To think money is mostly about luck, not effort?

In my experience it’s mostly luck, usually in the form of family wealth and/or inheritance and connections. Very easy to be good with money when you get gifted a deposit to buy a house, money towards your wedding or the whole thing paid for, every time you run into financial trouble your parents gift or loan you money, no student loans, no need to work at uni as you are given money from family, work experience with family/ friends etc.

I’m from a working class background, but work in a very middle class area and it’s way more common than I ever thought, people tend to massively underestimate how these things give you a huge leg up. Money makes money.

Well said. I am glad you acknowledge how lucky to be born into wealth, it's made such a big difference to yor life. I was unlucky and born into poverty, working so many jobs has given me anxiety from tbe stress of it. Wealth buy freedom, choices and options for a better life in my opinion. Congratulations on being a stay at home mum which is a great benefit to your children.

Data scientists who study human behaviour and targeting of different socioeconomic groups would disagree with you.

If you are surrounded by people who tell you constantly you can't, AND you are targeted by various other messages saying you can't AND financially you are penalised by your neighbour AND you have been told repeatedly by various agencies that you can't AND from childhood perhaps have built up a negative profile with the police because your neighbour is targeted in a way that a middle class one isn't (more likely to get stopped=more likely to get found with drugs than peers even if you do the same amount of drugs).

In some ways being a immigrant allows you to break from 'the past' and some of this entrenchment. Consider your life if you had stayed where you were and what opportunities you would have had.

In some ways because English is so widely spoken it means there's little opportunity to learn another language too - just regular expose to other languages makes a difference. You could argue this makes it harder for poor British people to up and leave in the same way someone poor from another country might have more of an opportunity despite other barriers.

There are many factors but I do think this pattern of entrenchment and targeting is particularly damaging and difficult to break out of.

But you can still get an education once you've left school. I was a straight A* pupil at primary but left secondary at 16 without a single qualification due to five years of extreme bullying which led me to truancy. Once I left that hell hole, I did a mix of evening classes at college and self study to get O and A levels and then did distant study/evening classes/self study to pass around 16 chartered accountancy exams, all alongside working full time in mundane low pay jobs working up from copying & tea girl to trainee accountant roles in a number of small local accounting firms. Your entire adult life really isn't dictated by your school years education! You can turn it around. Yes, it's hard and you have to make sacrifices. I wasn't prepared to throw my life away on unskilled low pay jobs because of a crap school education!

Spot on. I came from poverty and my friends didn't, they all earn less, had pay outs for the house they purchased, years on gone up in value and had multiple handouts. Nothing to do with work or effort.
I earn way more, I couldn't get a mortgage, got to be earning 100k or have parent gift money. No equity building and I work the hardest.
If you have wealthy parents, you are lucky, it's a 10x head start. If I had wealthy parents I would be well ahead.
I went to uni and now my degree student loan repayment goes against me for a mortgage. I am telling my children get 100k plus job, giving them as much advice as I can.
My partner is mortgage free because of a inheritance. He managed to buy when it was no deposit required and back then a cleaner could buy. Welcome to the waiting generation where I know people are waiting for their parents to due for an inheritance. I have created a better life which was not due to any luck but hard graft. I am having to do 10x more to still be 5 steps behind from my friends. I am hoping my business will pay off in years to come to buy and have financial freedom. It is so hard with paying out so much with no wealth for backup anywhere.

A lot of the money I have is down to luck (inheritance) but the fact that I still have it is down to me having self control and taking the time to educate myself on how to manage money.
If the same amount of money had fallen into my DHs hands at 18, we would be living a very different lifestyle right now.

Being smart enough to recognise a lucky chance when you see it.
Concentration
Conscientiousness

I was born in to total poverty, we literally didn't have a thing, often no food and defo heating was a luxury, my brother even had to wear cloths we'd grown out off, obviously not dresses but shirts coats etc.

Our mum worked her socks off, put her in an early grave but never had much at all... Dad? a waste of space.

I'm quite well off now & its pretty much all luck, a couple of good key decisions but chance in the main.

One thing i have realised though is the easy choices are often the wrong ones, sometimes you do have to do something you really don't want too, for longer term benefit.

I disagree, setting aside the fact that I came from a different country.

For people who are already here, born and raised, there’s nothing truly stopping anyone from getting a job, any job, just to get started. Sure, many of these roles are low-paid, but they exist. And they’re a stepping stone.

When it comes to building your way up, I don’t believe the barriers are as insurmountable as some people make them out to be. What’s stopping someone from working as a waitress? Washing dishes? Cleaning? Literally any job to earn money and hopefully invest in yourself. No new iPhones every year, no holiday for a long while, just bare essentials. It does get easier but starting out is hard.

