To think money is mostly about luck, not effort?

Of course we need both but the surgeon has years of hard work in education and training that the cleaner has not. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t value the cleaner too but we should give credit where due. Some skills are essential and very valuable and take a long time and innate ability to build. We shouldn’t pretend it’s just the same as being a cleaner - it isn’t

luck, skills and hard work all matter - unless you have loads of luck.

I think I achieve what I have based on a combination of all 3. People with much luckier life starts haven’t done as well as I did. Others have done better- more luck or more expectations/ambition ( I was too busy being shocked that I got a reasonable job that I didn’t look for a better one, because I had jumped up the social ladder as it were )

you can’t hard work your way out of dreadful luck - serious disability for example

It’s complicated. I know plenty of people who are well off through luck (inheritance, being an only child, parents being an only child so generations of wealth passed down).

And I know people who are doing very well financially through hard work, good decisions and being sensible with money.

Best post on the thread!

We are all needed in a society, no one is "better" than anyone else and money is no route to happiness or being a nice person.

Obviously not talking about criminals etc.

@GraySILK 100% agree with you.

And you know what society needs those people who'll never get above a Grade 5 at GCSE as much as we need the clever clogs who will become Surgeons.

If all the cleaners went to night school to "better their chances" they'd be nobody to do the cleaning.

And I can't talk for anyone else but I don't fancy the Surgeon getting to work on me without the Cleaners having done their bit!

What does need to happen in the UK though is the Cleaners should be able to have a reasonable standard of living too.
A decent damp free house, without paying out silly money in private rent. Not everyone will be able to afford private housing so we still need quality social housing for people.

I'm never going to be a millionaire. No inheritances, bad health etc.

But I did work hard and go without to get where I am. Retired, mortgage free.

Was lucky as well though.
Born at a time where the housing ladder existed. After the time where a single woman could not get a house loan, before the times where it takes 2 incomes to pay one.

It’s both luck and hard work, without either you won’t get very far but one element on its own wouldn’t create the opportunity that having both does.

Academic ability, having a good memory, being able to apply knowledge to different situations is innate. Some kids will never get beyond a grade 5 at GCSE no matter how hard they try. Not everyone has the brains to be a doctor no matter how hard they try, end of.

Family support for childcare and having a good network enables peope to work more/various hours compared to someone who doesn’t have that network and has to pay 9-5 childcare.

Family support for being supportive and not abusive. So many people have toxic parents and those that don’t don’t realise how that makes life better.

Being in the right place at the right time. Had the interviewer been a different person, the job might have gone to someone else.

Having ‘connections’.

These are things that are or aren’t and they more you have the more lucky you are. None of the above matters if you don’t work hard of course but don’t underestimate the affects things out of your control have on your failure/success. Be humble and accept that.

Nail on the head. It's an element of luck, an element of making good choices, an element of hard work. A mix of lots of factors. But it's certainly not just luck - the other factors are equally, if not more, important.

You're "lucky" if you win the lottery, but you won't win if you don't buy a ticket.

If you prioritise having a good time, partying, etc., rather than studying and getting the right grades at the right exams, that's on you if you don't get the kind of job/career that will give you the lifestyle you want.

Likewise if you prioritise spending on frivolities like car leases, new phone contracts, designer clothes, handbags, gadgets, etc that you don't actually "need" then it's on you that you didn't invest money wisely and don't have a pension, stocks and shares, a house, etc a few decades later.

Luck alone won't make the majority of people into millionaires, but nor will hard work alone, nor will making poor choices, but get the mix right and your future is in your own hands.

This is strange to me. So at 55 you never go on holiday with your DH? Just so you can look at a £400k balance on a screen? Why? DH's Mum died at 61. Life is too short!

I'm 55 as well. I don't have £400k in investments, but I guess if you added up my "worth" including the house it would be in that region. But DH and I take 2 foreign holidays every year, one is always long haul. I wouldn't swap those times we've had together for a piece of paper with a number on it.

I hope you book a holiday soon, you deserve some fun.

There’s always an element of luck. For example good health is required for most things.

However, when it comes to laying the groundwork for financial security, it’s the same as laying the groundwork for long term good health - you can increase the odds of both.

Most of the financially secure people I know have prioritised hard work and application from school days onward. They weren’t the ones going to parties every weekend at school or uni or going out every night. They were putting the hours in doing the work - and still doing that. They were the ones who thought yeah I’d rather do X - it sounds far more interesting than Y - but I’ve looked at salaries and Y will afford me the lifestyle I want; X won’t.

Ds still lives at home

He paid for all his driving lessons plus his car all on his own.

I did not have the means to assist.

But you were in a position to teach him to drive, that alone opens doors to work/college/friendships.

Does he pay a market rent for a HMO? say £600 min per month inc all bills?

You've instilled in him responsibility, maturity... & provided him with an excellent role model.

Many kids don't have this, they are bought up feral & have none of the above.

Not making excuses for his friends but we are all different and the wider economy needs people to spend money and not keep it in an ISA.

I don't think anyone one is saying it's just luck.
But luck opens doors for people. Once people are through that door what they do with that opportunity is down to them.

Some of it is background, some of it is being in the right place at the right time.

But if you've come from a poor background, poor either financially poor or just not interested, abusive poor, the odds of success are stacked against you.

