A lot of things happen to us that are entirely out of our control. It’s easy to blame people, but circumstances do have a large impact on our overall success. Things happen that we cannot impact or change.

It’s definitely a strong mix. If you have opportunities you don’t want to squander them, but there can be cultural fears in making big decisions too. A lot of people don’t invest, because they fear the market. I was terrified of dropping money into mutual funds, but eventually I made enough that I didn’t miss the money. If I had made less I certainly would have been more fearful of losing it all.

I have two friends who grew up poor and went to college and paid more than they should have because they didn’t know how to apply for scholarships. No one in their families had been to college and they didn’t understand the system. They are a doctor and a highly paid retail manager.
I also went for a check-up at the eye Dr who congratulated me on retirement. I had tried to get her to invest with me years ago, and she declined. She told me certainly wished she had.

People can’t make good choices if they don’t know what they are- I think our school system is really lacking in teaching basic finance and life skills.

Thanks for your comment.

I kept the word “privilege” out of the post on purpose. I wanted to walk through the scenarios and guide the reader to make the connection between my circumstances and my wealth. I find a lot of financial enthusiasts turn their nose up at that term, which is utterly ridiculous. I hope people read this and think about their circumstances. If I wrote privilege in the title a lot of readers would have turned a blind eye to it. They wouldn’t have thought through the connections before dismissing them. But yes, you are right, this post is all about my privileges.

I love your view that “privileges are a huge factor in the so-called “preparation” for life.” I completely agree. The hard part is balancing what we can control against those things we can’t. As you said, you can get all of the privileges life has to offer and still squander each and every one of them.

I’m also surprised that you never supplied the word “privilege” in the article.
If you don’t mind me twisting some of Heinlein’s words on decisions:
“There is no such thing as luck. There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.”
In my view I see privileges as being a huge factor in the so-called “preparation” for life.

Your decisions vs. circumstances point is like the business saying: “readiness meets opportunity.”
You need both to be successful.
There are privileged people who squander their money with poor decisions, as they lack discipline and readiness.
Likewise there are disciplined people who are underprivileged, and who end up waiting and waiting for the opportunity to become wealthy.

Thanks for your comment. I had an entire section of my post focused on these advantages, which somehow didn’t get published with this post 😉 Looks like I’ll need to dump my thoughts out on that again.

I completely agree that our mental and physical abilities play a huge role in our success. I am a 6’1” woman, which definitely helped me succeed in the male dominated field of engineering. Good looks can also make a huge difference in your success. We may not like these truths but they are true nonetheless.