Anyone starting their adult life should follow this advice, it actually works.
All good advice, but I’m less interested in helping middle class people become rich than in helping poor people become middle class.
Some of this advice is good for that too though.
Finish high school and embrace the nuclear family.
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Making good decisions and following the advice in the OP will lift people out of poverty.
Yep, two excellent ways to help people out of poverty.
My parents didn’t have a lot of money, but gave me something more valuable- a strong drive to educate myself (one the first high school grad in her family and the other a dropout who got his diploma at age 37), to work smarter rather than harder (they had both taken the hard road) and to rely on your own abilities and judgment as much as that of others. I went a bit overboard on all of those.
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I learned at a pretty early age if I wanted something I had to earn it, nobody was going to give me something for nothing. Same with most of the people I grew up with.
The only real financial advice my old man gave me was stay out of debt, live within my means and get in the 401k and never touch it.
My dad had an 8th grade education, my mom got her GED in her 40’s because she needed it for work.
I got my college degree in my 40’s.
Both my kids will get advanced degrees before they turn 25.
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Not everyone needs a college degree, but they do need a marketable skill or trade that will allow them to have a decent life. I know of several coworkers kids in their twenties that aren’t making enough to move out of their parents houses, they go from one crappy job to the next. My son and his buddies all have their bachelor’s degree and they all make close to or over 6 figures, a few others are in graduate or medical school.
My kids will have both.
They both spent several summers working for summer camps for basically peaunuts.
My daughter is already substitute teaching on days she doesn’t have school.
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What rules would you provide for that ?
Moving from poor to middle class? A lot of the advice is the same.
But, it can be frustrating for a poor people to hear “spend less than you make” when you don’t make enough to even cover the bills. Or, as Parrot said, embrace the nuclear family. I’d certainly tell a poor person that it’s better to wait to have kids until you’re established, but people don’t control the families they come from.
So, some of this is policy stuff, not personal choice. But we tend to blame the individual.
As I recall, there was a study done about the 3 Pillars of Success or something similar and it came down to these items:
- Stay out of jail
- Finish high school
- Do not have kids out of wedlock
A very high percentage of people with those “pillars” were not poor.
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But they control the families they start
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Then they have to improve their skills to make more money. Everyone I know started in a crappy minimum wage job and moved up. Have you ever worked for very little? How did you move into the middle class?
Having kids you can’t afford is a huge one. It’s a lot of work for 2 parents making decent money to raise kids these days.
Yes, all good advice. But people are not starting from the same place.
Yeah, if someone makes terrible decisions who should be blamed?
What policies would make people make better decisions?
You’re right, some people get free housing (section 8), food stamps, Medicaid, taxpayer funded Head Start and child care, utility assistance, cash welfare and much more while others have to pay for those things themselves.
Also in Illinois poor kids get free tuition to any public university, that would have saved me over $100k but unfortunately I earned too much.
The point is to end in a different place than you started.
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This conversation reminds me of the argument for providing lunch at schools for no direct cost.
The Federal Government already has a program for those in need. Any district that chooses to provide lunch at no direct cost to every school is literally costing their district Federal money by not having families that aren’t in need pay directly.