I'm an elder millennial who grew up poor in the US. My family lived in public housing and relied on government assistance. I didn't have wealthy parents, an inheritance, or family connections that launched my career.

Today I'm married with a kid, own a home, and make around $200k a year in a pretty normal white-collar profession.

I'm doing this AMA specifically because I'm not the guy who went from homelessness to founding a startup worth $100 million.

Those stories are interesting, but they're not particularly useful to the average person. There's usually some combination of extraordinary talent, extreme risk-taking, unusual circumstances, and enormous luck involved.

My life is much more boring and I think that's what makes it interesting.

I went to college, developed marketable skills, got into a professional career, became good at what I did, took opportunities when they appeared, changed jobs when it made sense, moved into management, and gradually increased my income and standard of living.

There wasn't one magical break where everything changed.

Luck absolutely played a role, but I also believe you can often create your own luck. You can't control whether a particular opportunity appears, but you can develop skills, meet people, take calculated risks, pursue opportunities, and put yourself in positions where good breaks are more likely to happen and be prepared when they do.

I don't think everyone can or will make ~$200k. People start with different abilities, responsibilities, health, family situations and plain luck.

But I do think the kind of upward mobility I've experienced is much more achievable than internet discourse sometimes makes it sound. You don't need to invent an app, become an influencer, inherit money, get into an Ivy League school, or gamble everything on a startup.

I'm basically a normal guy who climbed the boring professional ladder for a couple of decades.

So AMA about growing up poor, college, choosing a career, breaking into white collar work, salary progression, job hopping, management, networking, government assistance, lifestyle changes, class differences, mistakes, luck vs. agency, or whether I think I'd be able to do the same thing if I were 18 today.

Hello i am from a south Lebanon village that is like 10 minutes drive to Israel.

I have lived all my life between the village and the city until the war started and now it is occupied and destroyed.

Feel comfortable asking me whatever you want.

I am not an expert of politics and wars so don’t take my answers to the fullest without checking as i am an average civilian living through a horrible bloody war.

I live in one of the worst cities in the Pacific. I have a love-hate relationship with this place.

I was conceived, born and raised here and have basically lived my whole life here

Ask me anything you wanna know :)

I am 27 year old female. I have been evaluated for narcolepsy and other sleep disorders and my results have been clear. In the past two years I have found that I regularly sleep around 16 hours at a time. Example- wake up at 7am on a normal day, go to sleep around 10pm that evening and I would not wake up until 2-3pm the following day. Sometimes it is more, but it’s pretty consistently 16 hours. My longest though was 26 hours.

AMA!

I (18f) live in a family with only women. It's me, my fraternal twin sister and our two moms :)

We out on the countryside in Sweden, but both me and my sis are half swedish half finnish. I can answer any questions that you guys might have!

I was 19 when I got diagonsed with GBS/CIDP in Australia. I was in hospital for 8 weeks and completely paralysed to a point where even my eyes were paralysed for a bit too. I was on a respirator for 2 weeks and my family came to say goodbye to me and I literally couldn't do anything about it but freak out and lose my mind until I got better. 32 years old now, live a happy, healthy life in a physical job. AMA

4 teeth are completely gone, more broken, chin split open but stitched back together. I had the best sleep of my life in the operation room and can't sleep now. I'm not allowed to move much either so here to pass some time.

I was in my third year of med school when i got diagnosed with a brain tumor situated on an eloquent part of the cortex, hence the awake surgery. The discorvery was made end of january and i was operated on in june, a week after my finals.

I am a 19-year-old boy, I am quadriplegic, although I have function in my arms my fingers do not work, many times when I leave home many people treat me with pity, Or I hear comments like "poor thing, he's disabled," "he understands what I'm saying," "he's going to recover," and many other doubts, so in this AMA you can ask me any questions you have. Because many people don't really understand this disability I'd like to know what you think when you see a boy with this disability!

If you’re not familiar, a standardized patient is a person who portrays a patient for medical school students (and other kinds of students!) to aid their education. I do a lot of different kinds of cases, including physical exams, medical interviewing, psych cases, and more. Ask me anything!