Life has always been expensive — that’s not new. That’s why I worked multiple jobs, sometimes with no days off. It’s not perfect, and of course one could argue that no one should have to work two jobs or run themselves into the ground. But that’s the harsh reality when you want to achieve something and there’s no external help, no inheritance, no family safety net, no one handing you a lifeline.

You have to bend over backwards. You have to do what it takes. Because no one else is going to do it for you.

I agree.

I’m wealthy because of an inheritance.

I used to work incredibly hard in frontline child protection, but wasn’t particularly well paid in that job.

It was pure luck that I was born into wealth. I have benefited from that my entire life from private education, travel opportunities and the ability to pursue anything I wanted at university without worrying about the potential salary I may earn. Now I’m a stay at home mum with no plans to ever work again, once again it’s the inheritance or inter generational wealth that gave me that option. I didn’t work to be wealthy, I was simply born into it.

Working hard didn’t make me wealthy, and I think some of the hardest working people out there are often public servants on average wages like social workers, teachers, nurses, police etc.

There are many reasons why several things you say in this post, simply would not be possible for someone like you now.

You god lucky, because you came at the right time...

DH's parents never owned their own home. He joined the forces at 16, and being intelligent and diligent he worked his way up to fairly senior officer level. Neither of us have inherited wealth. But due to his hard work and spousely support (!) we are very comfortable now. Sister is the same through her hard work.

My parents are similar - no inherited wealth but bought their house and lived through 15% mortgage rates, no foreign holidays, very little eating out. Now comfortably off and took several foreign trips until a few years ago until health problems curtailed things.

From the outside it might look like luck, but that would downgrade the hard slog and sacrifices required to get to our position.

I think that's true of all Arts, whether it's writing books, arts you'd put on the wall or musical arts.

A huge amount of luck in getting that first break.

But their are also people who effectively become one hit wonders. They get lucky with one song or book and are never really heard of again.

I came to the UK with literally nothing (legally of course !!). I had to borrow money just to buy the ticket. No job lined up, no fancy degree, no safety net. Just decent English and a strong work ethic. I stayed with a friend for 3 months before moving out to shared accommodation. I arrived with one 15kg suitcase.

At 18, I was earning £5 an hour. I waited tables, cleaned hotel rooms, worked at a dry cleaner, served coffee, I took on double shifts, worked weekends, I worked nights behind the bar in the clubs, some weeks I didn’t have a single day off. And it wasn’t easy. During that time, I was sick many times but I never quit my job. At one point, I had a kidney stone stuck in my urinary tract. I worked through the pain for months before surgery. Even after surgery, I took the bare minimum time off, just two weeks, and I was back at work. I kept going. I didn’t rely on the state. I didn’t ask for help. I just showed up I could not work.

Because I knew I didn’t want to live like that forever. I didn’t want to spend my life on the lowest wage, sharing cramped housing. So I started looking into training and courses until I found free courses to start with, saved whatever I could, and eventually paid for more training. Bit by bit, I moved into office work, working out what I want to do long term. Now I work in a specialised field, and the rest is history. I am citizen of many years, I got amazing husband, beautiful home and great paid job.

No handouts. No luck. Just grit, consistency, THINKING about my life choices and a refusal to give up.

So when someone tells me their life didn’t turn out because of “bad luck”? I can’t accept that. I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to have nothing and still build something.

Note social mobility is at its lowest rate since WWII.

If you are older you had a greater chance of social mobility because of many factors.

'Working hard' now is different to working hard then for that reason.

The odds are stacked against young people who aren't better off no matter how hard they work.

I'm currently reading 'Weapons of Math Destruction' by Cathy O'Neill

Some of it is terrifying. It looks at big data and how decisions are made about targeting advertising, policing efficiently, how universities in the US are ranked and how CVs are filtered for jobs. It's mainly focused on the US but there are British examples - our data rules are stricter but honestly I don't think they are strict enough.

One of the first things it talked about is how advertisers in certain situations deliberately target vulnerable people to exploit them financially. So if you are in the bottom 40% of the population income wise, they will advertise things like pay day loans to you. Think about this and how certain products (and indeed scams) with unfavorable prices / terms etc are deliberately targeted - and how if you are better off or educated you'll pretty much never see these same adverts. If course this also means those with the most knowledge of how these might be dubious (because of education) never report them because they don't see them - thus they are able to exploit more easily.

A friend of mine was talking about this and how she was currently being massively being targeted by adverts for weight loss drugs. She's a bigger girl and has a complex about it (by her own admission). On principle she doesn't want to try these drugs because she's concerned about the long term unintended consequences and thinks it's too good to be true. But this constant barrage of adverts has made her nearly crack on several occasions. Meanwhile her friends who aren't overweight aren't being picked up by the data and aren't getting targeted by these adverts.

