Not that this is entirely wrong in principle, but it sounds like you got into the market for a house right around 2009. "Happen to enter the market at the exact bottom of a historic crash" isn't exactly a strategy. It's just luck.
Well sure, but perhaps also it's just survivorship bias. It sure seems like there is always somebody that just got lucky, no matter what is going on. 10 years from now, there will be a group of people that "just got lucky" with something they did right now.
I guess what I'm saying is that the right attitude is to decide that no matter how terrible everything is and no matter how stacked against you the world is, there is an opportunity - somewhere, somehow.
No, I made smart decisions about purchasing a house in a good low col area and fixed it up.
Honestly, this whole idea that anyone who's achieved some success is just down to luck is pretty disheartening. Do you think this is a good approach to improving your life? I don't see any advantage to thinking this way.
So no, I don't think you need to buy into myths to improve your life. By all means, make the smartest moves you can with the hand you're dealt, but you have absolutely no control over what hand you're dealt. If you got lucky, good for you. Plenty of others got lucky and squandered it. I'm not saying don't feel proud of yourself. But don't forget the many people who never even got the chance. You're not better than them and neither am I.
It's so easy and so natural to look down on other people. Everybody does it, and the best we can do is try to fight against it by having some humility.
I don't think this is true. Sure, it's trivially true that we don't earn the traits we're born with in any way. But it should be equally obvious that people can and do cultivate these same traits deliberately throughout life. People cultivate grit (i.e., discipline, persistence, courage, etc), and everyone has to fulfill whatever innate intellect they were given with knowledge and experience, which don't come for free.
There's certainly a lot of luck involved all along the way, but labelling it all "just luck" is a pretty broad stroke is it not?
> You're not better than them and neither am I.
"Better" is a heavily loaded term. I suspect you're angling for a "worthy of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" sort of meaning, which is dangerously close to a strawman. But if "better" is given a more specific and practical "better steward of their resources" meaning, then I assure you there are lots people better than me.
>Oh you mean the same time I graduated into a shitty job market with thousands in college loans?
I think this is actually to the same point. Compare what you stated with someone who, say, graduated in the 1960s where they could have a middle class lifestyle without even graduating college, or if they did graduate, without mountains of debt or relatively high home prices.
Both points can be true. There can still be paths forward while also acknowledging it can be more difficult. Exceptional people will always find a path to success; that's what makes them exceptional. What worries me is when we (as a society) make it exceedingly difficult for large swaths of people to succeed at achieving something as modest as "middle-class".