To think money is mostly about luck, not effort?

[TheGreyShark]

I’ve been thinking about how much luck plays a role in financial success. Some people work incredibly hard and never get ahead, while others are born into wealth, stumble into the right opportunities, or just happen to be in the right place at the right time.

I personally feel like the money I have is due to luck, not effort. If I’d been born in different circumstances or made different connections, my financial situation would be totally different.

AIBu to think money is mostly down to luck rather than hard work? Or is effort actually the key factor?

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.

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.

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.

@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.

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.

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.

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

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

It’s a combination of many things - luck, hard work and resilience/determination.

@PlutarchHeavensbee- you deserve every penny of your money and current position. You worked hard and made sacrifices. Where luck came into it was that you didn’t experience ill health that resulted in you being unable to work for a time/indefinitely, or a series of financial disasters meaning your savings were exhausted, you acquired debt and the cost of servicing those debts meant you were no longer able to save. That doesn’t take away from your achievement as some people can have good luck but fail to get ahead.

Resilience is also a huge factor. Knock back after knock back takes its toll on people and some give up striving as it never seems to get them anywhere.

Even having the intelligence to get qualifications could be considered luck, or the temperament or wellness to stick at it (more is coming out now on the relationship between adverse childhood experiences, trauma and the impact on things like physical and mental health).

its not true to say it’s all luck. Some people have definitely earned their success against the odds. I think it’s more true to say that for some people who haven’t achieved material success it’s not down to a lack of hard work but a lot of bad luck and circumstance.

But without the humble cleaner, delivery driver, shelf stacker or carer, what would the skilled and highly educated do?

These are the people who we rely on, as we saw during Covid.

The point is we can't all be high flying Surgeons and Bankers. We need people at all levels in society

In ensuring the successful outcome we need cleaners, the nurses, the surgeon, the anesthetist.

But no matter how hard the cleaner works they are never going to be as successful at the Anesthetist or Surgeon.

Personally, I don’t know anyone who’s worked hard and then not managed to succeed.
I’ve seen luck come into effect more with those who’ve coasted yet became successful.

Define succeed?

Is the cleaner successful if between her and DH probably also in a low paid job manage to get the money for an ex-council house?
And manage a holiday once a year?
Keeping themselves of benefits?

The more I think about this thread the more distasteful I actually think it is.
We need everyone to contribute to society. We can't carry loads of people on benefits.

But equally not everyone will achieve promotion after promotion not everyone can be the top dog.
Not everyone wants to be top dog and thats OK too.
Sometimes people get to a comfortable level, happy with their work-life balance. They don't want the stress of the next rung on the ladder.

But what also cannot be allowed to happen is for those who do have the lucky breaks, talent, ambition and drive to get to the top to be put off because taking the next steps will cost them child benefits or start reducing their tax free income. And at huge cost to their work / life balance.

Huge numbers of people in low paid but FT work, are on benefits - basically because the wealthy want to hang onto to every penny they've got.

No one on higher rate tax bands are "worse off" and why should the well off get benefits, like child benefit or free childcare???
If they really cannot afford to pay for their children on these salaries, perhaps, like they are keen to tell others "Go with out" ?

Someone on 120k will be taking home around 4x what a min wage worker will be getting, even more when pension is taken into consideration, they may also get fringe benefits like a car and health insurances, far better redundancy as well.

The better off are, according to stats, on average, going to live 19 years longer than the least well off.

But there still needs to be a differential between unskilled and highly skilled professional work, otherwise people wouldn't bother with the hard work and sacrifices they have to make to reach the top.

Huge numbers of people in low paid but FT work, are on benefits - basically because the wealthy want to hang onto to every penny they've got

I cannot understand this reasoning. It's the wealthy wanting to keep their wealth that causes some people to be eligible for benefits while in low paid FT work?

let me try and explain
say there is a total amount of money in the county - we can give most of it to one or two people or we can share it around evenly or something in between
if most of it goes to very few people then we end up having to scrape together benefits form taxes to help out those who don’t have enough - money that could be better spent on education and the NHS

if the very rich people paid their staff more they would have less money but the staff would not need benefits to survive - benefits that are raised from taxes that people just above benefit level are paying

One problem. Most of the wealthy aren't in the UK - they're abroad. So outside the scope of UK tax authorities unless they become UK resident.

This is ridiculously naive. We live in a global economy. Lots of businesses are owned by people or institutions outside of the UK either directly or in the form of shares. Even within the UK, businesses are owned by institutions such as pension funds that many people rely on in their old age. It would cause lots of issues to suddenly make these businesses globally uncompetitive by paying employees a huge wage.

The UK is also competing with other countries for businesses to setup here and to create jobs as well as to export goods. High wages actively harm the UK in this regard and will ultimately lead to higher unemployment and a higher benefits bill.

Well said.

Element of both I would say and also being a risk taker. Very cautious people struggle to grow wealth while having a good time alongside it as they always fear a rainy day and plan accordingly. Risk takers tend to live for today and accumulate more wealth due to this.

My mum was very cautious. - passbook etc. happy to accept 0.25% on her savings when interest rates were low rather than invest the money.

My friend gambled on a business venture. Had it failed it would have cost him £100k. He ended up selling it for over a million less than 10 years later.

@Needspaceforlego
Define succeed?

Is the cleaner successful if between her and DH probably also in a low paid job manage to get the money for an ex-council house?
And manage a holiday once a year?
Keeping themselves of benefits?

Exactly.
When I look back at my life so far, I've succeeded. I have battled so much. But only people who know me well know this. I'm unemployed at the moment and when I finally get a job it will be low paid. But people don't see the effort it has taken me to grasp even the bottom few rungs of the ladder.

But are they full-time?

The benefits statistics only ever mention x percentage of recipients are in work, they never say x percentage are working 38 hours a week or more.
Actually I think the BA class about 25 hours as full-time.

This is very true and what people don't factor into discussions about the wealthy. They have often had to risk complete ruin to succeed. It is also much more likely that they have made huge sacrifices to make the money they have. Far more than someone plodding along in a 9-5 with a decent wage and pension. If the risk taker is in the minority of people that end up with a successful business then a decent chunk of the population will assign their success to luck and question why the owners are so much wealthier than the employees in a secure job taking absolutely no risk. They will also seek to tax them out of existence. It's mad when you think about it really.

its far easier to risk it all if you have a safety net somewhere lurking in the background - and if you have something to risk in the first place

if you don’t have 10k to invest you can’t take a chance

if you have financially secure parents you can bet your home much more easily than someone with no backstop