Our SLOGAN ..That's just trucking man , Everytime it cost us money ?

The older I get the more I realize everything is designed to keep you in place. Treading water. It takes a lot to get ahead.
Go to work, do a good job, get a pay check. It's easy going at first but the more you build your life up around you the deeper into a trap you become where all you can afford to do is work. Not a lot of freedom to improve your life or get ahead at that point.
Imagine these kids with $100-200k in student loans. They don't even have it easy in the beginning. Straight into the trap they go.
It's all choices in the end I guess. I believe you can get ahead but it seems like it's getting more and more difficult as time goes on. The trend over the past few decades seems headed towards: earn less, work longer, spend more, use your retirement to pay medical expenses, work longer again.

I'm just now starting to notice inflation more and more first hand. It creeps up on you. I'm fairly young still but just the other day I was thinking of how $20 for lunch used to last me a week in high school. I just paid $9 for one meal at Wendy's.

 

Reality time folks: It does not matter what you get paid for any particular thing. At the end of the week, all that matters is what you traded a day of your labor for.

The whole day of labor. What was your return? #####, gripe, complain, moan and rend your garments all you want, but what did you trade a day's labor for? That is the only question. Quibbling over eaches is what people with too much time on their hands do.

People who are making money are deciding whether they are being paid appropriately for their investment of time and effort. If so, they keep taking the work. If not, they look for a better deal.

It is a fool's errand to try and figure out whether you are appropriately paid for each task you perform. If you are honest with yourself you may realize that you are being over paid for a hell of a lot of things you do. Are you going to ##### to the group about those too?

The real question is: Am I getting a reasonable wage for the whole package on average? There is your logic gate, use it or not, it's up to you.

 

I sure was that way! Going from a mileage paid road job, to hourly local, I never did get past the get the freight off, get the freight on, and get the hell on down the road!

 

I moved out of Maryland first thing in my 20's In Arkansas I had a house and several acres with timber and bottom land good for wildlife etc for roughly 35K total paid off within 6 years of 15 year mortgage. The equivilant in Maryland would have been 250,000 if not higher. Forget it. Taxes on property was about 90 dollars since one was a vet and other disabled. In Maryland it's close to 10,000 dollars a year just the property in one of my family hands. Oil twice a year comes to around 1500 each fill. Then electric another 400 a month. It's BS. Here in Ark, gas is a few dollars, electric not much more than that and you can have 5 tanker tractor trailer loads of water a month for a 100 dollars.

That was my ultimate solution to defeating the so called "|Keeping in place." The student loans came to 46000 dollars. Our mistake but it's PAID OFF. one 4 year degree worthless. Burn it. The partial 2 year I was working on was pretty much outsourced by H1B from India. What then? Nothing. Sitting at a desk waiting on customer calling who knows nothing other than it does not turn on anymore? Eff that. I rather fix a big tractor trailer.

You can still get ahead. But as long you remember not to get materialistic, buy useless crap that has to be replaced again and again and again (We went through 5 walmart lawn mowers in 9 years until we bought a hustler branded one. That one never failed. What a waste those 5 walmart mowers were.... Then we discovered value in the timber on our lands. I bought a big Stihl and started keeping about a total of a dozen families with kids warm during 4 cold winters in total with some more trees left over (Free.) Not a penny. I figure it will come around in time sometime just not in money.

They still remember me as that #### yankee who cannot hear anything worth a ####. But they say it with a smile now.