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I just find it a bit irritating and smug for MMM to make statements like, "Making money is easy." Even if you have a wave of responsibility and minimalism that sweeps through the country, (here comes some sociology...!) technology is basically replacing the middle class. See Jaron Lanier and others on this. I basically believe we are headed for some apocalyptic scenario with work in the next 10-20 years. Sam Harris and others are contending we need a universal income VERY soon, it's getting so bad. Maybe they are wrong, but I think they likely aren't.
This is not an excuse for my debt/situation. It's more a rebuttal to the idea that, "making money is easy."
You find it irritating but I don't see how you have been actually trying to make money... you don't want responsibility, you don't want a boring job... you want a fun job and the fun you like doesn't come with enough money.
Agreed, making money is easy. In most cases it just isn't fun, low stress or enjoyable.
This. Making money is *plenty* easy. The last decade has been the biggest energy and technology boom in probably the history of this country. Right now, today, you could move to one of many oil fields and pick up unskilled labor jobs that would make you 2-5x your current salary. I am not saying that you need to follow this path, btw. But realize that it is in your power, now, today, to make more money if you choose to do so. And that if you do not make more money, it is because you found the tradeoffs not to be worth it.
Your disconnect here is that if you want to make money, you have to develop skills that people with money will be willing to pay you for. You developed skills that you value, and that the people around you value, but not the skills that people who have the money value. The best way to make money is to figure out how you can help someone who already has a lot of money make more of it than he could without you. And that usually means business skills of some sort. Unfortunately, that's not a quick path to riches, either; since you didn't develop those skills in college (classes/internships), you may need to take some low-level business-ey jobs for a few years to develop them now.
FWIW, I am actually sympathetic here. I was raised in a very similar value system to yours. But there is no inalienable right to "do what you love" and get rich at the same time -- for most people, one or the other has to give to some degree.
And even for those who do manage to do both, it takes a long, long time, and a lot of hard work learning stuff you don't know and that doesn't come intuitively. One example: My DH is a total geek (Ph.D in EE). For the first decade or so, he followed his love of techie geekdom through a series of jobs; all of them were unstable and shut down. So 12-13 years ago, after yet another layoff, we moved for my job (more stable), which limited his opportunities to MegaCorp X, the big stodgy company he had zero interest in. But he took one for the team and sent a resume and landed an interview with Potential Boss A, who liked him and offered him a spot in R&D -- ok, cool, not bad. But then during the interviews, he met Potential Boss B by accident, and B immediately tried to lure him away to the business side selling that advanced tech to get new contracts. He chose Boss B -- after several years of chasing the dream, the apparent security of "follow the money" sounded safer.
So this is a recipe for disaster, right? Ph.D giving up his techie dream to become a sales douche? Except two years later, he was *running* the R&D fab and was A's boss; today, his income is probably triple what it would have been had he taken that first job. And the big shocker is that he's
happy. Don't get me wrong, there were times that were very hard, because he had to learn a bunch of new skills ("How to Speak MBA"; "Powerpoint for Sales Douches"; "Life as a TED Talk") and work for people who were way stupider than him ("People Skills 307: How to Hide Your Antipathy for Pointy-Haired Bosses"). But now he speaks both business and tech. This makes him very valuable: in short, he can he can keep the techies from blowing smoke to management, and keep management from making dumb-ass decisions because they don't understand their own product; and that visibility into both sides of the equation also helps him spot and pursue good business opportunities. And he is happier than he has ever been in his career, because that combination of skills means that people actually listen to him (not all the time, but lots more than ever before).
Point is that something like that could be in the cards for you, too. Maybe over time, with some business experience, you can find a way to bring your interests together -- e.g., everyone needs salesmen, so if you develop your sales skills, maybe you could parlay that into a middleman/broker role between the farms and the restaurants, or find a B2B sales position selling useful things to the sustainable farmers, etc. But you need to pay your dues learning those other skills first. Luckily, you still have plenty of time -- FWIW, my DH was 37 when he made that critical choice to even start down the business side.