Well, no, not always, because I always took whatever job I could find or get not something I might like to do. But I'll tell you what, since I retired in '96, its been the best days of me life. I have accumulated more, saved more than in all my working days. Of course during those working days we raised a family.
Raising a Family in my opinion is the greatest success you can ever achieve in my book Bill. It's nice though that since you have done that you have been well compensated or blessed and can enjoy the rest of your life.
Yeah, it is. My only compensation has been a social security check each month but what I learned well in those working years is how to manage what you have and how to live on what you make. I really wish the school systems taught personal finance, i.e.. how to manage a budget, a checkbook, make saving a part of the whole, how to handle personal taxes at least until they got complicated.
"I just dropped in to see what condition your condition was in." I like that, something poetic about it
At one time Home Economics Classes actually taught many of these things. Boys usually did not take that class. But I felt and still feel that personal finance including all you have mentioned is real life and it needs to be taught in High School before they enter the real world on their own. I really feel that besides parents spoiling their children rotten with so much expensive material things that they cannot afford if they leave home, kids today that become young adults do not want to leave home because they do not know anything about personal finance or what it costs to live in the world. So they just don't want to leave a home where everything is handed to them on a silver platter and they can sleep as late as they want too.
As a 10 year old, I sold donuts door to door for a local bakery who used child labor to distribute product. I got a nickle a bag commission, which was quite a bit at the time. So I spent most of my adult working life as a B2B distribution sales representative. Business degrees were earned in my forties, but I was not cut out for management. It was a difficult lesson to learn. I was a business owner for a little more than 4 years & that's when I found out who I was and am today.. I was forced into early retirement & today I am finally on Medicare. Whoever calls that whatever they make of it may be blind to risk. I certainly exposed myself. 4 certainties there are: life, death, taxes, & change, no?
I was going to be a musician and/or music teacher. Didn't happen, but I do listen to music from time to time.
@Harry Havens , I find the more music I listen to the more energy I have to move around. TV's just get you to sit, so I limit that to evenings. When I can get to my county library, I plan on starting audiobooks so that I don't have to set for such long periods.
I also aspired to musician, but I decided that the lifestyle was too challenging. But I still play my electronic drum kit now and then, but not very well. But I enjoy it, nonetheless.
You should be able to use the Overdrive library app and get audiobooks, @Ina I. Wonder . I am also pretty sure that Prime Reading has some, although I have not checked that part out because I don't like audiobooks. Okay, I looked at the prime reading library, and they have audiobooks, and I think that you should also be able to get some at the kindle store, and if you search from low to high price, you can find the free ones.
I tried to play a number of stringed instruments. Too impatient, not enough grey matter in the right places, lack of talent. It didn't happen. After I retired I picked up the diatonic harmonica. I do very much enjoy playing it solo once in a while. It's also fun to accompany other musicians. Later I learned to play the Chromatic Harmonica and the Tremolo, but not so well. Still, none of that makes me a musician, just a harp player. At one time I had semi-serious thoughts about joining the French Foreign Legend. That didn't happen either.
Anything involved with science and no, my life's vocational path would not take me in that direction. War happened, marriage and children happened. Stuff happened. I did manage to eek out a bachelor's and two master's degrees but alas, none in theoretical physics, bio chemistry, nor my present love, neural mechanics. The thing about studying science is that a person cannot just leave the hallowed halls of education and then go back a year later when the back pocket is full again and expect to be up to speed. It's either full time or not and in my case it was not to be. At the present, I am obviously retired and able to spend some time attending online lectures and visiting with people who have realized a better than average education in my areas of interest. Even at this late stage in my life, it is a sweet thing to be recognized by my scientific peers in a couple of think tanks as being one of them even if a sheepskin is not hanging on my wall, nor years spent in the lab. Better late than never as the adage says.......but, I would have liked it so much more if I were but one of many who busied themselves making discoveries instead of watching the end results of someone else's work.