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How do a guy just finishing a PhD and a lady editing Food Network's website float 3 mortgages? I should have stopped reading after the "Luckily we still owned

How do a guy just finishing a PhD and a lady editing Food Network's website float 3 mortgages? I should have stopped reading after the "Luckily we still owned the condo..." but I kept going like an idiot. What's the lesson here? Fall into money, and when that isn't enough, fall into some more from a distant relative?

antisthenes 9y ago
This is failing upwards at its finest. Despite multiple bad decisions, these people keep falling into cushy safety nets.
- SmellTheGlove 9y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I've had some luck in life too. Not to the tune of what's described in this blog post, but then again, I'm not out there broadcasting it. I'm from an immigrant family who didn't come here with a whole lot, and I'm in a good place now - a lot of it because my parents did all they could to have us avoid _feeling_ poor even when that was reality, lots of sacrifice for our educations, and also a good dose of luck. Some bad breaks too, some big ones, but some really favorable as well. I know very well the feeling where you strung together a few good decisions and it paid off, and where if any of them had gone wrong, life might be very different at the present. Sometimes it's good decisions, sometimes it's luck, sometimes it's a combination. But the worst thing we can do is pass off those instances of luck and circumstance (or privilege as they call it these days I guess) as hard work bolstered by good decisions leading to that outcome. If you rolled a hard six (Distant Uncle showing up with $150k to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat), call it that, you know? This isn't because you're going to make people feel bad by admitting luck or privilege, either. This is a matter of self-awareness. In life, you HAVE to know where you did right, where you fucked up, and where you got a little bit (or a lot) lucky. That all influences future decisions, and if you want to set your kids up to be better off than you are, you just have to know and honestly assess these things. All of this is magnified if you have less margin of error for mistakes and bad luck. There's no lesson in this article other than to demonstrate that you can fuck up badly and come out on top if you have enough resources at your disposal. That's life, but not a lesson, if that makes any sense.
jonnathanson 9y ago
Seeing as how they owned a condo and a townhouse, then they bought this place, then they bought a lake cottage and a vacation property in Mexico -- all on impulse, sight unseen, resulting in similar lessons completely unlearned -- I'm guessing the "distant" relative is less distant than he's made out to be. I sure hope they're getting their mysterious benefactor a really nice father's day gift.

antisthenes 9y ago

This is failing upwards at its finest. Despite multiple bad decisions, these people keep falling into cushy safety nets.

SmellTheGlove 9y ago
Don't get me wrong, I've had some luck in life too. Not to the tune of what's described in this blog post, but then again, I'm not out there broadcasting it. I'm from an immigrant family who didn't come here with a whole lot, and I'm in a good place now - a lot of it because my parents did all they could to have us avoid _feeling_ poor even when that was reality, lots of sacrifice for our educations, and also a good dose of luck. Some bad breaks too, some big ones, but some really favorable as well. I know very well the feeling where you strung together a few good decisions and it paid off, and where if any of them had gone wrong, life might be very different at the present. Sometimes it's good decisions, sometimes it's luck, sometimes it's a combination. But the worst thing we can do is pass off those instances of luck and circumstance (or privilege as they call it these days I guess) as hard work bolstered by good decisions leading to that outcome. If you rolled a hard six (Distant Uncle showing up with $150k to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat), call it that, you know? This isn't because you're going to make people feel bad by admitting luck or privilege, either. This is a matter of self-awareness. In life, you HAVE to know where you did right, where you fucked up, and where you got a little bit (or a lot) lucky. That all influences future decisions, and if you want to set your kids up to be better off than you are, you just have to know and honestly assess these things. All of this is magnified if you have less margin of error for mistakes and bad luck. There's no lesson in this article other than to demonstrate that you can fuck up badly and come out on top if you have enough resources at your disposal. That's life, but not a lesson, if that makes any sense.

jonnathanson 9y ago

Seeing as how they owned a condo and a townhouse, then they bought this place, then they bought a lake cottage and a vacation property in Mexico -- all on impulse, sight unseen, resulting in similar lessons completely unlearned -- I'm guessing the "distant" relative is less distant than he's made out to be. I sure hope they're getting their mysterious benefactor a really nice father's day gift.