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While I was in Ecuador we toured about half of the country and I had a close friends father-in-law with us on the trip. He is upper middle class in Ecuador. As we were traveling the country looking for land and properties for me to buy as both investments and to move and build on, I could see some of them were intimidating to him. At one point he made a comment similar to "Living like a King".
For me, Ecuador is a "down size" to a simpler and less expensive life. Yet the areas I was focusing on in my hunt were far beyond the "common people". It really puts things into perspective, and it once again reminded me --- Money does not buy freedom, nor does it buy happiness.
BTW, I should also add that there are plenty (!) of Ecuadorian's who have far, far more money than I do. When I asked several realtors about who the neighbors are, I was expecting the majority to be gringo's or expats. Not the case at all, it's just the upper class people who have these homes or second homes in the beach areas.
Also no matter where we drove, the poorest and most run down parts of the country, or the most expensive, the people were all very happy. So much in fact that the comparison between American's and Ecuadorian's, in terms of happiness, was really shocking. Once again... money does not buy happiness.
I'm still on the last days of my trip home in New York. I went to a department store to stock up on some "American stuff" and at the checkout was told that I could save 30% if I opened a charge card with them. Hmm.
No argument that debt is a choice, and under disciplined circumstances it can be very helpful, but it is my belief that in our culture it is a choice that is abused.
I think I need to back off my earlier statement though. If one had the means to walk into a debt counseling center, picked a person at random and wrote off all their debt for them right there on the spot, more likely than not they would be back in debt before to long.
So I suppose even in the case of indebtedness money would not buy freedom.
Maybe money does not buy happiness or freedom...but it sure helps. You don't hear too many people driving broken down rusty cars every day to jobs they hate, living in bad neighborhoods or squalid apartments, talking about how happy they are.
On the other hand I know of a prominent physician in my area, one of the best in the country in his field, super wealthy, but hated and feared by those around him and his adult children are all screwed up. Whole family's crazier than a shithouse rat.
So there's got to be some balance. You have to be in good health, both body and mind. If you're not then all that money means nothing. (I'm in excellent health, so's my wife and little girl, we love each other immensely, so in that sense I'm a multi-millionaire.)
I make good not great money at what I do (not trading) but I want to make more. And I want to make it trading, because additionally I want to have the time to do the things I want to do as I get older. I've been broke before, and brother it sucks.
FYI, I just read back in the thread, and there were actually two. There was some drama some years ago involving each of them, separately, in different threads. If you want to waste some time, and end up saying basically "WTF?", you could search for posts by them until you found what you're asking about.
Or you could do just about anything else and spend your time better.
I think having a boss generally sucks. But I'm also not particularly interested in running an actual company and trying to sell things. So if you wanna live a decent life, you've gotta do something... See where I'm headed with this? I stopped trading for a while and when I got back to it and started refunding the accounts I had withdrawn everything from, all I could think about was the opportunity I missed while I was doing other things that were not contributing to my success.
I should add... Just because you're free does not mean you are automatically way happier. Happiness is a choice. I think you need to choose to be content but keep motivated to work for something better.
