[peterjerome]

MM,

in case you left anything out, i believe you have up to 60 minutes to edit (or delete) your post.....in case you left anything out.

peter.

[SIUYA]

you blokes think the US has it bad....look at Europe....the Germans are paying for the retirement and spending policies for Greece, Portugal, Italy. etc;
One of the great things a past government in Australia did was force superannuation (basically a self funded pension system) on us.....mainly as most people are too lazy/incompetent/cant be assed/ selfish/living in the moment to save money for themselves. So sometimes the governments get it right (not often )
Even if the returns are not great - its something.

[TimRacette]

Originally Posted by TimRacette »

...but it seems as though many of the baby boomer age folks spent their lives working in a job that they really didn't feel a strong passion for...

MM,

Might wanna stop and read a little closer next time.

-Tim

[MightyMouse]

Originally Posted by SIUYA »

you blokes think the US has it bad....look at Europe....the Germans are paying for the retirement and spending policies for Greece, Portugal, Italy. etc;
One of the great things a past government in Australia did was force superannuation (basically a self funded pension system) on us.....mainly as most people are too lazy/incompetent/cant be assed/ selfish/living in the moment to save money for themselves. So sometimes the governments get it right (not often )
Even if the returns are not great - its something.

Our Social Security Admin was supposed provide benefits for retirees and that won't likely be around much past 2035 or so or whatever the new blow out date is. Everyone in the US pays about 15.5% of their pay into SS. Each employee only sees half of it come out of his paycheck, but the company he works for pays SS the other half and lowers the employees pay by the same amount. Most people do not know this and won't accept it because they forget that a corporation's main function is to turn a profit. Tax is cost that gets passed along to someone. either the consumer or the employee.

By 2020 or so we will have 100 million people over age 65 on social security and there will be about 120 million working and paying into it. Does it sound like it has a chance of surviving?

SS began as a benefit. It was actually tax free like an insurance benefit in the beginning and now it is taxed. But when you are forced to pay or get arrested and go to jail it isn't a benefit it's a tax..It was set up at a time when fewer people lived beyond age 65. In the end it was a way for the government to get the people to fund government debt and an inefficient way to create about 60,000 jobs.

[Ingot54]

Originally Posted by Rande Howell »

No doubt people are seduced by the sirens of easy money and an easy life. All the things that feed into our culture's notion of success (and retirement). But just like the folks who retire to Florida after grinding out a life of work, believing they have paid their dues on the good life, the actualilial (MSP) tables show that they are dead in 5 years. Having given up on purpose driven life, they die.

Rande Howell

Quite a lot of assumptions there, Rande - "easy money ... easy life ... success ... the good life ... "

My own reasons for becoming a trader are very far removed from that. Life's circumstances and my own altruism led me to the financial wilderness - never bankrupt, but living hand-to-mouth basically. I discovered that at the age of 54 I had no hope of retiring from salaried work.

I realised I needed to find something that would ease the transition from my profession to a self-funded retirement, as I would one day be naturally unable to continue with my current salaried situation.

I knew before I got too far into this, that it would take time ... maybe three years I thought, but it has taken me until now to get it together ... 7 years later! I am a slow learner, it seems, but once I do learn, I have it for life!

Just another perspective - a trader not after the "easy life" or decadence ... but involved intentionally as a means to self-fund some kind of life after being unable to participate any longer in mainstream employment.

[Cosa Nostra]

I think it's also because trading is so accessible via the internet that most people think they can get rich quick

[hollisnan]

Just as athletes run the gamut from the weekend warrior (who flames out) to the serious professional, traders run the gamut from the naive novice (who flames out) to the serious professional. Weekend warriors have different motivations than professionals, and so it is with trading. The get-rich-quick crowd does not define trading any more than the amateur enthusiast defines sports. Which side are you on? We've had an interesting dialogue about being attracted to trading; now let's refocus the same energy on being successful at trading!

[Rande Howell]

Originally Posted by Ingot54 »

Quite a lot of assumptions there, Rande - "easy money ... easy life ... success ... the good life ... "

My own reasons for becoming a trader are very far removed from that. Life's circumstances and my own altruism led me to the financial wilderness - never bankrupt, but living hand-to-mouth basically. I discovered that at the age of 54 I had no hope of retiring from salaried work.

I realised I needed to find something that would ease the transition from my profession to a self-funded retirement, as I would one day be naturally unable to continue with my current salaried situation.

I knew before I got too far into this, that it would take time ... maybe three years I thought, but it has taken me until now to get it together ... 7 years later! I am a slow learner, it seems, but once I do learn, I have it for life!

Just another perspective - a trader not after the "easy life" or decadence ... but involved intentionally as a means to self-fund some kind of life after being unable to participate any longer in mainstream employment.

Taken out of context, anybody's message can be distorted. For the vast majority of people I work with, they seek to serve a purpose greater than themselves in their trading. Most frequently it is their families. And they are still seduced by the sirens of the song that many brokers and educators sing about trading. They get in, and they discover that there is a lot more to trading than they initially thought. Hopefully by this time they have developed a passion for trading and will give them the motivation to make the inward changes that allow for a successful trader to be developed. As Einstein quipped -- the order of thinking that got you into the problem is not the order of thinkiing that will get you out of the problem. The person you are that gets into trading is rarely the person that will bring success in trading. The person has to change, adapt, and reinvent themselves.

Rande Howell