To dislike it when people take too much credit for their excellent life choices

[colourdilemma]

And are judgemental of those whose don't come up to scratch by their standards?

I don't think there are actually many of us who can claim huge credit for things that have gone well. More, I think those who are okay, settled, financially stable should be thanking their lucky stars that they had any of the flowing leg ups that made them able to make choices in life that worked out well:

1. parents who valued education
2. living in an area the had good schools
3. having parents who were emotionally stable enough to give them confidence and support
4. having a parentsl household income in childhood/early adulthood that let them take risks and or stay in education
5. having good enough physical and mental health to get through school/training/education
6. having academic/emotional ability and aptitudes for so called "good" jobs
7. meeting the right friends/partners
8. not having anything go disastrously wrong job wise/financially
9. having a crystal ball
10. a lot of luck

I could go on. Personally, I have a degree, financial security, a stable family now and a job that I can earn well in. But if I track my "success" back I would be better to describe it as a very precariously balanced, sometimes nearly disastrous series of part chosen, part chose me events. Isn't everyone pretty much the same?

This strikes me as why the tax credits debate is so horrible and why I dislike the phrase "hard working families" so very much.

And please forgive me if describing my position in the way I have sounds smug in any way; I do not remotely feel like that. I have long term mental health issues, my parents are a mess and I struggle hugely with parenting my three kids. So how b**y unfair is it that I seem to get away with it scot free because of some earning potential and financial independence?

Somebody famous like Newton once said "I am standing on the shoulders of giants" about the research and scientists that went before him and, even without getting into what a screwed up way this society chooses to judge success, I think anyone who has this "success" should think carefully about where it came from. Hard work, absolutely, but others work hard and don't enjoy the fruits so much.

YA most definitely NBU, and I have to say its reassuring how many people on here seem to know it.

I come from a birth family with borderline physical violence and lots of emotional abuse (me being the scapegoat). The one advantage I was given was education and I have used that and spent many years in a job sector I loved. Except that that sector (libraries) has been destroyed and there aren't many opportunities for decent jobs now. Thank goodness me and mine have always had our health. Really pisses me off the way these Tories are specifically kicking the vulnerable down and generally increasing the divides in our society and destroying the environment to grab bigger and bigger shares for themselves when they already have so much. Really pisses me off.

I absolutely, totally believe in hard work being necessary. I also believe that most people work hard. It's what that hard work gets that differs. And all the other stuff I've outlined and other factors that I haven't determine how "successful" your hard work makes you.

I've been thinking overnight and I've come to the conclusion that it's more to do with risk taking than luck. I don't mean jumping off cliffs type risk - I mean that two people in the same situation may not identify the same opportunities and if they do may not go for them. That is I think to do with resilience. However both can be working just as hard.

YANBU

Of course some people have much better platforms from which to launch their lives. Forgetting or not acknowledging that fact, simply makes people look like jerks.

Of course, there is free will, I think, I our individual choices do make a difference. I would never advise anyone that they are powerless, that the die has been cast, and to just give up.

It's sort of a "midgets on the shoulders of giants" situation.

Yanbu. I was going to link to the same cartoon as previous posters. It's never a level playing field to start with.

"Hard working familIes" and "families who do the right thing" are Tory phrases which make my teeth itch.

I agree that much of life is down to luck. So what should we do, give up?

And the above quote from a poster - bizarre. "Families who do the right thing" are Tory scum, are they? Is " not doing the right thing" in some way better?

I think YAB a bit U. It has to be a mixture of hard work and good luck because there most certainly are people who have the most appalling bad luck and who still manage to make successes of their lives. Although I do think that you need some amount of 5 and 6 on your list to be able to achieve against the odds.

I think the best luck you can have is a loving, supportive family and there's not that much that any government can do to provide that (other than intervening in the most extreme cases).

Is working hard a matter of choice or does being born with the ability to work hard come into it? Likewise being able to take risks and other character traits.

Yes, i largely agree with you. I am in my position (which isnt exactly the dizzy heights of success but I am comfortable and happy) mostly through luck.

However, I don't like the idea that I often see on here, that all wealthy and successful people have got their position by sitting on their arses all day, quaffing champagne and laughing at poor people. It's just bollocks with a nice dollop of jealousy thrown in.

