How i screwed up.

[Danny Sullivan]

Hello world,

i've just finished reading TMF (with Unscripted to follow) and came to devastating conclusions:

1. Our education system in germany is solely focused on producing Sidewalkers - which was more than shocking to me.

2. Literally everyone i know is a Sidewalker or Slowlaner. Even my family and spouse.

3. I'm a Sidewalker and an Action-Faker.

My name is Daniel i'm 34 years old and live in Germany. I enjoyed 13 years of education and another 3 while in vocational training. After which i was happy beeing "finished" with learning for once and started working for our family business. I founded a car parts retail business in 2007 with the "do what you love" intension, which ultimately killed my love for it and shut it down in 2010. Early 2013 (aged 28) i had to quit my job because of a metabolic disorder, which took me until late 2017 to battle down and get my quality of life "sort of" back.

Even though this time was quite a struggle and i was unable to work, i had a very supportive family and spouse that stood with me (even though i lost most of my friends - which was an important lesson too). Yet, in this time i went vegan, started training 4 days a week again (stopped at the age of 19), lost 18kgs of weight and educated myself financially with everything i can get my hands on (and that made sense).

At first i came across investing methods in the stock market, with long-term dividend strategies beeing the primarily focus. I thought "Hey, that doesn't sound so bad." (lifting myself up to the Slowlane level) only to read the truth in TMF . It's a bet on time and hope. MJ is absolutely right. Although i don't regret looking deeper into this, because i analyzed a lot of companies and learned quite much about how businesses operate and what warning signs to look out for.

I'll try to end every day at least 1% smarter than i started it. Even though i'm bound in a treasonous surrounding for quite some time now, i'm not willing to give in and accept my current situation - which i'm responsible for in the first place.

That's it - i tried to keep it short but, oh well. Good to be here and thanks MJ for creating this place and your books!

 

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[Mattie]

I think being in the Netherlands and Visiting Germany, I am not certain it's considered slow lane in the culture. I believe in WWII the people were under a lot of survival of the fittest experiences. Rebuilt their societies to sustain equality and give everyone a fair opportunity to survive. They also had the Berlin Wall and separated family and friends. You live in a different world where your culture thinks of the bigger picture of their citizens. Older and wiser culture which hopefully has learned from it's mistakes. The whole social system supports it's people. There may be social issues and social problems but I've learned a lot from this culture. I am thankful for having the opportunity to see how a culture worked together to build stronger families, stronger communities, and no culture is perfect, has its issues.

Slow lane exists over here, because they already learned what America hasn't learned.

 

[Danny Sullivan]

Hey Mattie,

i can't tell for the sense of duty part after WWII because i haven't been around that time. My grandfather often says people cared more for each other than today - which is propably true.

While it's also true that the government system is more of a welfare state it lacks education and proper execution in many parts.

For example: funding your pension through the stock market has no place in our education system. It's not taught or communicated, nor does any official instutition intent to change this.
People are funneled into the state approven systems: statutory pension, employer-funded pension and private pension (the latter are just companies with marketing budgets!). So essential the money from their pension fund is used to attract more people to do the same thing.

And our pension funds aren't allowed to invest money anywhere. The current workforce pays the pension for those already retired. Our birthrate is declining (even though they try to disguse this by accepting refugees) and a demographic change is taking place, where we will have substantial more retired people (which life expectancies get higher and higher with medical progression) than young people and therefore workforce. See where this is heading? This system is doomed long run (imo).

As of today the average pension is about ~1.000 € (~1170 $) per month, of which the government will take taxes and additional contributions (which is not clearly communicated towards the people either). That leaves about ~720 € (~ 842 $) per month for the pensioneer. Too much to die, too little to live. That's just not what people deserve after working their whole life.

It leaves you behind with the impression, it's best for your government (and people) if you just did your part (work, work, work) and the time retirement should hit - just die.

It's awful and painful to watch.