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?

Want2bSupermum your DH is more lucky than someone who was born with an IQ of 70. No MBA for Mr low IQ.

You are lucky you haven't had a child born with life limiting disabilities and medical needs. You can quickly find yourself bankrupt in the good old US of A when your health insurance stops covering.

No one is saying it's all down to luck, but arrogant attitudes like yours where all your success is down to working bloody hard and being all round good guys are insulting.

One of the most entrepreneurial and hard working person I know had his business go bust because their major customer went bust (national chain) owing them lots of money. Oh sure, they could have diversified/widened their customer network, with hindsight. That wasn't down to a lack of work on his part. He built up another successful business again but times were very tough for a long time.

I think almost everything is down to - not luck, but random 'fate'.

I currently work in a well paid professional job.

Because I have a degree in a certain subject.

Because I made the choice to go to university to study it.

Because I was well informed about the qualifications I'd need to do this job.

Because I was confident enough talk to teachers and other adults about my future plans.

Because I was raised by people who appreciated and understood the importance of education.

Because I had the security of parents who loved me and would do anything in their power to help me succeed.

Because I had a safe, warm home to study in.

Because I was born to my mum and dad. Which was just down to luck! In my case good, in some people's bad. And my mum and dad were the way they were, and had the lives they had, because they were born to their parents. So on and so on.

I often think about stuff like this. Not sure I've explained it very well, but I do think who you're born to makes a hell of a difference to your 'luck' in life, in some ways less obvious than others.

DH and I had some incredible pieces of good fortune

1. We were born to good loving parents
2. We are healthy
3. We are intelligent
4. We got excellent educations.

These 4 things that were outside of our control have probably contributed most to our current wealth and also our happiness.

Apart from that, we work very hard, we make very prudent decisions, we are risk averse, we save, we postponed having children, we pushed ourselves, we emigrated. All of those things contributed also to where we are now - but we wouldn't have been in a position to choose good jobs to work hard at without the other bits of good fortune.

I wonder how many of the posters saying 'it's ALL hard work, no luck involved at all' are relatively young (under 40).

whois Our DS is autistic. It hasn't been easy and we have a long road ahead of us. You might say that is unlucky, I don't. It is what it is and you deal with these problems that are in your life. Yes it's expensive because we supplement what the school board provide. We are paying close to $500 a week and it's disgusting this isn't consider medical care but behavioral so not covered by Obamacare. However I would not say we are unlucky that our son is disabled. We all have problems we need to overcome. Others have children who have a serious sickness or pass away. Some people have sick parents they must care for while simultaneously caring for their children and working. It sucks but you do what you can and keep going.

BreakingDad I think the difference is that DH and I keep going. People say no all the time. We just keep going until we get what we want. Making the money to buy property wasn't easy. We lived out in the burbs for 6 years before we could move back. During that time DH had a gun pulled in him at traffic lights on his way to the airport early one morning. It seems many on here call that bad luck. DH and I see it as just something that happened and best avoided in the future.

Everyone is different, it's usually a mixture of both hard work and luck.

What is annoying is when someone says how 'lucky' I am to have quite a well paying job. Erm no it's not luck actually I moved out of the family home at 17 worked full time whilst studying and paid back fees as I was working full time. I have then spent the last 10 years going for every promotion possible and working a lot of hours to progress so no that's not down to luck. Or how lucky my husband and I are to live in a nice house in a nice area, again nope it's down to not buying designer handbags, 3 holidays a year etc etc that some of my friends in smaller houses / not as nice areas feel like they need.
I would consider myself very lucky to be able to pay off my mortgage in my 30s though as mine won't be paid off until I'm 48.

I however would say that because both my husband and I were brought up in a good area we went to good schools which helped a lot and was our good fortune :)

I am also on the fence.

My mum was a single mum. My dad never paid a penny towards us. She left school with nothing much and got pg in her teens.

He walked out on her. in the hospital having me she was applying for jobs. Her 1st place was an upstairs flat with no heating. She had to hand wash our nappies. I grew up in a house with no bathroom and only an outside toilet ( I am not 200 years old btw) every night she studied and studied. She worked full time all day and studied all night.

Now she is retired but she bought her own business, we moved into a house with a bathroom and heating (yey!)

I put all her success down to sheer hard work. However she clearly had brains, ambition and determination and saw education as a means of escaping our extreme poverty.

otoh her sister also single mum, also 2 kids and nc h. didn't study. Did work hard but in menial jobs. She still cleans now to make ends meet. She is in her 70's now. Enormous difference in standard of living.

Not luck but education and herd work and determination.

is it good luck or to work for an employer who provides promotion opportunities? is it bad luck not to?

Consider that promotions and pay rises have been few and far between over the last 8 years or so, I think those that do gain them should see that fate/luck/good fortune has had a hand in it. Right place right time.

if I'm unsuccessful at a job interview is that because I am no good or there was someone better? If I am successful, is it because I'm fantastically intelligent or is it that it was the right fit on the day, the right chemistry, the right circumstances.

I think its far too multi-faceted to claim solely good luck or hard work. Its all a large melting pot of opportunity, experience, having money to finance studies, good health and a healthy self-esteem. A belief that " I can do this. I deserve this. I want this"

Take away just one of these aspects and the knock-on effect for the others can be huge.

