a horrific and catastrophic financial collapse, with a civil and global war thrown in for good measure. Talk about hard decisions. How about life and death decisions on a daily basis for several years? We have no chance at a better future without the collapse of the present day dystopian debt empire.
My kids are all hard working, have decent jobs, have no debt, and still have absolutely no pathway to owning a home, without being strangled by debt to do so. Even rent for modest apartments, is a huge burden. Life is now hard for everyone, not only the stupid. We aren’t in Kansas or the 1980’s anymore. The people who did this to America and the American people have names and addresses. Many of the people they have screwed over are the ones with the 300 million guns they want to confiscate. At some point, those guns will need to be used. Then we’ll see whose life gets hard.
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“Hard decisions used to lead to an easy life’ … at least for some (but nowhere near all) who survived those decisions.
(Lots of g.i. Johnny-Joes never come marchin’ home again. Lots who ostensibly did never did, either … for one sliver of eaten up & unseen, so book-cooked un-calculated, pie.)
& some like to talk about it.
Or bugle it (as case may be). Bull Elk in rut/osterone’ll wake ya right up in the morning. Does no good to tell those big ruminants to get a room, either. WHF shame-lecturing ‘em has no effect, either.
No such thing as home ownership. Not for ordinary people. Property taxers are the dingos that ate that baby b/ruth/a.
I left out of a factory job in ’83. Behemoth fortune 500 or 100 or just too damn big & made guys-connected 24/7 operation.
(Went young man west (Greeley, Horace) to get an out-from-under education. Oh, boy. Say, boy! – do it Foghorn Leghorn style – unpack that bag! Didn’t that ‘toon feature an over-under shotgun? Or was it binary, LR, barrels? Great for weddings & other educations too, it turns out.)
Even then robots/mech had been replacing workers. Many of those workers were as LLPOH describes. A few were sharp, kept the machines running, putting out first grade.
Those latter few never saw promotion. Machines down & 3rd grade would have resulted.
“Social” engineers saw promotion. Same as I’d seen earlier in the row-hoe at mom&poperations.
Scale invariant are the turtles. Or maybe that should be cooing turtle doves.
Twice to be unionized or not to be unionized was voted latter. I voted latter twice.
Some years later, back for a funeral, the plant was shuttered. Jobs that over-bought life”styles” were shattered. Lots of missing shutter slats.
But here is the (other) thing.
The blue-collars, unionized formally, or informally by being in the right econ-depressed place at the right time (like after being last man standing post-war, too) & being tax incentive-scooped up by the connected big suckorporation, is just color revolution-variation of the unionized white-collars.
Cartels & monopolies & crenelated credential ramparts are unions … are crooks.
Doctors? Fucking criminals. The worst. Lawyers? Ditto.
That’s where some money is, maybe?
Is why criminal Willie Sutton robbed criminal banks, too. “Cuz that’s where the money is!”
Anything where the competition is throttle body-modulated by rockefellars/carnegies types (like “healthcare”) – & its always those big buyers of color of law types – rather than by actual competition, is organized crime.
Send lawyers, guns, & bankers goes the song, sort of.
Competition is for losers. ~ Pay/up/Pal Peter, It Takes A Thief, Thiel
There is no competition to “crush” in those domains – – those domains-wielders have crushed competition. Under color of law it, competition, flat ain’t permitted.
And that’s why, for just one mushroom cloud example, death-&-sickness-dealers get away with Orwelling themselves “healthcare.”
Those competitionless domains have crushed the American pie. But that pie-crushing is what it has always been about, from the King-supplanting get-go.
So, can’t beat ‘em join ‘em? I “self-select other” – “free will” is a tradition, too.
Big Education. A union. Saw the exact same workers/dynamic there as at the factory. But uni put out a looooot more 3rd grade. But still collected 1st grade pay. Well, mulct.
