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What kind of extreme financial situations have you been in?

How close have you been to not being able to pay for: rent, utilities, groceries, health insurance, transportation?

What did you waste too much $$$ on?

What kind of desperate things did you do for $$$?

How much do you worry about $$$?

How jealous are you of someone else that earns more than you?

I grew up poor. Sometimes we didn’t have enough money to pay for groceries at the end of the month. Bill collectors calling all the time. Hard work and support from Catholic faith and neighbors got us through. Jesus can overcome. I have a special interest in computers and this lead to a good job. My parents scrapped and managed to send me to college.

Garbage Soup! When there was not enough food at the end of the month we ate “Garbage Soup” any leftovers not fit to make a meal of went into the big soup pot.

Google “stone soup” and throw a “stone soup party”!

See I never get jealous. I know there are plenty of rich people, that is OK. I know I will never be rich, that is OK. I also know I am not too long for this world, and the rich people, they got to die too.

When I graduated college, that was when I was dirt poor and had very little besides my computer and my clothes.

Mom said get a job, now, or else go to the grocery store and bag groceries. I got a job in Atlanta that paid about $27,000/yr. It was programming boot camp, you work in a room for 9 - 11 hours a day doing assembly language coding. At the end of each week, if your program works, you pass, if not you fail and you're fired. People got popped one by one, escorted out of the premises by security. I somehow or another survived. So I learned a useless language not used anywhere else except that one company.

On the job, I was not liked by anybody. For one thing, the company had fired a bunch of senior employees, and the only reason they hired my class was for cheaper wages. So the people on the job actually hated the newcomers to begin with. There was hostility that you could cut with a knife. I was not any good in the social stuff, but knew enough to keep my mouth shut and not say much.

I found the job extremely difficult. I hated the apartment I lived in and the heavily polluted, high traffic road leading to work. Eventually I was able to find another job, and I was very glad to get out of there. I had a great deal of satisfaction thinking about all the training time that the company lost with me leaving. They needed to learn a lesson about retaining employees, I was happy to further their education on that matter. I did not particularly enjoy coding assembly language, it is not an easy thing to do.

I was even happier when I left Atlanta, it has to be one of the very worst cities in America if not the world, just a dystopia with plenty of examples of how not to do things.

Each company I worked at, you had to learn a whole new bag of manure. The old manure became obsolete. No, you had to start over, from scratch, new programming language, everything. That is just the anti-productivity system that big business had decided was dandy.

I'm curious what assembly language you couldn't use anywhere else.
I used to write z80, 8080 and 6850 machine code in my head, but never landed a job coding.
I made the mistake of choosing electronics over coding.

One time my first year out of college me and my dad's oil company made about 400,000 dollars in revenue in today's dollars in the span of 1 to 2 days. I have been homeless 20 times. I cant afford anything because I am unemployable so I live with my parents and grandparents. I worry about money all the time. I am jealous of people who make a living wage.

One day my car won't be driveable so I'm saving money for a newer one (can't afford a new one). But I recently lost one of my jobs so saving will be harder now.

I worry about money a lot. Groceries have gotten extremely expensive here so money I could have saved goes on food.

My sister has been working in the mines for a few years, so that and money from her husband in their divorce has made her rich. She's had cosmetic surgery because she can pay for it. She bought an extremely expensive brand new truck.

Yep, I envy her.

In college I had times when I ate whatever cheap canned/frozen vegetables were on sale that week at the grocery store. I made a lot of pasta meals with stewed tomatoes to get by. Occationly I would have enough money to put some hamburger into the mix. Hamburger helper was too costly to use in my apartment building.

My roommates talked me into “cheap food night” where we would search for the cheapest deals we could get that night. One place had an all you can eat chili soup special one day a week for $2. A certain local bar had quarter burger night on Wednesdays, so we would often be there for that, even if we could not afford to eat anything else that day. Going out was literally walking to wherever I was going to, as I often could not afford gas. If it was not for student loans (federal and private), I would not have been able to go to college at all. I will be repaying those loans for the rest of my life.

I realize I was better off than some I knew at the time. I tried to share with them when I could. In the game of life, it is not who has the most who really wins but who helped the most with what they had.

Growing up I had very wealthy cousins. One got a new sports car for his birthday. It got quickly taken from him by the authorities after catching him racing on public roads without a drivers license. It was replaced with a older muscle car, which also got taken away. He finally got a much slower new car that he could learn to drive with. My father said to me that “sometimes people have to learn again and again”. I think he was talking about my aunt and uncle trying to show off their wealth. I could not care less what others have more of, they often have a lesson to learn by their own design.

I remember one week forty odd years ago, when I had only enough cash for a block of butter with which to lubricate the potatoes I dug up from the garden.
Strangely...I was quite happy eating only potatoes for that week.

I actually live pretty frugally. Working for a small, family company, my pay is pretty minimal, but I still manage to save money every month.

When I was a kid, there was a period when we were really short of money. I'm not going to go into details, but my father donated all he could to help out a neighbor.

During this period of time, on the night before my first day of the third grade, my oldest brother was cutting some angle iron with a cutting torch. When he finished, he got up and walked away and I walked up to it and immediately fell on top of it. I had a burn that ran the entire length of my left fore-arm. We didn't have the money to go to the doctor and so we treated it at home with burn ointment (my parents were really apologetic about that). It was something like a year or more before a doctor ever looked at it. The scars were so bad that they were still bright red twenty years later.

I have a good friend whose immediate family is very wealthy, as in nine figures + wealthy. She knows Charles Schwab personally. The paintings the walls are all real, not prints of them. She has several items that belong in museums. She has lost two things that were worth millions of dollars, yet she jokes about how they got “misplaced”.

Her perception of being rich is much different than most people, as she thinks her family are just average. Her kids have never learned how hard it is to earn money if you are not already wealthy, so they constantly spend it on frivolous things that they do not need. Neither can hold a job long as they have very little work ethics. After a while, all of that stuff they bought gets donated to a charity thrift store. At least it does help fund the charity.

As my friend ages, she and her husband sees how spoiled the children have become and wonders why. I tried to explain it to them, but it just not make sense as they do not see their own level of wealth. It is like they have blinders on. Her family will end up fighting over everything in the end. That is the lesson she will learn.

I do not envy having those problems. I would rather have a normal-level life to deal with.

"If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself."
- Desiderata

full text:

Desiderata: Original Text
This is the original text from the book where Desiderata was first published.

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

by Max Ehrmann ©1927

From The Poems of Max Ehrmann edited by Bertha Ehrmann
published by Bruce Humphries, Inc. 1948

Source:
https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html