The snowbird crowd is ageing

TomG2 wrote:

bigdogger wrote:
....snip.......... Wealth and financial security is really about choices and planning and not about luck.

I can only attest to the people I know and their wealth is as much a matter of circumstances, marriage, inheritance, or just dumb luck as it is hard work and intelligence. Look at our grandparents who lived during the depression. .

Then all I can say is you must hang out with a bunch of people who make bad choices if none of them actually made any money. Like I previously said, 85% of the millionaires in the US are FIRST generation millionaires, meaning they made their money, did not inherit it and surely they all did not just stumble into it. What they did is create that wealth. They created companies, they invested their money in other companies, they made smart decisions and lived below their means, not above them. And they didn't wallow around complaining about something that happened 80 years ago (the depression), since that has absolutely no impact on them today. BTW, many people became wealthy during the depression. It created opportunities just like the recent recession created opportunities. People who bought real estate, stocks and made other investments at the bottom of both the depression and the recent recession did extremely well. Those who turtled up, hoarded what they had and proclaimed the sky is falling, not so well.