Staying or leaving for bigger city, need opinions

[bjimmy24]

Originally Posted by WRnative

Persons that I know with greater financial resources have much more quality time with their kids, especially after retirement, than others. They do work harder, especially earlier in their careers, but many also emphasis making family time available. Many have cut the cord, and spend little time obsessed by life's more meaningless distractions. They have families later in life, given their time spent in acquiring an education and professional security. Their kids don't graduate from college with any debt, and have their college options unlimited by financial concerns; this is not a petty difference in the current U.S. society when university debt often is crushing.

What happens to our society if persons don't seek advanced skill and training? E.g., we already are far behind many of our economic competitors in the production of engineering talent. A significant percentage of U.S. graduate school engineering students are foreigners. Russia is almost double the U.S., despite its much smaller population and the high percentage of foreign students in U.S. engineering programs.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmc.../#59be5e17667d

I don't disagree, but we are not talking about a guy looking to go from 40k to 70k per year. We are talking about the already wealthy.

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by bjimmy24

I don't disagree, but we are not talking about a guy looking to go from 40k to 70k per year. We are talking about the already wealthy.

I don't consider this guy wealthy by the standards that I'm talking about. After taxes, his income doesn't offer the type of discretionary income that I described, and I think he knows it. Forty to fifty percent higher income, or more, would make a big difference.

Also, investing in individual properties can be relatively time-consuming and low return activities compared to those otherwise available -- investing $10,000 in an early stage growth stock such as Google or Amazon. The expertise to do the latter certainly can be acquired in an MBA program.

Several of my friends made their fortunes on employee stock options. Sadly, managements today have greatly restricted such programs, especially meaningful grants, to only relatively high upper echelon employees. My friends with stock option riches didn't work for risky tech companies which often incentivize employees with eventually worthless stock options.

Gone are the days when regular employees at the likes Sears (a friend of mine when I was a kid had a father who was a warehouse worker who made a small fortune participating in the Sears stock program in the 1950s and 1960s) or Wal-Mart participated in the corporation's growth through employee stock plans.

This supermarket chain has made millionaires of hundreds of its regular employees

Managements today relatively hog stock grants, which I think is a disaster for too many corporations. I can't think of a single corporation today that offers an option incentive program for even mid-level management or researchers, and I've talked to several young Phd researchers, etc. Does anybody know of any???

[bjimmy24]

Well, I don't even come close to 100k and probably never will. I consider it quite wealthy.