I totally agree with you. I was very fortunate growing up and even then I can't really say I made stellar choices

My eyes were really opened to how important a supportive parents is recently in two ways:

1. DD has a specific university course in mind. She needs good A levels of course but also she has to have a significant chunk of non-academic work experience. If you don't know the right people or live in the right area, and have supportive car-owning parents, you would basically be fucked. It could be done but you'd need to be a great deal more organised and driven than most teenagers are.

1. DS1 is 18 and had been trying to find work. Having been let down quite badly by his college last year he is feeling pretty low, lacking is direction and negative about life. I had to badger and cajole and help him to looks for jobs, sign on, deal with all the crap that entailed, drive him to interviews and work experience in out of the way places, help him with Kafkaesque paperwork and bureaucracy.....all the time trying to buoy up his spirits and encourage him to 'look on the bright side'. He now has a job but it wouldn't have happened without a lot of parental input. I don't find it surprising there are so many stranded and hopeless teenagers.

I no longer trust the system to do it right. Once they leave school they are on their own.

the phrases ""Hard working familIes" and "families who do the right thing" are such bull they utterly depress me.

we will lose £50 per week when the tax credits cuts hit in April. I work 2 jobs, dh works full time, both low paid.

if we quit work we would be better off, as we would receive housing benefit, council tax benefit, free school meals, EMA etc etc.

working with tax credits we are better off, working without tax credits we are worse off.

what the tories aren't saying is that the tax credits cuts hit working families and not the unemployed..unemployment benefits aren't being cut, only working benefits.

I think the problem with the epithet 'hard-working families' is that most 'families' work hard - the other element that transforms hard work into a wonderful life-style and financial security is good fortune.

Yanbu. You can plan and work hard as much as you like but If you don't have a big dose of luck and good health (mental and physical) you won't make it.

YANBU

I would add that people forget the role society as it is set plays in deciding who to reward.

Get rid of copyright law and intellectual property becomes worthless

Get rid of law and order and survival of the physically strongest becomes the norm

Change property laws and the ability to accumulate wealth diminishes

Decide which public services to provide and how to reward certain skill sets differently

Change which industries you support - manufacturing over banking

Change where you subsidise house prices

Change what qualifications you reward and how easy it is to obtain them

Change attitudes to who is responsible for the vulnerable in society and who bears the cost.

Society has a choice about who to reward and who is therefore luckier and in my lifetime the goalposts have moved a lot. I am in my 40s so I am not even talking about generational shifts.

I totally agree with you, I taught in an inner city school for a while and discovered that the key ingredient for a child's success was one loving parent (at least) who was stable emotionally. I saw really vibrantly intelligent children's lives take tragic directions because their family were addicts/hated school themselves/ or mum/dad had an abusive partner. Add in no money and it's really hard to succeed. Yes there were others who did get out but they are still struggling as they have had no financial/emotional support. I didn't have it easy either and ponder these things too - you just have to be grateful for what you have.

"Families who do the right thing" implies that there are families who do the wrong thing, and that sets working people arguing amongst themselves about who is doing the right thing and deserves the crumbs being offered by the government, and who is doing the wrong thing and doesn't deserve anything. Meanwhile the rich and powerful are laughing all the way to the bank.

A friend on mine is very scathing of us "lesser" beings. She was born into a family with money. Her parents put down a large deposit on her 1st house. Then her estranged dad died and left her half a million pounds.
Her family are all Christened so could get her kids into a good school, neither me nor dp are.
Yet when I mentioned that I need my tax credits to live she couldn't believe how much I actually got from them. (Too much in her opinion) Dp and I both come from poor familys and have started our own business to, hopefully, earn more in the future (its building up nicely) She was also incredulous about which secondary I was sending my eldest to as it not the best, but apart from the religious schools, its kind of picking the best of a bad bunch. Hopefully as I value my dcs education, I can encourage them to be their best, and want them to go to uni/college, and not on a yts earning £30 a week so they can give me half as board as my mum did.

To whom are we supposed to be grateful?
I made my choices.
I agree that it's a bit of luck and also choice, together.

what you are 'given' - that you have no control over : of the original op's 1-10 list many of the things - like having loving parents who are interested in your education, of being incredibly naturally bright or gifted, (which I'm not) , that is nature rather than nurture, isn't it?

I don't have a high flying career. I guess I might have hit there in the end, but I chose not to. But I'm ok.
I chose to marry my dh. Or was that luck?