Then the book goes on to talk about how data is being used to filter CVS. This is supposed to remove certain biases but in actual fact a lot of these biases are either inadvertently being programmed with bias in or are being deliberately written to include them in less identifiable ways which aren't transparent and aren't as easy to challenge legally.

It talks about how certain ideas or traits are used as proxies to suggest something else and theres little follow up on whether these are accurate or not accurate.

One example is how the 'bottom performing' teachers were automatically sacked - without thought as to how people were gaming the system and over inflating performance because they got bonuses for higher achievement. Thus a good teacher who came after a cheating teacher got sacked despite having an amazing reputation with colleagues and parents because the data said she'd understand performed.

And how one IT recruitment company had made a connection between star employees and liking a particular type of Japanese Manga so was favouring them (and of course this also massively disadvantaged women in multiple ways). This also begs questions about creating group think on an industrial scale.

The author reflects on these correlations and untested assumptions as akin to phrenology. And she stresses how the actively target and entrench poverty, often by design - and people not subject to this would be completely oblivious whilst those on the recieving end might well be fully aware of how off something was but unable to challenge it because they a) can't prove it, b) need a higher level of proof than all the work going into creating these ideas c) all without the education and financial means to fight back against such injustices - coupled with a culture of non disclosure and lack of transparency making these decision making processes pretty much infallible despite potentially catastrophic flaws which act as a feed back loop without checks to thrive and damage society as a whole.

It's fascinating. The book a few years old now - it was published 9 years ago - but I think we can start to see a lot of the fall out from these patterns. And the trend is towards yet more AI.

The underlying point here is that if you are rich or have the right postcode you are often targeted in a positive way and have more opportunities compared with someone poor or who has the wrong postcode - before you even do a single thing. Working hard is something of a mute point - there are greater barriers at every step of the way. It's crucially primarily an economic thing (race and sex gets caught up in this because of pre-existing economic disadvantages).

It goes a long way to explain many of our current political challenges. If you are on the wrong side of the divide, it's not just that you are disadvantaged - it's that you are also seen as a legitimate target to exploit and/or discount.

I think this is the kind of logic that traps people. Ultimately getting more contracts, more work experience and progressing will almost certainly be better for people in the long term rather than managing your career so that you stay below various tax thresholds or benefit cliff edges. This mentality is what keeps people at best stagnant and at worst poor. It is also causing a productivity crisis in this country.

@Marshbird

so if you want to pop at how much easier the older generation have it,

Why are you so triggered by me writing the below?

"Lots of older people have been lucky with property prices simply because of when they were born"

Is it a lack of comprehension as you are inferring things I haven't said?

Nor do most people move to cheaper areas…

It's really quite common in London, google may help you here but you seem very fixed in your mindset....

Im at the age all my friends have had inheritance money and i can see how its helped them and their kids. We never had inheritance money and i feel the difference.

I totally disagree with telling kids ‘you can be anything you wish to be’ as it’s ridiculous as well as unrealistic and sets kids up for disappointment.

I also disagree that all financial success is down to luck only. I think that’s a terrible message to send because in many cases it’s a combination of luck and incredibly hard work.

I think the ‘it’s all luck’ people say this as a coping mechanism to cover bad choices.

Let’s be clear though, that 50% of wealth is not going to 50% of the population.

But that isn't what @bigvig said?

Luck, also influenced by family and circumstances.

I'm an author, and earn the greater part of my income from writing books. But getting published in the first place is mainly luck - getting the right book in front of the right person at the right time. There are plenty of other writers more talented than me whose work will never see the light of day - either they give up or they just aren't hitting the right editors desk just as the editor is looking for their precise 'thing'. And self published books are even more a matter of luck.

So I feel extremely, overwhelmingly lucky to have got that first contract which led to much bigger and better things. The money enables me to live comfortably (I am mortgage free because my parents owned their own house and their wills split equally between my brother and I). So after a lifetime of struggling, being on benefits as a single mum of five in an unheated and damp rented house - I finally got lucky.

Let’s be clear though, that 50% of wealth is not going to 50% of the population.

Just 10% of uk population own 57% of the entire wealth.
in fact quick google says just 13% of population benefits form inheritence.

that’s the wealth inequality bit…

Have a read of The Richest Man in Babylon.

I do think luck plays a part. But frankly, if you’re born in this country you are far far luckier than many countries in the world and already have a massive head start.

I also think the saying the harder your work the luckier you become is true.

This is a very good point…certainly both me and exh were raised in working class households where eduction was highly valued. And expectation set we’d go to university. We were both schooled at home by parents as well as state schools to enrich our education and experiences.

my exh particualrly, was first generation benefitting form free university…his parents fought hard to ensure he made the most of this, having some form very impoverished backgrounds themselves.