I am not stealing this Diary title from DarkSyde cause it is at the top of the rec list. No, in fact many of my friends are in fact millionaires. Plus I want to rant about some stuff related to what was talked about in that Diary. I swear it might be interesting below the fold.
I come from a family of that top 2% we keep hearing so much about.
I got my first job when I was 12. A paper route in 1981 or so. I have worked pretty much 5+ days a week since then. Did my parents get me a "clunker" of a car when I turned 16 and paid my college? Yes. But if I wanted to take out a date in college or put gas in said car, I had to work.
I know, I know I am blessed. This is background for what is coming.
When I went to work after graduate school within a few years I was making more money then I could spend. I bought a huge house, German sedan, $3,500 suits, bar tabs that would choke a horse.
Then the dot.com thing happened. Now at the time I worked in high-tech advertising. We didn't take on a single dot.com client, cause we could see it was bullshit (insert VC funding isn't profits), but it wrecked my industry. My firm, 40-person, 23 years old, $60 million in yearly billings got bought up by a billion dollar French holding company and I was unemployed the next week.
My phone used to ring off the hock with jobs offers. Now nobody would return my calls.
I thought about taking unemployment. But I was able-bodied. I should work. I tried to get a job at a place like the Gap (think they were cooler back then) and couldn't get hired.
Ended up working two jobs at 7/11 type jobs.
It was a spotlight into a world I didn't really understand. Managers working your schedule/hours so employees are under 40 and can't get benefits. So that single mom only gets 38.5 hours, but told if she works harder next week maybe 40. Fucked up shit! That was less then 10 years ago for me. I am 41.
I popped out of that and am now pushing that top 2% again. Many of the people I network with are millionaires. More then a few came from families not as blessed as mine. Jags in the driveway. $250,000 home theater systems. Million dollar homes.
They all seem to forget where they came from, or how hard it was. Offering no help now they have theirs.
Take this story for what it is ......