Are you really "more financially successful" if you can't afford the same things, though?
Unless you have different priorities, which is fine. Like I could afford some stuff, but "can't" cause that wouldn't let me afford other stuff my parents never had.
Plenty of people have rich and supportive parents. Very few of them become quite so successful. You can buy a lot of things but that levels of success isn’t one of them.
I've noticed most of my friends that would be deemed "successful" by most of society only have 1 thing in common...parents with exceptionally large bank accounts.
I can only point to a couple people that came from middle class and lower families that are now successful (though I'm not terribly old yet), with them they had above average intelligence and above average charisma.
However, being exceptional seems to be a minority factor in being successful when compared to being born with more resources at your disposal.
I mean, you can't really be a billionaire in today's world if your parents weren't millionaires. And it's like this all the way down.
To keep it polite and short, that's really not how the world works anymore. These days your (at least financial) success in life is very much correlated with the wealth of your parents. If you're from Sweden (as your username would indicate) you can take Stockholm as an example. My non-independent friend (and their parents) there are millionaires from housing appreciation and savings, while my independent friends are are spending all their salaries on renting short lease 3x normal rent sublets.
In another area - I knew a guy and his parents were very good with finance and business and he was way ahead of everyone else right out of high school. He did go on to become very successful financially. And me, well I should have done better! (Oh yeah, don't compare yourself. Run your own race. hmmm)
It's increasingly the case that your success in life depends on how rich your parents are.
Previous generations had less help from parents. I don't think that's because parents wanted to help less, it's because the kids didn't need the help.
ie, people in the past were more able to find success on their own, without any parental assistance, which is a better system for people who grow up poor.
Some discussion in The Millionaire Next Door about this as well.
The conclusion, if I recall correctly, was that there was an inverse relationship between the financial success of the child and the amount of money they were provided from their wealthy parents. More money from the parent generally just meant more consumption by the child, while depleting the assets of the parent. Thus less is inherited and the child has not learned to save and spends it all.
I suppose I agree with you in theory, but in practice I'm not sure there's much difference in outlook going from being the child of a wealthy family who has many things given to him (or her, but let's be real, it's almost always a him) to then being a young-adult billionaire CEO who can easily buy many things.
Put another way, if you can now afford to buy a brand-new Ferrari, does it matter that you had to drive a three year old Lexus to high school?
Your parents don't even have to be wealthy. Just having parents who are financially stable, own their house, could literally keep you off the streets and give you food if you fell on truly hard times, makes an enormous difference compared to not having that.
The two aren’t mutually exclusive. The children of the very wealthy often (usually?) share their parents’ economic advantage, thus perpetuating the inequality that originated due to economic factors. But that doesn’t mean they’re driven or that they’ll develop the same qualities that drove their parents to be successful.
Whoops, forgot to mention the parents you were born to. If they're higher class or just plain old spend more resources on you, society winds up letting you get more stuff.
I worked my ass off to get where I am financially. I grew up with low income, abusive, mentally ill, and alcoholic parents. I wasn't taught hardly any life skills and I had no "connections" of which to speak. I worked hard to get where I am now (I save/invest 70% of my income a year) but I don't for a second discount luck as a big part of it. Someone making similar choices as I did can surely have a different outcome.
Plus the biggest increase in my financial status came from getting married to someone who makes just as much money as I do.
When at least one is from privileged background they usually can both work lower paying jobs.
It's a lot easier to make a decent living out of it if you already own a house and your parents can act as a safety net in case unforseen huge expenses fall from the sky (e.g. if your parents total their car: you won't need to cover for them)
Out of curiosity, and if you don't mind sharing, what was your staring position?
I ask, because even if they never invest a cent in your personal ventures, it is a very significant boost to to have wealthy parents who provide both broad access to formal and informal education, valuable networking, and a dependable safety net. Saying someone with those advantages is "more capable" when comparing them to the average First Worlder (let alone the average human being) is a sort of perceptual bias that seems unfortunately common.
Why would your parents be wealthier than you'll ever be (unless of course they're extremely wealthy)? That seems like a very pessimistic attitude to have towards money and income.
I grew up in a lower middle class family and I'm wealthier than my parents ever were, just because I worked hard and improved myself, and went into technology where I could make an upper middle class salary.
Why would you want to resign yourself to being poor your whole life?
Not to undermine their success, but people tend to skip where their success come from, besides brightness. I mean, you can be as bright as possible, but of course if your parents are the first one investing on you (investing cash, I mean) then everything it's a lot easier.
This happens at various levels of course.
I recently had a conversation with an ex-colleague that had just left the company and was considering moving abroad. He said he had some money saved and I was shocked to hear how much he had saved. When I came back home, feeling quite miserable I must admit, I ran the numbers and understood the where the difference in his savings and mine came from: put simply, I had to move from another region of my nation to where I currently live and work, while he's just from here. The difference merely came from not being forced to pay a rent every month and on top of that, saving more money on others things he just didn't have to pay. There's nothing bad about that per se of course, I just felt a bit bitter because I understood that no matter how good or hard I work, that's a privilege gap I will probably never fill.
Privilege is something many people don't realise, and don't realise how big of an impact it makes.
Have to be? Or tend to be. I think we often overlook that richer families tend to have a lot better parenting. It's not just about money. Good parenting is arguably more important than being wealthy.
Unless you have different priorities, which is fine. Like I could afford some stuff, but "can't" cause that wouldn't let me afford other stuff my parents never had.
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