I totally understand where the OP is coming from, I've never voted Tory and I'm against the cuts to tax credits.

But... during the last election labour was starting to piss me the hell off with their implication that because my family is hard working but not low paid I'm in some way morally less worthy and therefore it's acceptable to tax what I have and take it away from me. For me, hard working isn't just 9-5 or 12 hour shifts. It isn't just providing for me but also paying out £1000s to prop up my parents who were the losers in the 1980s (think manufacturing in a Northern town).

In addition to being 1st generation university, indebting myself to the eyeballs to get my degree, moving 250 miles away from all my family and friends to take a well paid City job (I found accommodation by answering a newspaper advert - I knew no-one). I took a 95% mortgage and made no pensions contributions to get on the property ladder then rolling equity when we moved to get my nice house - it was a wreck when we bought it and we did it up. It was paid for by a job that involved multiple 20 hour days, many all-nighters, frequent weekend working and cancelled personal plans - all without the support of any local family (and no bankers bonuses. My biggest bonus for a year of working like that was £5k before tax, little more than £2.5k after).

By all means go after the non-doms, the household name corporations structuring their way out of tax, the private enterprises screwing profit out of the NHS and the exclusively old-Etonian jobs for the boys ruling class.

But please don't bash those who worked their way out of the mire. It was fucking hard and I made a shit load of sacrifices.

This is an interesting post op! I can see both sides. I could have gone either way in life - I'm fairly average, not particularly attractive, no more than average intelligence, from working class background, brought up by single mother (a self employed cleaner) in small council flat but in a very affluent area (hence the council flat). My father was alcoholic and during my teenage years was very ill with cancer, he died when I was 19. I worked damned hard to make sure I got good exam results so I could go to college and university and get a good job. I took every grant and loan that I could get my hands on to get through university and worked hard to get my degree. I wouldn't say I was particularly 'lucky' to end up where I have, it has been a lot of hard work, I could easily have taken the alternative (council house, young motherhood route and stayed in my home town with friends and family around me) - obviously fine if that's what you want to do, but i pushed myself hard, moved away from home to get on the property ladder, have an ok - not amazing- job, we have our own home, I have a good dh, and a beautiful ds. We work hard for what we have but we are not in the lap of luxury. Neither of us have inherited anything, been given anything, we only have one car between us and a very modest little house in a not particularly great area, but I consider myself to be successful.

Just by way of example, I would like to tell you about my two best friends who I am hugely proud of:

M - father left when she was born and has never been seen again, mother was a cleaner who died of cancer when M was 8. M had no family in this country and ended up in foster care. She moved between foster homes due to more than one incident of sexual abuse. She went to an underachieving inner city school in London. She worked incredibly hard at that school, got the best results that school had ever seen and got a place at Oxford. She is now happily married and has a very successful career as a teacher.

N - grew up in a war torn African country where it was too dangerous for her to go to school. Moved to the UK aged 10. At 14 she was raped and her father was ashamed and beat her so badly she ended up in hospital and nearly died. Her mother supported the father's actions and N ended up in foster care. She went to an underachieving inner city school but got a place at Cambridge. N is happily married (to an evil banker!) and earns her own six figure salary.

M and N were lucky to be healthy and clever and to live in a time when being black/female didn't hold them back. But I wouldn't describe either of them as lucky. I find their hard work and resilience humbling and I think describing them as lucky belittles their achievements.

yanbu

YABU for some of us. I think that it is usually a matter of perspective, fatalism etc.

1) parents who valued education Nope, neither of us had that. DHs family tried to talk him out of going to University in his 30s

2) living in an area the had good schools Nope. I was brought up rurally and expected to be a farming housewife, DH was expected to work for the major local employer. Schools did not work all that hard beyond the basics.

3) having parents who were emotionally stable enough to give them confidence and support No. Neither of us were blessed with that

4) having a parentsl household income in childhood/early adulthood that let them take risks and or stay in education Or that!

5) having good enough physical and mental health to get through school/training/education DH had, I have a hidden, sporadic disability and later, when I did my degrees, cfs that left me bedridden at weekends.

6) having academic/emotional ability and aptitudes for so called "good" jobs I have no idea what that means in real life. I started working in pubs and restaurants, lasted 15 years as a teacher. DH worked as a building labourer now still works outside but is an engineering supervisor.