If its all about the money, then the pragma-utilitarian face of it is Gordon Gekko. Or maybe Warren Buffett’s Geico Gecko w/o all the warm/funny/cute reptile stuff. Looking around that’s just about all there is to see.
Seams are strained because that rapine has been going on since the get.
As have been the self-congratulatory/serving story-narratives.
As have been “the competition’s” story-narratives. Like loyal opposition national socialism.
Demolition derby it is. ♾️ Dago sees the death drive/wish. I do too. But it is ubiquitous, not concentrated.
Mom, rest of the cast of characters, is just as dead as her son that she has just killed/sacrificed. And that ritual is traditional, too. “Babraham, kill your son!” And not even god could intervene. :
Unique individual, unique time, unique place. Part of the self-made recipe seems, often, to redact those parts of the casserole. Despite nobody selects any of those ingredients from a menu. Everybody gets what they get. What they passively got.
From that pre-existing stewpot much bowls of passive-aggressive, & aggressive-passive, is ladled.
“What one man can do another can do!”
Yeah. But the false message here is that any & every other can do, too.
((Or did. I don’t spit coffee thru my nose anymore when I read vicarious-caucasian displaying the personal pride flag & “participation” trophy about what some other caucasian did.))
Not to mention the falsity that only a script can pull off: the self-made billionaire hasn’t killed the bear, yet – & until its done there is no guarantee that it will be done.
For every one done that makes the grapevine, there are more undone piles of bear shit in the woods that’ll never be heard about or from.
Ain’t that right, Hatchet Jack?
As for fuzzy-wuzzy Alec Baldwin-bear, killing a grizzly with a pointy stick was never a possibility. Accidentally killing a Ukrainian (which is Bear country) woman with a “prop” gun is what happened.
Make-believe gets rudely intruded upon all the time. But does Frampton Come Alive?
Not so much.
Other notes I’m hearing:
“Not the better half.” But he was already dead. Inside caught up outside after the ’29 crash when he jumped out a high window. Bonus points for the Leo diC WEF connection.
“He was dead & didn’t know it.” “Men like you haven’t figured out … yet…” Unless what’s coming on so seemingly strong is so QQ – qualitatively & quantitatively – different this time, from what it was in the last great depression that men like that will see their edges dull/ed.
I Am Mother, I am machine, I’m the biggest tool you’ve ever seen. Tool-maker wo/man en-tooled. Not new, of course, that tool & die-namic just keeps tooling along in its Chevrolet, toking on a number & digging on the radio … via Omaha … to tell that oracle there there ain’t no spoons, bullets neither, silver-linear or otherwise.
Another unforgettable essay by I Forget.
I graduated high school 1980 which rhymes with nothing. 78 is great, 79 fine, 81 is lots of fun. 80 is nada.
Our country is a wreck waiting to happen.
In 2014 we officially moved here to podunk. This year we “sold” the treehouse (little shack our builders lived in for 5 days a week to build our log home) and have discovered the banks now have to know if the septic tank is metal or concrete. Apparently, it is environmentally better to crap into concrete. And banks care greatly about the environment.
Fortunately, our buyer is a 28 year old young man who has already learned to make hard decisions and has 60K to put down, making any loan officer willing to ignore our metal septic tank.
But, even if the bank will not loan…someone will.
The young man works for the Department of Agriculture and says he decided 2 years ago he needed to get a home in the hills.
We say Welcome to the suburbs of the sticks.
He probably made it just in time.
Lady 80 & the intelligent Tramp, out to podunk. Plus, I saw that purty red Little Old Lady From Pasadena car you have … rhymes “cool.”
Brevity is the soul of wit–William Shakespeare
Will didn’t pay the bills by writing fortune cookies.
But even if he had, & did it better than anyone else, that wouldn’t, & doesn’t, obligate me, anyone else, to emulate him.
Some write for themselves. Others for various audiences. Muses’piration – prostitutes’piration spectrum.
Plain ignorance (benefit of doubt) of what words are/for has something to do with that spectrum.
