How Multi-Generational Stress is Passed On

Those numbers make my head spin, Bruce! I have friends in their 50's who are still paying off their student loan debts. And yeah, my husband's gigs in corporate America were extremely stressful. At one time, he was the revenue manager for a hospital corporation. When he started, he was responsible for 3 hospitals. That was quite a workload. By the time he left about 2 years later (this one voluntarily), his workload had doubled and they were wanting to add yet another hospital to it.

And yes…having said that, Walt, I've encouraged my kids to consider the trades. Especially my oldest who, from a very young age, was fascinated with electricity and plumbing. I taught him how to read buy using a plumbing guides. It was the only thing that would hold his attention. He's a bit of a prodigy in telephony as well.

I'm hoping my other kids pursue self employment as well. Especially in areas they enjoy.

The other thing we encourage our kids is to keep their wants few and simple. And to avoid debt at all costs.

 

Like Oscar Wilde once observed, North Star: "The only way to live on in the memory of the commercial classes is by NOT paying your bills".

 

That would be quite a way to leave a legacy!

 

That's a lot of cabbage for a degree that burns a person out in a few years.
I get stressed just from trying to navigate web sites at eBay and amazon.com.

Talk about stress and aggravation, I get it almost every day from technology.
I may have to spend an hour or two every morning trying to get the right answer
from customer service people who mislead me for half an hour or longer and
then I get a busy signal on the phone. It takes a lot of mental energy to laugh it off
and know it's not fatal.

 

Wait until you get transferred to the E-Help Desk in India, Walt. That's where the real fun . . . I mean aggravation begins. Help desk people in the USA used to command close to six-figure salaries. The Bean Counters took a look at the numbers and figured they could outsource the help line to India and pay only $20K per year. Who suffers? The frustrated customer who can never get a clear answer to his problem before the line abruptly goes dead. That's progress!

The idea with the Stanford CS degree is to get in at a high salary, but with a big stock option, so that when you go out the door you're already a millionaire at 30 and can start investing in high tech companies yourself. At least that's the idea many have followed and come to grief pursuing when their little company didn't go public. Better route is to get a CS degree and an MBA and get into management. A PLM (product line manager) at Google or Apple makes at least $495,000 per year, maybe a whole lot more with stock options and private trading. But prosperity isn't good for everyone. You can drive a hundred miles in any direction from my residence and not find a house selling for less than $1 million. What do you think that does to the old blue collar working class who are still stuck in this economic environment? Makes them so mad they move away.