#GenZ #HavingChildren #WhenToHaveChildren #ConcernAboutTheFuture #men #women
How do you define success?
If you are between 18 and 29 years old, depending on whether you are a man or a woman, you may view success differently, according to a recent NBC News poll, conducted with Survey Monkey.
Both men and women all ranked having a fulfilling job, having money to do the things they want to do and achieving financial independence highly, the poll says.
About 25 percent of those polled say they are worried about their future.
But a remarkable percentage of Gen Z men ranked having children as their top characteristic of success. Women ranked having children closer to the bottom of their priorities, the poll said.
Today’s politics is filled with notions of women concentrating more on motherhood than careers.
But, with this generation having a more difficult time than their parents did in making a life, the idea of having children may be a low priority for many women.
In decades past, it was easier for women to stay at home while men went to work. Today, with prices of necessities soaring, it’s almost impossible to live on one salary.
It’s no wonder this generation is feeling anxious about the future.
Politicians like to carve out dream scenarios. Often, they are just dreams untethered to reality.
Even with both men and women in the same household working, making ends meet – let alone saving for a house or retirement – is much more difficult.
They can only look at their parents and grandparents and wonder how they could build the equity they had built. Inheritance may be their only hope.
Not only is it financially difficult to have children, it’s can be financially difficult to get married. Some data indicates that many first-time home buyers are in their 40s, when it’s supposed to be the prime of your earning years.
Their parents and grandparents may have gotten married fairly young, bought a small house fairly early into their marriage and traded up to better housing over the years to accommodate their families.
Many of those parents or grandparents have adult children living with them, because, even with a job, they can’t live on their own, let alone start a family.
If young men see success in having children, how are they going to do that?
If such young men still live with mom and dad, they are already starting from behind.
With unaffordable rents, and salaries and job opportunities not commensurate with those rents, they can’t start building a life outside of mom and dad’s house.
Having children may be great, but one has to be able to afford them. Having children you can’t afford will only put those kids behind in many ways.
The same politicians encouraging young people to have children are the same ones who refuse to help provide for those children once they are born.
So, if you are young today, make the best choices you can. Don’t let anyone bully you into a life you can’t handle.
Remember: Step 1 is finding a reasonably good paying job. Step 2 is moving out of mom and dad’s house. Step 3 is finding a good, responsible life partner. Once you’ve done those things, you can think about when to have a family.
Peter
Tag Archives: men
DOES YOUR PERSONALITY AFFECT EARNINGS?
#personality #earnings #PersonalityAffectsEarnings
Many of us have witnessed people being belligerent a t work. Perhaps they got fired.
We may have seen others who suck up to the boss, and get promoted.
But what about more subtle personality traits? Do they affect how much one might earn?
Tyler Cowen tackles this subject in an article for Bloomberg. It was also published Sept. 17, 2018, in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Cowen quotes a study by Miriam Gensowski at the University of Copenhagen. She revisited data from California schools, back in 1921-22. She culled out the top 0.5 percent of student in the IQ distribution, meaning they scored 140 or higher on the IQ test.
What did she find? Cutting through a lot of numbers, she discovered that conscientiousness mattered for men. Men who scored higher on the conscientiousness scale earned an extra $567,000 over their lifetimes, the article says.
For women, extroversion correlated with higher earnings – even more strongly than conscientiousness, unlike for men, the article says.
The article quotes the study saying that more “agreeable” men earned significantly less. Remember the saying, “nice guys finish last?”
“One possibility is that more agreeable men self-select into lower-earning, more subordinate professions,“ Cowen writes.
And, perhaps no surprise, the smartest ones among the smartest ones generally earned more, the article says.
OK, so you are who you are. You may think you aren’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, and the study referenced above may not have looked at people like you.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t make it above where you think you should be – if you want to.
Being conscientious will help. If that doesn’t come naturally, work on it – man or woman. Conscientiousness is something that can be acquired with effort, if it doesn’t come naturally.
To a lesser extent, extroversion can also be acquired but, for some, requires a good bit more effort. If you are naturally shy, you can change that, but you have to be motivated to WANT to change it.
Right now, you could be working in a job that you do not believe will EVER make you “successful,” as experts seem to define it, or wealthy. Don’t fret. There are ways out there for people, even shy people, to be successful. You just have to be willing to look for them. And, though you may be shy, you HAVE to be teachable.
If you WANT to change your life and are willing to check out one of the best such vehicles to potential success, message me.
Teachability can compensate for many natural personality traits. Conscientiousness, however, is easy to learn, in relative terms.
The lesson here, perhaps, is don’t let the person inside you take the best out of you. Be willing to find the best that’s inside you, and bring it out.
Sometimes, it takes another person to see the best that’s inside you and help you bring it out. Sometimes, you never know who that person might be. It may be someone you already know. It may be someone you haven’t met yet.
Don’t look at what someone is offering with the person inside you who wants to take the best away from you. Look at that person believing that the best of you has yet to appear.
Peter
WOMEN EARN LESS THAN MEN IN RETIREMENT
#WomenInRetirement #EarningsOfWomenVs.Men #jobs #layoffs
During their working years, women tend to earn less than men.
When they retire, women are more likely to live in poverty.
So says an article by Adam Allington of the Associated Press, published in the July 11, 2016, edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Women who raised children and cared for the sick and elderly family members often take what savings and income they have and spend it on something other than their own retirement security, Allington writes.
He quotes the National Institute on Retirement Security, which reports that women are 80 percent more likely than men to be impoverished at age 65 and older. Women 75 to 79 are three times more likely, Allington writes.
“I’ve had jobs that included a 401(k) and I was able to put some money aside every month,” Allington quotes Marsha Hall, 60. “But then I would get laid off and have to cash out the 401(k) to have money to live on,” he quotes Hall, who was born and raised in Detroit, is divorced and has no children.
Hall works part time as a file clerk, and she and her siblings chip in to care for their 75-year-old mother, Allington writes.
“If it wasn’t for Section 8 (a housing subsidy), I don’t know where I’d be living,” Allington quotes Hall.
Many men also have undergone a layoff in the last few years. Many families have lost their homes and have had to liquidate some, if not all, of their retirement savings.
Some see themselves scraping together a living via Social Security, part-time or even full-time jobs well into their golden years – presuming they can find those. For many, trying to reproduce the income they had in a job they lost is nearly impossible, as they see it.
Fortunately, there are solutions out there that can produce an income – even a better income than one has ever had – that don’t involve subsidies, or working at a traditional W-2 job in your golden years, and allow a person to help others do the same. For one of the best, message me.
Traditionally, women have borne the brunt of caregiving. They have also, in many cases, had to take off some work time to have children.
Much research has shown that, in general, they have also earned cents on the dollar vs. men.
These phenomena may have put women behind in earnings, thereby putting them behind in terms of retirement savings.
But both men and women are facing what Hall has faced in recent years: layoffs and not being able to replace a lost job with one that yields as good or better income than what was lost.
It’s important for everyone to have a Plan B in case the worst happens. If you have a good job, stay with it and save as much of your income as you can. Invest those savings well, with the help of a trusted adviser. If life forces you to take a break from work, try not to deplete those savings, though that may be easier said than done.
Most of all, make a secure retirement a priority in your life by spending less and saving more.
Peter