If you are prospering financially, to what do you attribute this?

[dirty ethel rackham]

 

For the purposes of this thread, prospering financially means you have enough to pay all bills each month, have some savings, live in a house you consider comfortable, have access to good medical care, and can afford to purchase healthy food. Also, if you had an unexpected bill, such as a car repair, it wouldn't cause financial hardship for the month.

 

So, if you are prospering financially, do you attribute this to your education, background, genetics, good health, work ethic, geographic area in which you reside, luck, family inheritance, or other?

 

By your definition, I suppose we are prospering.

 

First of all, I have to quibble with the "friends with like circumstances" quote. I have friends who live paycheck to paycheck, no insurance, big families, who never complain about money. I have friends who live very comfortably - can afford luxuries that we couldn't dream of.

 

How do we do it? When we first got married, we made a pact to live below our means. Even though I made twice as much money as dh, we decided to live on his salary and use mine for some extras but invest most of it. This way, we never got used to an income that we couldn't live on after kids. ETA: This was especially evident in our housing purchase. Although realtors and bankers kept telling us we could afford a bigger house, we chose our price range based upon what we were willing to put toward a house payment each month, not what some overly generous calculator said we could afford.

 

Education certainly plays a role, I have a bachelors and dh has a masters. We both came from families that valued a college education. It simply never occurred to us not to go to college. We also went to college at a time when, if you didn't have to support your family, you could earn most of what you needed for school over the summer and with part-time work during the school year. While I haven't worked in my field in 15 years (and now that field is mostly overseas), dh has a decent, fairly recession proof job as a result of his education.

 

Hard work is also a factor. Dh has only been laid off once during down times, because, for the most part, employers have seen him as an asset worth keeping. They know he is good for the bottom line. He also gave up some income potential to work for a quasi-government agency - that has given him job security and benefits at the expense of a higher salary working in the private sector. The health insurance part has been a big reason why he has stuck it out during some really unbearable times. I have had some chronic issues and having good health insurance has been incredibly beneficial.

 

Being smart about work. When there were big shakeups in his department, dh had a can-do attitude when many of his long-time co-workers were grumbling Dilbert-style. This allowed him to get several big promotions to head up projects and he delivered what what they wanted.

 

Being frugal. If we can't afford something, we don't buy it. We both are fairly averse to spending money. If we are going to buy something, we look for quality so we won't have to replace it soon. (I am not averse to spending money on books, education and healthy food.)

Edited August 29, 2011 by dirty ethel rackham