Re going for promotions, mine have all be gained by going for better jobs in different companies as movement within companies is pretty stagnant. I read somewhere that in your 20s&30s you really need to move job every 3 years to get anywhere.

I agree with that Kay - ive just turned 40 and the longest i've spent in a job is 6 years - not for want of escaping mind you! I'm in middle management and will remain so unless I get a Masters/similar.
I fear stagnating and not being marketable right now.

Yep really lucky our parents died.

Being under 40 doesn't automatically make your opinion incorrect, Mango.

When people say getting an inheritance is luck they are not saying you are lucky your parents died. My parents are both dead. I miss them and wish they were still here. But I am lucky that they saved a bit of money and owned their own house and were able to leave something to my sibs and me. I know people who will inherit nothing or who have inherited nothing. They feel the same grief as I do and miss their parents the same. But I got some money that I hope to use to help my children with deposits for houses eventually. they didn't. I am lucky in that one regard.

Instinctively, I got promotions by moving ob.s My husband moved hundreds of miles to follow my career so I would argue that feminist principles and women not letting their careers play second fiddle to men's careers and in other words my feminist political views were part of the reason for the promotions. If instead I were a trailing spouse having to pick up work wherever my husband shunted me to then my career might have suffered.

Also adapting helps. I have always spread risk, done a lot of different work things and that is protective of money and careers rather than putting all eggs in one basket.

Want2be

So that crucial interview your dh had at 17, what if unforeseen circumstances prevented him from attending? Or someone better qualified and/or more experienced/charismatic was also being interviewed for the same role?

baconyum you're being very facetious. What if he hadn't bothered his arse becoming employable so that he could do well enough at interview to get a job?

It's pretty rare for people to just have the ingredients for a good life handed to them on a plate and for them not to have to put any effort in to make the most of what they have.

I'm currently doing a PhD, sure the stars may have been aligned for me to get that opportunity but I had to put a lot of effort in to get the qualifications needed to apply for it and if anyone thinks that me finishing the thing will be because I'm lucky rather than the fact I've worked my arse off they will get incredibly short shrift.

Want2be posited that her and her families good fortune was purely down to hard work but also mentioned an important turning point.

It's a sliding doors thing isn't it?

Of course hard work matters but however hard you work if something awful happens hard work won't change that.

Hard work maximises opportunities but it doesn't always create them

So in summary I think opportunity can be the result of good fortune or luck. Making the most of an opportunity requires hard work and effort, and that hard work and effort can lead to further opportunity.

I think hardwork can change things when something bad happens, of course it can. Sitting around thinking woe is me I'm really unlucky nothing good is ever going to happen can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but people bouncing back from hard times isn't that rare, and whilst because of personal circumstances and particular situations it will unfortunately always be harder for some than others, but you very rarely get the opportunity to bounce back or run into good fortune by sitting on your arse and waiting for it to come to you, most of the time you need to go looking.

Yes, so I graduated in a terrible terrible recession. I make well over a hundred job applications. Many people wuold have given up. I didn't. My daughter aged 10 won a cruise down the Nile - why > Because she is a little optimist and she picked about 100 entry forms off an air port floor and scratched them off until she won, No one else did that. Other people tried one entry and then thoguht I've failed. Instead like Robert the Bruce watching that spider which tried again and again and again she had a go and had a go etc etc and won out and thus has she in her life to and thus do I too you just keep at it when all about you have given up and by sheer dint of trying more than most you often do prevail.

Agree re the promotion opportunities - my current employer seems to be pretty good (not been there that long but going on how long many of my colleagues have been and how much they've progressed) but I've changed jobs several times to get the next step up when it wasn't happening at an existing employer for whatever reason.

My last employer (huge company) there was total stagnation within the 300 strong department because of changes in department head. Stuck it out for a year after they came in to give them a chance to find their feet and make whatever changes they had planned (they talked a good game) but it was dragging on endlessly and meanwhile I was stuck and unable to move up officially to the next grade even though I was doing the same work - so I was being badly short changed. Applied for an internal move and at the same time got approached by a recruiter for an external role, went for both, got both.

From what I can tell if I'd stayed put I would still have been in the exact same place career wise as it still seems to be stagnant there.

I've been thinking about this - I reckon it's a lot easier to succeed if you're lucky enough to come from a wealthy background, all other things being equal.

You may be a really clever and talented potential business entrepreneur and have wonderful, loving and supportive family and friends but, if you're poor, is it always worth gambling on starting a business or moving for a good job? If it fails first time, that's it, game over. Richer people can afford to gamble because if it goes wrong they have the material resources to pick themselves up and start again. If you don't have much money, the risk can be too much, no matter how hard-working and intelligent you are.

baconyum Hard work doesn't always create opportunities but those opportunities are always there if you look for them.

DH want to make an impact while he was suing his employer for breach of contract. They had agreed to pay commission when he moved to the U.S. and they changed their minds. He stuck it out. The day after his green card arrived in the mail he started legal proceedings. He could have taken a low priced item and raised the price but in his mind taking a product they were paying someone to take away and finding a buyer for it was far more impressive. That wasn't luck and it wasn't luck that they failed to honour their contract or that he won his case.

Also my MIL was a home aide and my FIL was a school janitor. He is where he is because he works hard and stands up for himself.