That comeback would have been 10x funnier if you’d have quit after the word cookies.
Ever Visit before?
https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=123822.0
A few ‘Industrial’ syrup dudes, Think You’ll like it/be impressed.
THE FACT THIS PERSON IS A “BE-LIE-VER” (BELIEVER) OF THE “CATHOLIC” RELIGION SAYS IT ALL!
HE IS A “MIND-CONTROLLED” IDIOT SLAVE (LAUGH!)
I USED TO BE A VERY RELIGIOUS MINISTER MYSELF…BUT ONCE I LEARNED THE
“ORIGINS” OF ALL RELIGION…ESPECIALLY THE “ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH”!
YIKES!!!
THIS WHOLE ARTICLE “SMACKS” OF PURE “RATIONAL” ABOUT “GETTING AHEAD” IN LIFE!
“KNOWLEDGE” IS “POWER”, AND TO LIVE BY IS…IS “HOW” ONE GETS AHEAD!
RELIGION “ENSLAVES THE MIND”!
BECOME A “SPIRITUAL BEING” AND LIFE WILL BECOME MUCH EASIER!
What you say is true but please stop yelling at us
Yeah, welcome to the club!
I learned coding and computing BY 1976, lobbied the WH for the release of the NCP format internet for the bicentennial (GHWBush flatly said NO!), and I made “Who’s Who/US Students” for the bicentennial. In summer 1980, the guys from the NYC/NJ Playboy club about lost their lunch when a 20yo southern boy from the woods in Florida could CODE on a DEC VAX117-8 mainframe system running CP/M OS.
In ’93, we confabbed the first Motorola cable modem with Comcast (you’re welcome) and ported the Motorola NextOS to iOS for Apple but they sat on it for almost 15 years in the lab(a flavor from the original AT&T UNIX).
After 9/11, we were all bum rushed OUT of decades long careers, doors slammed, and emailed with “learn to code’ for the coming “commercial” internet.
Been there, done that, got the 45, vinyl, poster, tee shirt, 8trak, cassette, cd, and mp3….
Kudos to you for living your life with integrity, honesty and intellect. You are a rebel with a cause!
I think you cucks have overlooked something very important, and I am embarassed that I did not think of it at least almost immediately. Get this, guys:
Winning makes easy results, losing makes hard results.
The ecological environment is competitive among organisms. Duh. All this domesticated bliss you seek, baaaah. You think your narrative is more than laying a finger on your enemies. Really stupid.
And “defining” makes “winning” & “losing.”
The credit where credit due-card commercial asks “What’s in your wallet?”
Who/what cui-bono-quid-pro-quo put it there is a good question to ask, too.
It was six men of Indostan, to learning much inclined,
who went to see the elephant (Though all of them were blind),
that each by observation, might satisfy his mind. ~ jg saxe’s elephant
Learning is quote-locked fake&gay more often than not.
I responded to farmer about that. Judge invisible learned hand deleted it. It *was* an elephantine post.
Respect the CPA more than MBA, generally. And even more tough them hard decisons are right decisions. Right decisions may or may not lead to easy but that should not be goal. Goal (for me anyway) is peace and self respect. I know you have it Jim.
HARD DECISIONS???
HOW ABOUT “WISE” DECISIONS, FOLKS???
BEING “CLEVER”, AS THE PTB PROMOTES, IS A “NO-THING” COMPARED TO “WISDOM”!!!
WISDOM!…ALWAYS SUPPORTS ‘TRUTH”…NEVER “LIES”…GETTIN’ DA PICTURE YET???
WISDOM IS THE “SHORT-CUT” TO “SUCCESS” FOLKS!!!
Mike Adams, the health ranger. said w have nothing to fear. The ANP, All News Pipeline concurs.
99% of these kids likely weren’t college material in the first place.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careers/about-half-of-america-s-new-college-graduates-are-working-in-high-school-level-jobs-like-food-service-and-retail-report/ar-BB1iKqLP