Be Purposeful, Not Discouraged

28 Jun, 2026

I know many young people today are struggling. The costs of living are up. Housing prices are high. College debts are mortgage-sized, and healthcare costs are ridiculous. These are facts in the United States. Healthcare and education are less daunting in other countries. Housing and taxes are more.

What was it like in 1982? It was one of the worst periods of stagflation during the last 100 years. Only the Great Depression, from 1929 to 1935, was worse. This will give you a sense of things:

The Prime Rate in the United States is what banks use to determine lending rates for their best customers. Think of it as a proxy for a mortgage rate. I picked the peak figures for 1981-1982 and the latest figures in 2026. By every metric, 1982 was a bad year to finish college. I got a business degree with an emphasis in accounting. That degree got me as far as nine job interviews in a university accounting department. They hired someone with 3 years of experience but I didn’t lose hope.

I thought about my definition for success. What I wanted and what was important to me. I wrote down these goals.

1. Having enough in savings to cover expenses for six months.
2. Buy a new car.
3. Get married.
4. Buy a house.
5. Have a secure retirement at age 65

Written goals provide focus. I needed to earn enough money to secure happiness. Money wasn't the goal; it was the means for achieving my aspirations. I wrote down income and savings goals for 1992, ten years later.

These are the jobs I could get. Working at a drug store. Selling accident insurance policies to farmers. Selling photocopiers and cutting grass. The most lucrative job was cutting grass for a landscaper. I had an in with the landscaper because my sister had been there for several years. That job netted me $14,000/year. I was paying rent, buying food, and having fun. I was surviving well and looking for opportunities that my college degree would eventually provide.

My break came when my dad offered me a temporary job in Atlanta doing accounting. That temporary job lasted four years. I improved my skills and knowledge. I performed well. By the end of my second year after school, I got a job in accounting. My income increased substantially, to $25,000/year in 1984. By 1985, I had saved enough money to put $2,500 down on a $9,500 car. My car payment was $198.58 a Volkswagen GTI. I met my wife and got married in 1987.

What happened during that decade? I exceeded every goal on my list. I was ready for luck when it came my way.

In 1989, we bought our first home in the suburbs of Atlanta for $107,900. Saving enough money to put a $20% down payment on the house enabled us to avoid paying for private mortgage insurance. We qualified for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 9.76%. Our combined annual income in the year we got our house was $65,000. Our combined net worth in 1992 was $260,000. All these things were beyond my expectations.

Why did it happen? I did worry about things I couldn’t control, and focused on how I could improve my situation. As long as I was moving toward my goals, I was happy.

My original 10-year plan became a template for future decades. Building annual spending budgets that focused on saving, not spending. We chose to spend less so we could save more. We were happy because our savings provided a safety net and enabled us to get a brokerage account. We invested. These habits resulted in a net worth beyond my imagination.

This is the interesting part. Seventy percent of my career earnings happened in the last 16 years of a 46 year working life. In 2009 I started thinking about what I wanted our nest egg to be to support retiring in 2024 (age 65).

In 2018, I determined we needed to save another $200,000 to hit our nest egg targets. We started living as if we were retired, spending less and saving the rest. We paid off our mortgage. We redirected money that was going toward our kids’ college educations to savings. During the next three years, our net worth increased 190%. We had exceeded our retirement target by more than $1 million. Then, my wife’s parents died, and she received an inheritance. The result—our net worth was 290% more than our retirement target value. We were ready for good fortune.

I continued working two years beyond age 65 and saved more than half of my salary. Investing my wife's inheritance put us in the top 3% of net worth in the United States. Even without her inheritance, we were in the 94th percentile of wealth for the United States. We never owned a business. My wife had stopped working to be home with the kids 33 years ago. She ran the house and controlled spending. I made and invested the money. We decided to save a significant portion of our income, invest, and only spend what remained. We chose the net egg over unnecessary luxuries.

No matter how bleak things might look today, take control of your future. Start by writing your life aspirations. Develop a written 10-year plan to make it happen. If you do these things, you will be ready for good luck to come your way.

Footnotes

1 Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average CPIAUCSL, retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL, June 27, 2026.

2 World Bank, Inflation, consumer prices for the United States FPCPITOTLZGUSA, retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FPCPITOTLZGUSA, June 28, 2026.

3U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Unemployment Rate UNRATE, retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE, June 28, 2026.

4 Federal Reserve History, Recession of 1981-1982, retrieved from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/recession-of-1981-82, June 28, 2026.

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