I was raised to choose rich. I was supposed to get a career that would pay me six-figures or more. Whoops. Wanted to teach.
Whoops again -- no ability to teach. So I took on social work at first.
Whoops. I'm too empathetic to make a good counselor.
So I tried housewife for a while, when we were first married. Whoops. Bored silly. I hate everything that is even semi related to household chores except doing dishes.
Then hubby broke his back, and we needed money coming in. Back to social work -- group home parent. Whoops, someone forgot to mention it was 22 hours a day 6 days a week.
So I got some office work, and hubby got a job with the government when his back was okay again. We did reach to comfortably middle-class. Whoops.
I became disabled. Whoops, so did hubby. Then we ran through our retirement money after we cleared out our savings, and ran out of all money one month into his chemo. We lived on $839 a month with $258 for food stamps, plus health insurance. (Our mortgage was $550 then.) We were officially flat broke and three weeks from being kicked out of our house before I found a government program that paid our mortgage until he was approved and then received his first lump sum and month Disability benefits.
Now we're only broke.
Funny thing. My Second cousins go to the polo games and charity balls. Amazing how different one family can be.
I got something they don't though -- the reality that God is taking good care of us always.
Because of the financial diversity of my family, I know people have the same problems rich or poor. The only difference is rich people can afford the best solutions for the problems. We still have God though.