You need a bit of luck to get to the right doors and luck to open them.

Everything plays a part, including luck, but it’s a spectrum.

As others noted, we have privilege of not growing up in a third world country. So we are already ahead of others from birth.

Then your living conditions growing up come into play and what opportunities these gave you. Schooling, extracurriculars, networking etc.

Another factor is down to individual motivation. You can have all the opportunities available to you but if you don’t take advantage of them, you won’t get anywhere.

You also have to consider the person themselves- if they were born with a disability, or any other concerns which may cause an obstacle in their lives. That adds an extra layer of ‘difficulty’ that others don’t have to experience.

You have an unconscious bias if you are not a stereotypical white male, or even if you are you might feel set aside for D&I targets (I’m not commenting on this to say it’s wrong, just acknowledging it could happen and cause a disadvantage even if it might be positive).

Then you might also have just been in right place, right time. Who knows.

Some people might have ‘luckier’ circumstances than others, but I wouldn’t devalue someone’s personal efforts down to ‘just luck’ as that is just as bad as saying someone is in a poor situation because they aren’t lucky, when actually, they might have just not explored opportunities available to them and be content to claim they were ‘hard done by’ when they simply didn’t want to try (for whatever reason that may be).

Also luck he's allowed to stay living there.

How did they invest in the stock market if they had nothing?

@Xenia in 1890 your Great Uncle must have had family backing to stay on at school, and go to uni.

Compulsory schooling only started in 1870 or 1873 in Scotland. From the age of 5 to the age of 10.

For the vast majority leaving school at 10, or later 13, when the leaving age rose, their opportunities would have been limited to the local industries around them.

When I started work in the 90s, as a low paid trainee, I remember speaking to someone who recalled someone decades earlier telling them about their parents PAYING a business to take them on and train them.

Even worse than the unpaid internships of today which are only really open to people with parental backing.

There's also a degree of luck in mindset.

I have ADHD which wasn't diagnosed until into my sixties. I can now look back and realise that the impulsivity that it causes me has led me to make stupid and reckless financial decisions over the years. If I'd had more of a sober and NT mindset I would be considerably financially better off.

I doubt I would be any happier, but I'd have money in the bank.

yes luck is a big factor

lucky if your intelligent, good looking, born into a good family, born in a good country, educated well, had a lack of trauma or abuse, have good health and your loved ones around you have good health

Agreed.
Yes a cleaner could well become a supervisor depending on the company size But their opportunities are likely to be limited because Managers are likely to be recuited at that level.
Yes they could go to night school or whatever to up their qualifications. But it's not always easy to fit night school round a job or find the funding for it.

Our office cleaner works two jobs neither of which has great opportunities for promotion or becoming 'successful'

Some cleaners work up to owning a large cleaning company but I agree it is less likely than if a different job is done. There is a very rich man who started with one caravan and now owns caravan parks. However one reason parents like teenagers to pick well respected careers is purely because you increase your odds of higher pay and security - you kind of load the luck dice. Even in the 1890s my grandfather's brother picked qualifiying as a solicitor because he thought it would make him more money (it did) and his sister trained as a nurse in the 1890s and moved to London for a 30 year career where in letters between the siblings I still have from the 1920s the others (she was one of 10) were very impressed by the pension she had in retirement compared to them.

You have luck as well. Lucky to be healthy enough to work so hard and not be overwhelmed by caring responsibilities etc.

It depends what you do. If you’re a cleaner, for example, you could work really hard and be the best cleaner ever, but you probably won’t get rich.

But if you work in financial services, or selling anything, you are more likely to get rich, as these jobs award sales by giving bonuses.

No trust fund. They rented, same as everyone else! They had a job, that’s where they got the money from to play the stock market!

It is a mixture of luck and hard work usually. I regard my principal wealth as just about never being ill and being happy. I couldn't put a price on that and that wealth has nothing to do with money.

However I also earn a fair bit and that will be in part from getting th ebest A level results in my school, putting myself in for 3 x 3 hour of unigversity scholarship exam papers no one had heard of that I found out about and winning one, coming top of year 1 at university with a prize, then top in subjects in year 3.

In particular I chose to do law when I was 14 (took the decision then) because I knew it paid more than the librarian other career the school was suggesting - I have nothing against librarians but even at 14 I knew one choice as better paid than the other.

I then concentrated on jobs in London not elsewhere even though I am from the NE because I knew law jobs are higher paid in London. So we can see the pattern here - active choice to work very hard and go for a career and place where pay is higher; yet also luck that I was not struck down with an illness nor born with an IQ of 80. I also chose not to have children at the stage that would have interfered with my studies (I even graduated from university a teetotal virgin - not something most students manage or even want these days).

Mixture of luck and the other factors in my case I would say. Eg my career had no interruptions as I chose to work until I went into labour and used annual leave for the 5 babies and then came back full time at about 2 weeks (not months, weeks) and expressed milk at work. So luck that I had no health problems but having first baby at 22 (we married when I was 21) probably made that easier than first baby at 39 and active choice to have no career break - long career breaks can interfere with careers even if that is not supposed to happen.

Set up on my own in the 90s which meant we could buy this nice house where I live but it could equally have gone the other way - new firm could have failed and we would have not had my income (husband a teacher).