Life is just as easy as shooting well.
When shooting, if you make the gun fire when the sights are lined up on the target, you get a good hit. In life, things work out if you make the right choices at the right time. See, its easy. As always, the devil is in the details and hindsight is 20/20.
When I look at my siblings, life hasn't exactly worked out the way they would like. They have had hardships and difficulty which I've not had to face. Often, when I talk with my sisters, they'll comment on how blessed/fortunate/lucky my wife and I are. I just smile and nod... gritting my teeth all the while.
It is true that my wife and I are doing quite well, both personally and financially. We've got a couple of kids who are smart, funny and well-behaved. We're living comfortably and are saving for a decent retirement. My sisters (who are a lot closer to retirement age than I am) have virtually no savings and seem to live in a state of constant chaos. Both are "locked in"* to jobs which they do not enjoy and which do not pay very well.
What's the difference?
When I look at my wife and I in comparison to my sisters, at each major fork in the road, we've chosen the correct path... my sisters (for the most part) have not. One of the biggest issues has been that we've had the foresight to recognize potential problems and make adjustments along the way. For example, my BA is in Economics... which is almost as useful as a History degree. When I got out of college, I got a low-paying job at a local bank and worked my butt off. In the process, I rapidly gained a promotion and some decent resume-filler. During nearly ALL of my non-work hours, I took some additional classes at a local community college and learned a ton about programming languages and system administration. I spent nearly two years doing this, but finally landed a job with a software company. It was an entry-level position for not much pay, but it was a beginning. Again, I worked my butt off and learned as much as I could.
Eventually, that job turned into similar one in another state (for better pay), and that one turned into another one for very good pay. All the while, my wife was working even harder towards her career goals. When I would talk to my sisters, they would complain about not liking their jobs or not having enough money. I'd mention taking some classes and changing careers, or even working another job. *GASP* they couldn't do that, as they were working full time already... where would they find the time? One was hourly and working EXACTLY 40 hours a week, and the other worked no more than 50. I was working steadily at 65-75 hours a week and my wife thought that 90 hours a week was an easy stretch.
We are now reaping the benefits of the hard work and good decisions we made many years ago& yet my sisters seem to think we are lucky. Yeah, right.
Monkeyleg Please dont construe any of this as a criticism of you, your work ethic or your decision-making over the years. This is more of a general rant about planning. Im particularly sensitive to it right now, because Im currently watching my nephew (who just graduated from college a few months ago), make some pretty fundamental mistakes. Hes has no clue about what to do, and worse, is unable/unwilling to accept any advice from people whove got relevant experience.
* I put parentheses around locked in, because they could both leave the jobs they have and either make more money, enjoy their work more, or both; however, neither is able to overcome their own inertia. They seem immobilized by a wretched combination of laziness and a lack of confidence.