To say your good fortune is down to luck....

[Shallowstreams]

On threads here I keep reading people saying how they've 'worked hard' and as such can pay off their entire mortgage by mid thirties or similar.

But most people work hard and that's a distant dream. It's only achievable to get and pay off a decent sized mortgage if you've had the luck in whatever shape or form to get an extremely high paying job or a very low mortgage perhaps because of family help or inheritance.

I work very hard and earn very well as does my husband yet our mortgage won't be paid off for many many years, and I'm almost 40.

It just annoys me that people seem to think they've managed to achieve this as they've worked harder than others and are not acknowledging the good fortune that has put them in this position

AIBU?

YANBU

It all starts with going to university Plan B without having to pay university fees after having made applications being a air traffic controller (possible after college) Plan A, and also forces was Plan C. My A levels were in STEM but struggled, did engineering got unremarkable 2:2. Applied for over 100 jobs, got one eventually where a guy have been fired a fortnight before. Just volunteered for overseas stuff going (as had no dependants) and was able to save money to eventually get deposit. Didn't work harder than anyone else, just in right time at right place. As the overseas work I was previously involved in doesn't happen any more or was as financially rewarded as it is.

People who marry well - that's lucky. That they met someone who had good earning power and that person wanted to marry them.

I have friends who are very well off, not through hard work but through happening to marry men who earned a lot of money.

I think where and when you are born decides so much . But is that luck or accident or fate or.?

I'm a "its both" girl too.

If you were lucky to be born in a family with loving, sensible, educated parents who taught you how to succeed and you have talents that enable you to make money it is worth nothing if you don't use any of that.

Equally, you may be working hard but don't have skills, resources or talents to earn anything more than the minimum and didn't have a family who knew how to teach you how to succeed you will be treading water trying to keep your head above it. It is expensive being poor and when you are struggling to keep a roof and food on the table and working multiple jobs there isn't any spare time for studying or starting your own business. You can't make sacrifices if you don't have enough for basics.

It takes both on the most part.

Luck comes into it. But how people's lives turn out, and not just financially, is also often as a result of the choices they make.
Shall I choose to be a smoker?
Shall I choose to have unprotected sex?
Shall I choose to bunk school?
Etc etc.

I'm in the 'both' camp too. There is certainly an amount of being in the right place at the right time, which is just luck. But hard, intelligent work sometimes gets you noticed too.

Well, it depends. I feel lucky that my parents met my needs and chose good schools for me, that my physical and mental health is broadly sound, that I learnt to speak English young.

However - getting a scholarship to UCL for my master's? Buying my first flat at 27 in the mythical Zone 2 of London? My strong relationship with my partner? Being the only foreigner in my year to secure a training contract with a leading law firm? Running my own business? Each of these represents plenty of proverbial blood, sweat and tears.

Unless the OP is saying that people are lucky to have been born with a strong work ethic?

I remember coming to the office with the keys to my new flat, having lived in a grotty houseshare for years and taken a second job when all my friends were spaffing their (decent) salaries on nice apartments and M&S ready meals, only for to be told how "lucky" I was that I could buy it. You can guess my reaction. Likewise, "Oh you're so lucky you don't have children yet!" Yes, amazingly the stork still hasn't dropped by.

Working smart also has something to be said for it. Those flies that buzz against windowpanes are working pretty hard too, but that's no good unless the window is open.

Yanbu (mostly). I think good health plays it's part too, my health has scuppered many opportunities for me.

There was an article about how Bill Gates had unprecedented access to play on early computer networks during his teens that along with his wealthy parents basically set him up for life .

Look at Richard Branson, on the one hand he was this entrepreneur who left school with poor qualifications, on the other a bankrolled little rich kid who was in the right place at the right time, and of course you need money to make money. Whose initial business were based on tax fraud and mummy and daddy being able to bail him out. The tax fevasion continues today with his Neckar island dodgyness, but hey ho.

YANBU. There are people who work hard all their lives and never get anywhere.
I've never met anyone who is genuinely completely self made, they all had help or good luck at some critical point.
The decent ones acknowledge that.

Both.

It's not just down to working hard, as most people work hard but not all will see the same result. As one random example, you can work as hard as you like in your job but if it is a job with set pay scales and set numbers of people in each job role, you're not going to be making loads of extra money by working more hours. It'd be a slower progression.

Or you chose a job out of uni and then ten, twenty years later the economy changes and your job suddenly because redundant in the economy. That's bad luck, that's not something of your own making.

However, I do agree that to write everything off as luck does negate quite a bit of the work people put in.

Hmm I paid off a chunk of my mortgage with money I inherited when my parents died. I really wouldn't call me lucky for becoming an orphan in my 20s though...

Ah! So happy/lucky = wealthy!

That's a bit self defeating. If you measure happiness with a financial scale there aren't going to be many happy people in the world.

And that's before you get to all the rich, miserable feckers.

