[Don Ro]

"It's all about a lifestyle and mindset that started with a paper route and mowing lawns when I was 12..."
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Fairly common when I was a kid.
No paper route here...but I shoveled sidewalks for $.25 in the winter, mowed lawns in summer, and various odd neighborhood jobs.
I'd scour around to collect soda bottles and sell them to the grocery store for $.03 apiece...I was in heaven when I could buy a 5 cent pack of sunflower seeds.
Folks divorced when I was 4 yrs. old...mother went to work to support 4 kids...I learned early to value & save nickles & dimes.
Worked in the school cafeteria during lunch, swept school room floors after school (remember those desks bolted to wooden rails?).
That's how the nuns let me trade for my tuition to a Catholic Academy my last 4 years.
Never, ever got an allowance...we were not poor, but low income.
If I wanted firecrackers in July, or go to a movie (10 cents), I had to earn my own money to do so.
I learned early on.
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" Most didn't have a month of savings in the bank. But they had the RVs, ski boats, jet skis, etc."
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As I began to make decent money in my 30's & 40's, I had a friend who lived in an "affluent" neighborhood...I'd visit him and see his neighbor's cars parked in their driveways, garage doors open and their garages chuck full of what I used to call "consumer trash".
I often felt envy, however.......
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These days of retirement, I have no desire to travel so I can live a comfortable life on very little income...and do.
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Bless your Spirit, Jim (jcommin).