Is The American Dream A Nightmare?

Saturday, September 4th, 2010 at 6:43 pm

If you can relate to this Article then you may be someone who needs to wake up and realize that there is more to life than working 40 or more years until you retire and try to live on a quarter of what you made while working.

Sorry if this is a bit long but the reality of the fate of people in just 1 average, hard working , middle class family is alarming when you examine it and should send up huge warning flags as to the myth of The American Dream!

Now I think my family is a pretty typical example of middle class America so I’ll use them as an example. Let’s start with my Grandfather. He came to America from Ireland with his mother and 7 brothers and 2 sisters at the age of 3 in 1903. His brothers all served in WWI.

My grandfather, being the youngest left at home was not allowed to serve so he went to work delivering mail. When the war was over he went into a trucking business with his brothers. When they sold the business several years later he went back to delivering mail. During the 60′s he drove an oil truck delivering heating oil. He semi-retired from this company when he was 76 years old and continued working as a maintenance man in an apartment complex the oil company owned until he finally retired at age 88! He could not afford to retire at 63 and survive on his social security. He developed alzheimer’s and passed away in 1990 at age 90.

Next to My Dad. Born in 1921 After graduation from high school he promptly enlisted in the Navy, married my Mom on his break between basic training and being shipped out to serve in WWII. He served 4 years on a resupply ship in the South Pacific. After the war he came home and went to work for Ingersol Rand making pumps for Nuclear

momdad 300x225 Is The American Dream A Nightmare?

My Greatest Teachers!

subs. He worked his way up to lead expediter and retired at age 65. He passed away 3 years later at age 68 from mesothelioma most likely from the asbestos he was exposed to while working in the kiln room at Ingersol.

His brother Joe also joined the Navy right out of school and also got a job working for Ingersol. Worked his way up to Inspector but was killed in a car accident on the way back from doing an inspection. He was 59.

My Mom worked from an early age as a store clerk and then as a waitress and then became a cook and eventually managed a small restaurant in a large department store. She was a workaholic, an awesome person and Mother but unfortunately passed away after having 3 heart attacks in 1 week, the 1st one at work. She was 58.

Will You Reach Retirement?

Let me show you how to get 1st page search engine ranking Using the power of Empower Network

My oldest brother served and was wounded twice in Vietnam. He came home and went to work for American Can corp where he lost 2 fingers in an industrial accident. He worked odd jobs thereafter and died at age 52 from a heart attack while shoveling snow. He was a single parent and had multiple loans against his equity when he died and his 2 kids, who were in high school, were left with nothing.

My other older brother John started as a cook working for our Mom, and then managed a Restaurant that was an offshoot of the one our mother managed. He then went on to a bread company as a delivery driver. After years of working 2am to noon he worked his way up to branch manager and then the company sold out to a competitor. All of his managers were replaced and he was given the offer to either take a downgrade to manager or be laid off. He took the downgrade meaning he had to cover bread routes when drivers were out. He works 10 to 12 hours a day at age 57 with no end in sight.

Will You Be Able To Retire At Retirement Age?

My 2 sisters both run their own businesses. One is a programmer and one is a freelance editor. Both are struggling with getting by as they are tied to companies that only offer work at certain times so it is feast or famine. My sister the editor is retirement age but can not afford to retire with what Social Security pays.

I started at age 13 working a hot dog stand for the store my mother ran a restaurant for. At 14 I started as a cook working for my Mom. At 16 my mom fired me! Ha Ha. Let’s not go there. She had no choice. I then worked for a Pancake house as cook until I graduated High School, did a short stint in Culinary School, then worked as a line cook for a Holiday Inn.

I got married and went to work for a large insurance company at age 24. Worked my way up from the mailroom to computer operations and 1 year later was laid off. They brought in robots called silos to do the work we were doing.

I have worked a wide variety of jobs since such as Apple picking when I was laid off, pest control technician, Bread delivery driver, Potato chip route sales, loading dock work for Nestle and Walgreens and now after four years with a major pharmeceutical distribution company I progressed from Case pick person on a cherry picker machine. I was promoted to lead person in the case pick department, or as my son called me, The Big Picker! I next transferred to my current position as shipping lead person working 10 hour night’s from 8pm to 6AM.

A supervisor job opened up recently and I was told the job was mine but I’d have to take a 6 thousand dollar a year paycut! Apparently I make more money with my 2 hours of overtime per night than the supervisors do! So basically I am doomed in a dead end job running my ass off until I retire or die. Oh and besides all of the above I have run my own website Hosting company for the last 10 years. Luckily I had this going for me as my wife got laid off from her job of 21 years about a year ago!

Luckily for me at a time just when I needed it my current primary Network Marketing company was presented to me and I jumped into a business with a whole team of amazing leaders! Everything happens for a reason and time and time again at all of the worst moments of my life just the thing I needed at the time would magically dump into my lap! Sounds crazy but it’s true.

Now I’m sorry this was rather long winded and probably half of the people who started reading this never got to this point but I felt it necessary. This was just my immediate family! All of us extremely hard working people and to what end? Is this really The American Dream? Looking back at my family history It looks more like an American Nightmare!

I would bet that more than 70 percent of you reading this have similar if not worse family stories. Do you want to suffer the same fate? We all have the ability to break out of this mold! Look back at your family and if it looks like mine this should give you all the drive and tenacity to succeed that you need!

I am eternally Hopeful that people will start to wake up and realize their true potential lies not in how well they can do at their job for their boss, but for themselves instead as Home Business owners controlling their own destiny.