7) meeting the right friends/partners Definitely! We were each others only support.

8) not having anything go disastrously wrong job wise/financially No, we were both made redundant a couple of times, twice we were both made redundant the same day. The 80s and 90s were very uncertain times.

9) having a crystal ball Nope, We just followed our noses, did what felt right and had few expectations of wealth

10) a lot of luck No. Neither good or bad luck has ever bothered us. We just had life events that we dealt with as we met them. Suicides, ill health, loss of jobs, income etc.

I think the difference between being lucky and not is your expectations. We have never expected anything, so we have never been disappointed. We have never needed much in the way of gratification via possessions, holidays etc. So we haven't set much store on 'things', which means that the few 'things' we do have are relatively expensive.

For example: BIL/SIL earn about the same as we do, started as we did, didn't go to university but got on the job qualifications as they got promoted - both have been with the same employer for decades, SIL for a bank, BIL for a local manufacturer. They bought his mums ex corpy house for a knock down price and have regularly released equity for flash holidays - they live each day as though it is a gift, that is why it is called The Present, apparently [puking emoticon] In their mid 50s, 30 years after buying the house, they still have a hefty mortgage, all those equity releases had a price to pay, they still lease/hire her car, they have a house full of fake/cheap 'stuff' and they really dislike us.

We bought a flat, lived in it for years when it was unsaleable. It was cheap to run and we both went to university, one after the other, we were utterly skint for 10 years. Sold it and put the money away and rented for over a decade. Worked and paid off our debts then saved and saved. All coppers and the odd pound went into a jingle - SIL found that hysterically funny for some reason, but it formed the basis of our saving habit. We rented very rurally, had chickens, veggie plots, did garden gate sales and swaps, it was fun and frugal. After 17 years we bought our own home, a forever purchase, cash, all done and dusted.

I suspect we saved as much money every year as BIL/SIL spent on 'stuff' that they consumed and forgot. Yet we don't feel we missed out on anything, we have equally good memories of experiences that excited us at the time. But SIL insists that we have been so very lucky and that life is just not fair. She is vitriolic in her opinion, I am the very bane of her life, always get what she wants! She even finds the fact that I don't want what she covets to be a personal insult.

So forgive me if I simply do not believe in luck. If a stable childhood is essential, then the odds were stacked against us; if good education is another example, then no, we had to pay for ours in our 30s, in loss of wages and student loans; if stable employment counts then no, neither of us started off well there, DH has been laid off multiple times over the last decade or so and I resigned due to stress and am still not working.

There is no such thing as luck. There is life, and it is very much what you make of it!

We have made the most out of ours, poverty stricken and better off, rented and home owning, working and out of work. We have done whatever was needed, coped and not bemoaned our bad luck or life's unfairness. It just was what it was!

Sorry. That was a rant. But better here than into SILs face!

I agree there is a combination of good fortune but work/ personal attitudes also comes into it.

I was out yesterday with a group of friends. We are all established professionals. I'm buying a new property so is my friend.

She and I coincidentally bought our last properties, for about the same amount of cash and with similar mortgages at the same time, it transpired in conversation yesterday that my residual mortgage is much smaller than hers as I have been overpaying like buggery. She has had a lot of glamorous holidays instead.

The ensuing comments were very interesting -apparently I'm lucky that my mortgage is so small there was no acknowledgment that it is small because in other areas of my live I've deprived myself (although going on holiday to cornwall not Barbados isn't that great a deprivation I agree) and I work full time rather than part time.....

For ever person who claims more credit than they should, there will be one who sees themselves as more helpless than they were.

There will be a small number of people who can fairly attribute their condition to either themselves or luck.

It's often offensive to tell a successful person they are lucky. Someone who is vastly more successful than most of their peers almost always did an enormous amount to get there, telling them they were lucky is dismissive and insulting. Next weekend 15 Australians/New Zealanders will be rugby union world champions. Each of them will have had hundreds/thousands of cumulative instances of luck in getting where they are. Nevertheless, if you were to meet one of them in their hotel bar after the game, you would have to be a twat of the highest order to tell them they were lucky to be a world champion.

For every obnoxious person who can't see the role of luck in their own achievement, there will be several obnoxious non-achievers loudly attributing success in life to luck. (By definition there are fewer exceptional achievers than the opposite, so there will always be more people with an incentive to rationalise non-achievement.)