> teaching a child that factor (3) is the only one of import does him a great disservice.
I've seen a lot in my life with this, and it's wildly untrue. I know many families with multiple children, and over time some of those became millionaires and others did not. None I know started with inheritances. I know a lot of self-made millionaires. All of them share a common attitude that their future is in their own hands, and it's clear from the arc of their financial lives that that is true. Their choices produced their outcomes.
The ones who did not become millionaires also share a common attitude that nothing they could have done differently would have changed anything.
The fatalistic outlook you have will be self-fulfilling. But you can choose to change it. It really is up to you. The choices you make matter. If you want to know more, I can't recommend a better book than "The Millionaire Next Door" about how ordinary people doing ordinary things become wealthy.
I've read it. I think if I were born in 1950 it would be worth its weight in gold. Someday someone will write a similar book that would have worked perfectly for people who were born in 1980; unfortunately, by then it will be too late for us and instead the next generation will debate its (in)applicability to their lives.
It's not fatalistic. As I've been saying all along, you have some control of some things. Exercising that control constructively is necessary. It simply is not sufficient.
Take a look at the stock market returns for the last 5, 10, 20 years. At pretty much any point you could have invested and had handsome returns by today.
I also know people who abandoned the market at the bottom of one of the various dips. They're all bitter about the recoveries since. Taking a longer view, the various machinations of the market that seemed so important at the time are lost in the width of the line on the graph.
Yes, your choices are by far the #1 factor in any success, or lack of, that you have. Telling your children anything less is a disservice.
I've seen a lot in my life with this, and it's wildly untrue. I know many families with multiple children, and over time some of those became millionaires and others did not. None I know started with inheritances. I know a lot of self-made millionaires. All of them share a common attitude that their future is in their own hands, and it's clear from the arc of their financial lives that that is true. Their choices produced their outcomes.
The ones who did not become millionaires also share a common attitude that nothing they could have done differently would have changed anything.
The fatalistic outlook you have will be self-fulfilling. But you can choose to change it. It really is up to you. The choices you make matter. If you want to know more, I can't recommend a better book than "The Millionaire Next Door" about how ordinary people doing ordinary things become wealthy.