Driven to Succeed – HumbleDollar

This post is about my life, perhaps more than you want to know, but since this story will be a chapter in a new book coming out next year, I thought I would provide a preview.

Driven to Succeed Richard Quinn  |  Apr 16, 2022

THIS IS ABOUT a journey, about what can happen and what you can make happen. It’s about starting at the bottom and, over more than 50 years, achieving financial independence.

My financial views were heavily influenced by my parents, especially my father, but not in the way you might imagine. My father was a car salesman. For many years, he worked seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. He was let go from his job at age 67. Thereafter, my parents lived solely on Social Security.

But I never heard my father complain. I never heard him express envy of others. In his final working years, my father sold Mercedes. He could never afford one himself, but he was allowed to use one of the demo cars.

When I was 17, I got to drive a 300SL in a parade. Owning a Mercedes became a lifelong dream. That’s all it was until 2004, when I opened a bank account solely to save for that car. It took me a decade, but eventually I paid cash for a Mercedes E350 in 2014. Three days later, my wife and I started off on a trip across the U.S. I was age 71.

I had seen my parents struggle financially for their entire lives, and I wanted to avoid that at all costs. I wrote in my 1961 high school yearbook that, “I will be a millionaire someday.” Adjusting for 60 years of inflation, I didn’t make it, but I did okay.

I was born in 1943, and I have a very different perspective from many younger Americans. I recall periodically crawling under my schoolroom desk, practicing for a nuclear attack. I remember when a woman’s place was in the home and discrimination was the norm. I recall when the mandatory retirement age was younger for women than for men.

Source: Driven to Succeed – HumbleDollar

Read the rest of the story at the link above.