Working hard or not working hard has nothing to do with it. It's choices. I'm SURE I worked HARD when I worked part time at Sam's Club, I was the top salesperson in history for credit cards and small business memberships, I busted my butt ... but made VERY little money.
Now I sit in a corner office... delegating. I make four times more. It's the profession you choose, the position you hold and how marketable your position is. It's the "worth" of the position.
Yes yes yes.
OK it has *something* to do with it...my sis in law wouldn't be where she is if she hadn't worked hard inside her specific goals. She wouldn't be happily facing partnership by next July if she'd just filed her nails and let her paralegal do everything. If she hadn't been ready and willing to go to work 7 days a week for weeks on end, calling into work while on vacation, etc etc. Heck, they have just used the spoils of her (and my brother's) success to buy a second home...not in Aspen, not on a beach, not in Jamaica...but in downtown San Diego a block away from her office, so she can stay *even later* and be there even earlier, without having to do the relatively long drive when she's tired.
But she also made the right decisions LONG ago, and had the ability to see those decisions through. She knew as a child that she wanted to be an attorney, and even though her decisions in between had us questioning her (French major in college, took 5+ years off to work in a completely different field while her husband was building up his career), she defiitely knew how to follow through!
But does her day-to-day work, her at her desk or in a meeting work, look harder than what my husband does? I would say NO. He is just as on call, he goes on business trips that are FAR longer than hers, he sits and does his work in hotels rooms the same way she meets with clients and takes depositions.
My brother worked less than I did in high school, but 1. he's a bit smarter than I am and 2. he quizzed me, and has the ability to learn while doing that...so he'd help me study, then 3 years later when he had the same teachers and same tests, he knew it already. He had WAY more confidence than I ever did, and he applied to a much higher level college than I did, and got in (and met his wife while waiting on line for basketball tickets).
And in fact going to THAT university helped a GREAT deal. They had to work hard to GET to that college, but I can't state for sure that their coursework was harder than my coursework, when you level the field for what sort of work we were doing. sis in law taking French, brother taking engineering courses, I was taking athletic training/exercise science type courses with a view towards chiropractic (so physics, organic chem, higher level anatomy classes), along with a math minor (culminating in linear algebra)...heck, the sister of my sis in law is very successful in her OWN right, with a solid financial advising practice, and she was a FLUTE major in college!
With my brother, he worked hard, but was also lucky lucky lucky. He fell into ROTC, and that combined with Electrical Engineering along with being graduated at JUST the right time got him some certain experiences in the AF that he never would have gotten otherwise, and all of it led to the exact job that he has right now. And in his day to day work, at this point, he works far less *hard* than my husband.
And hubby makes a fraction of what my brother and his wife do...a fraction. Sis in law's yearly bonus is about the same as what we make in a year.
I worked hard through college, I worked my rear off to get a doctorate, I tried my darndest to work hard with a practice...and then I quit.
So I definitely fell down in the working hard part...but then again, I got jobs that were very difficult for me (but not as difficult as owning my own business).
There are people who work *hard* but don't see much financial success. Look at the miners we've been watching! I'm sure they worked their behinds off, day in and day out, and if the collapse hadn't happened, how much would those men have made in their lifetimes? A fluke has caused them to be known, and they'll get some money for awhile...the miners who weren't in that collapse won't ever see the financial boost that these guys will see.
Making good decisions, following through, having confidence, LUCK, happening to meet the right people (aka LUCK), having an innate intelligence, AND working hard...those are all aspects of it all.
Working hard is absolutely ONE COMPONENT of financial success. Without hard work, very few people will be successful. Paris Hilton, I suppose is the exception to that rule -- and really, I suppose we could argue that her family is rich, but she herself isn't really responsible for her financial success. Even if you consider people who discover oil on their family land to be financially successful, hard work was still involved. Someone (maybe the newly rich person, maybe an ancestor) bought that land, maintained it, paid taxes on it.
However, other factors come into play too:
Natural talents, ability, and intelligence. For example, I know a couple kids at school who work SO HARD every single day, but -- for one reason or another -- it just doesn't come together for them. One I'm thinking of is what used to be termed "educatibly mentally handicapped". She can do literally everything in her power, and it still won't be near what my own daughter could do with immense ease. On the other hand, look at someone like Michael Jordan. He was born with natural talent. Someone else could put in just as many hours on the court and still not equal Michael Jordan's accomplishments.
Choice of profession. Some jobs pay more than others. If you choose to be a social worker, you will never earn CEO pay no matter how hard you work.
Thrift. How you spend what you have matters tremendously. We all know people who earn about the same salary we do, yet they're either doing much, much better financially . . . or they're doing much, much worse. Anyone can manage what money they have well -- if they work at it -- so that really could fall under the hard work category.
And finally luck. Being born with a healthy body, with parents who are supportive of education, in an area where jobs are readily available, in a time period where health care is available and no wars are going on -- all these things certainly give a person a leg up. And, of course, the opposite could be true too. A person born without those benefits could still be successful, but he'd have to work harder than a person to whom those things came freely.
So, I'd say that hard work is absolutely NECESSARY for financial success. Without it, financial failure is almost a sure thing, BUT it isn't enough in and of itself.
Guess I could have just quoted you and not blathered on.
Across history, this has always been true. It's just that in America for the last 50 years or so we have been exceptionally fortunate, and we've come to assume that it's our due. The concept of retirement is relatively new. The idea that ordinary people can own homes and land is not a universal reality.
I agree 100%.
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