During my musings about who thrives in the contemporary economic landscape, I was reminded of several acronyms.  I've isolated these 3 as a few of the top categories that generally succeed, financially speaking.  Not surprisingly, those who are more career-oriented instead of family oriented generally fair better than those who have children.  OINKs= One Income No Kids; DINKs= Dual Income No Kids; WOOFs= Well-Off Old Farts (the latter of which I altered slightly to make myself chuckle).

My generation has been plagued by a job force that is often underqualified and overpaid, but by virtue of being the first to arrive on the scene, are able to enjoy lucrative jobs that offer healthcare, dental, retirement, etc…  In an effort to appear less cynical, I will offer up my own mother as an example.  She had no education other than high school.  She was a computer analyst or some such thing for the Illinois Department of Corrections for 25 years.  The funny thing about this  is that she lacks computer skills.  My mother enjoyed a paycheck of around 42,000/year and retired at the age of 48.

In contrast to her success, I know multiple people with master's degrees that can't claim a salary that high with that kind of job security.  Having a post-baccalaureate degree has become relatively cliché and doesn't yield the financial stability that it once did.  I've known law school graduates that have had to tend bar for 3 years before procuring a job.  I even had a professor with a PhD from Ohio State tell me that she currently makes 53,000/year as a professor at a university and went up against 198 other applicants with backgrounds from Yale, Harvard, Cambridge, and Oxford.  The only other job offer she received was from a school in St. Louis which offered a laughable 38,000/year.  Until the present job climate changes for the better, I will harbor a great deal of contempt for the hiring practices of old, and the longevity of the baby boomers.