Related Posts
Which consulting firm has the best 401k match?
Visual Storyteller
Decided to payoff my mortgage.
Investor’s Business Daily: worthwhile?
Bowl Leader
More Posts
Community Builder
Conversation Starter
5/28 Thread (General):
Additional Posts in Consulting
7pm flight- just me myself and I @ TSA
Bain & Company Which are the best consulting firms and practices for Climate Change & Sustainability, especially in the Canadian geography? Also, please suggest the best Canadian city for consulting jobs.
McKinsey & Company | Boston Consulting Group | Bain & Company | Kearney | LEK | EY | Oliver Wyman | PwC | Deloitte
#ClimateChange #Sustainability #Water #ESG
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
Well, using my own example.
At 20 I graduated with a degree, immediately went to work in consulting. Managed to do a masters while working full time, and ultimately jumped to a new company at 22 which paid amazingly. A few months into being 22, I got pretty sick, physically, which took a toll on me mentally. By 23, I went from outstanding performer, with amazing ratings, to waking up and logging in, but barely able to function just due to the stress and fatigue.
Chief
This is DEEPLY relatable. Sending you all the best, C2. Most people will never know the battles so many people wind up having to fight behind the scenes, nor the true cost and toll they had on those people.
Most of us are just a few bad breaks away from being considered a "failure", if you measure it in a point in a time. Any one of us could get really sick, be unable to go back to work in the same way, lose jobs, lose spouse, run through savings, not have family as a safety net, etc. If you can confidently say a few things on that list can't/wont happen to you then be grateful and consider yourself in the lucky few. Life doesn't care about how hard you worked in the past or what plans you had, so enjoy it while you can, focus on the things that matter and remember you're only a failure once you stop trying to get back up.
Because somewhere along the way they either made bad decisions, hit some very bad luck and weren’t able to recover, or both.
I’m a very strong believer in fate. You can do what you can do to help yourself but somethings are just outside your control. Last year, someone I knew, who had just retired from a very successful career, was walking home from an event and was killed by a driver who had a medical event while driving. Life is often quite unfair.
#1Burn out. Pushing to hard too soon… most people can’t maintain that and when they fall off, they fall far.
The psychology of rebuilding is much harder when you have never been down.
If you worked hard and saved and invested well through your 20s and 30s. It’s possible you have collected F*ck you amount of money And they just don’t need more.
Some people realize they just don’t care that much.
Chief
That’s a lot of words to say that “life is a marathon and not a sprint” is not a cliche
And that “comparison is a thief of joy “ is a fact
Debt is a key word in this post. Living beyond our means causes marital strain, successive poor decisions because they tend to lead to more imprudent thinking, anxiety, etc. I look back at decisions people thought I was being ridiculous for because of my tremendous desire to not be in debt (aside from mortgage with plan to pay off house well before the due date).
Rising Star
I’ve been around a few years, with consulting focused on valuation. Debt is often a part of that. The warnings are based on the fact that even smart people misjudge how debt is used. I’ve seen it used the worst in lower margin industries like restaurants (almost impossible to earn out of too much), and traditionally highly leveraged ones like auto sales, and especially in cyclical ones like transportation or real estate (that might be the worst - happening again right now). What happens is people operate with a false sense that things will turn around but they often don’t, or take too long, and high debt leaves no margin for error or uncertainty.
Sure, I’ve seen lots of people manage debt very well but I’d guess over my 35+ years I’ve seen more manage poorly than well (not typically clients, just in general). Likewise, I can’t think of a scenario where personal debt makes sense except when paid off monthly, or mortgage it it’s paid off in 10-15 years.
So yes, debt might not be evil but it can be for a lot of people. Continue to be afraid. People can rationalize almost anything.
Chief
No one bats 1000 and life throws us curveballs.
We never see someone's whole story: we see pieces. We don't know if they had a terrible medical emergency or lost someone very close to them or became invisibly disabled (or maybe were all along). It's so easy to judge people but the reality is we likely will never know how much people are struggling and/or suffering behind the scenes.
Sometimes it's just a series of poor choices coupled with some bad luck, because so much of life is beyond our individual control. Maybe they lost one job and took the first thing they could find elsewhere and then the market got worse so their investments took a dive and before they knew it the lifestyle that was previously far below their means is now far out of their means and difficult to extricate themselves from. Life is hard and cruel and very unfair. Any of us could easily become homeless or debilitated through no fault of our own. It's often sheer dumb luck we don't.
They marry the wrong person, make costly mistakes, have a string of bad luck and they work for a company like KPMG.
So many reasons.
I know one guy who couldn't get his alcohol under control. Others who hit their ceiling because they didn't understand "the system" and didn't build the relationships with the people who could pull them up the ladder. Another had undiagnosed ADHD and autism and couldn't quite get past a certain point. And others got sick, injured, or burned out.
There's no one reason, and sometimes it's a cocktail of little things, but the safety net that seems to keep people from falling is their professional network and relationships.
very insightful D1, you got most of the reasons why people fall back in general.
People burn out. There are days that I’d rather work a shift at McDonald’s than wake up at X AM for another meeting. I know it’s irrational so I haven’t done it, but some people do. And then maybe it doesn’t work out well for them, but you can get why people initially make that choice.
Rising Star
Trauma catches up, bad luck, no one helps in the way they actually need help, burnout, ageism.
They get distracted and give up. My parents were born into privilege, exited the family business to immigrate and work minimum wage jobs thinking they’d be rich for life.
Yes but very likely we would have went to an international school in our old country and at least wouldn’t have been at risk of losing our home. Immigration is good if you have a plan. Not just moving on a whim.
Lots of things - bad luck and timing, subconscious perfectionism and self-sabotage, running into horrible people along the way who they let trip them up…so many ways to get waylaid, not nearly as many ways to succeed
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Also, the skill sets needed to succeed at different times in life can vary. And luck, loss of focus, drugs and alcohol.
Everyone will run into tough situations. Sometimes it is bad luck and sometimes bad decisions or both. Those that continue to succeed learn from the adversity and move forward. Those that dwell on it, lose confidence and struggle to recover, which can often lead to more poor decisions. Most successful people have failed numerous times before finding success. I also think sometimes those that achieve success early can become overconfident/arrogant and believe that every decision they make will be a winner, but life has a way of proving us wrong from time to time.