I think it is all down to circumstances. (i don't really believe in luck as something some people have or don't, but for the purposes of this thread i think that 'luck' means fortunate circumstances)

DH is 35 and we have just bought a very lovely large house worth a lot of money. We did this because sadly his mum passed away last year and he inherited a large sum. Does he feel 'lucky'? no, he would way rather have his mum. But we do feel very grateful for the situation she has left us in. We of course also did some hard work too but we never would have this house at this age without the circumstances.

There is also an element of 'luck' with what jobs and skills you have. If you are fortunate to have aptitude in certain things then the jobs are more lucrative. If (like me) your skills are in pottery and oils painting maybe not so much! DH is fortunate that he is good at something which is well paid. I am not so lucky in that respect.

On slight tangent and about luck. My ds1 has asd, spd, asthma and various other things. people say he is 'unlucky' and poor little thing etc. But i answer actually considering the situation we are in with regard to resources, he is 'lucky'. He has parents who fight for his needs, are comfortable enough to pay for extra help, born in an affluent country etc - lots of things that children like him don't have. Also he is middle class, white and male so that affords him a very unfair amount of social privilege as it is. No, i don't feel too sorry for my ds, i think he is lucky actually and he will never be brought up to feel any other way. It is very unlikely he will ever struggle, we will be in a situation to give him a head start thanks to the head start we have. So the 'luck' gets passed on.

When I was at uni in used to work in a frozen food factory during the holidays. The other staff worked bloody hard for peanuts. They had nothing to show for their hard work because once they'd met their essential costs there was nothing less. Even if they'd managed to get a deposit saved up they'd never have got a mortgage due to their low, low incomes. They could work and work and work and they'd still be hard up. So I don't think YABU at all.

Both. I come from a poor background, and have managed to make a decent life for myself by working hard at school and uni and becoming a teacher. I worked hard when I was at work, and now I'm a senior teacher. However, I was unlucky in the fact that I was too young to get in on the property boom, and despite earning a salary of around £50k, I just can't save enough to buy as all my money goes on rent (south east). My closest friend was in the same boat but - ta da!! She was magically able to buy a flat because her parents put down a third of it. She'll always be better off than me, no matter how hard I work. But still, you can't feel resentful of other people - people like my friend (a lovely person who knows how lucky she is) who have lucky lives aren't to blame for the fact that other people are less lucky. The only thing that pisses me off is when someone as lucky as that then boasts about getting what they have by hard work - errr, no, its because your parents gave you thousands!!

I don't know really if your being unreasonable or not.

Me and dh have a lot but we inherited a lot so that isn't luck as we lost family, but we both had a very good education and work really hard and that is sort of luck I guess if we hadn't be born to the parents we were we might not of had such a privileged up bringing and education.

I guess sort of down to luck. I do however think some people do work harder than others.

I'm on the fence here, to a degree I think you do make your own luck but, by the same token you have to deal with the cards you are dealt. Not everyone goes to private school, gets the best education money can afford & become an MD of a FTSE 100 company. However, on the flip, some people make bad choices & blame everyone but, themselves. People I know, chose to not to stay in education, left home ASAP, are still renting & blame others/society for their woes.

Don't think there's a right or wrong here. My acid test is, if you've done the best you can, with the cards you were dealt initially, aren't breaking the law & make at least 3 people smile per day, then you're not doing much wrong.

The richest person I know you could always tell they were going to make it. The fact he is quite as wealthy as he is is partly luck but he was always going to be very well off.

There are other decisions to be made as well. I didn't want to live in London like the vast majority of people from university. I don't like corporate business environments. I wanted to have a family and time to spend with them. I wanted to work in a field I enjoyed. All of these things mean I have 'sacrificed' a potentially better salary. But that is a conscious decision.

the harder i work, the luckier i am

I inherited money from my mum which means we'll be able to pay off our mortgage. i certainly do not count that as being fortunate.

People who say that you make your own luck can do one. In the last four years, I've lost my entire immediate family to illnesses / unexpected and premature deaths. I also had a miscarriage.

So yeah - financially, I'm all set, but I'm heartbroken and sad.

It's only achievable to get and pay off a decent sized mortgage (if you are lucky)

Often you will see two families with the same income, one relatively secure, the other pissing money away left, right and centre and functioning on a mixture of debt and late payments. We own our house outright. We earn less, and over the last five years substantially less, than many of our university contemporaries who are waist deep in debt and complaining about not having any significant savings. But our house is smaller, our cars older, our holidays less glamorous and our idea of eating out student haunts in scraggy parts of town. That isn't luck, that's prudence.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't
Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't
Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the 'Funky Chicken'
On your 75th wedding anniversary
Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much
Or berate yourself either
Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's

Read more: Baz Luhrmann - Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen) Lyrics | MetroLyrics

That's the one araiba

I was thinking about this and similar lifestyle issues quite recently.

Seems that some people dive headling into disaster after disaster - why is that ? Is it lack of thought before hand or just bad luck ?

I reckon much of that and this current thread topic is down to making the right choices, and keeping on top of everything. A little luck won't hurt - but in the main I think it's down to hard work. The right sort of work -at appropriate times.