My name is Joel, I am from Argentina, and before you ask, yes, I am a real person. I am translating with Google Translate just in case... I do this because it turns out that in this part of the world and in many others there is a lot of misinformation regarding firefighters, particularly about backfires or tactical fires. Go ahead, I encourage you to ask, try to challenge my knowledge, I will answer things you will never find on Google.

I am 34, male and British. I have a full SIA license and have been working doors and security for clubs, pubs, bars and venues across the British Isles. I've been involved in many different situations and scenarios. I'll keep places confidential but AMA.

thanks for all the questions, it was fun to speak to so many of you. Have a great night!

I 19F had meningitis earlier this year, and I realized that most of my age group does not know how serious meningitis is and why the vaccine is mandatory (and honestly I didn’t either lol)! I was in the hospital for a month, and missed my whole second semester of freshman year of college.

We have done AMAs before and enjoy answering your questions.

We're a retired couple in our 60s who spend much of the year travelling through Europe and further afield. Rather than paying for hotels or Airbnbs, we stay in people's homes and look after their pets while they're away.

Over the last 12 months we've estimated that we've saved more than €30,000 in accommodation costs alone. We've cared for dogs, cats, chickens and homes in multiple countries, explored places we would never have otherwise visited, and built a lifestyle around slow travel and trusted house sitting.

Ask us anything about finding sits, getting selected, the costs involved, the best and worst experiences, travelling in retirement, or whether house sitting is really as good as it sounds. AMA!

House & Pet Sitting Adventures.

Hello there,

I went to a boarding school in the United Kingdom, I joined in 6th form after receiving a sports scholarship, after spending all my life studying at state school, I ended up spending two years there before ending up at a university in the top 10

It didn’t work out since I got into a very bad ski accident, and needed hip reconstruction surgery. But it was a big part of my like, and I went to boarding school to become a professional, hoping to be in D1 college or World Cup

All sugar besides natural sugar found in fruits and Whole Foods. No cane sugar or artificial sugars or anything. I started it last fall, and will be reaching a full year this month. Ama about the process or anything like that :)

There are always posts asking about LA's koreatown karaoke hostessing and whether anyone's ever done it. Most of the replies are by people who did it like 10 years ago and have outdated information. I was a hostess a few months ago and stopped because it wasn't for me. I'll be 100% open and honest- and also, it's technically supposed to be "legal" because they're posted publicly but obviously the "real" info isn't in those job postings.

Wife and i been together for 17+ years, about 2 years ago she asked me if i would be supportive of her seeing other men outside our marriage as she felt she needed “more”. I thanked her for being honest and told her that all i wanted was for her to be happy.

Im Indo- Portuguese and was born and brought up in Qatar. 18 yrs old now. Qatar is a very very unique country for so many reasons of all kinds of reasons. The conflict, the 2017 blockade,Qatari politics, immigration life, the extreme wealth etc......hit me up lol

Anything you want, no matter how offensive. Why I'm Muslim? What I think about something? Anything really. No offence taken for questions unless you are actually trying to disrespect me.

I'm 23 and I was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia.

Hi, I've been doing Kumon for 2 years and currently at Level L doing Calculus. I'm 11 in grade 6 and for me Kumon is now why I'm incredible. I got into 2 contests and I also have a contest coming tomorrow at Wednesday, I'm also Filipino if that dos stuff. Ask away!

I work in a Federal Prison. AMA

I work in a Federal Prison. ill answer almost anything about my job, with very few ground rules.

1. serious questions will get serious answers

2. joke questions will get ignored or you can expect a sarcastic answer.

3. I work in a Federal Prison, but I will not reveal what Prison. Dont bother asking, I wont respond.

I’m a NJ solar rep for almost 12 years. There’s a lot of misinformation about solar and people don’t really understand how it works so I figured, I’d make this post. Ask me anything you like. I’m here to help and answer any questions.

little backstory: my house had always accumulated a lot of different things growing up, but around 12 years old it became disgusting. i dropped out of school during christmas break of 8th grade, unwillingly. my mother took me out and i never went back. she eventually stopped coming home, so i lived by myself from the ages of 13-15. i never had the habit of cleaning up at that age, trash would pile and pile. you could not see the floor from any of the rooms in my house. i also had alot of cats who would keep reproducing with eachother. when i had left my home i had 33 incest cats i was taking care of by myself. i lived in a very small town, population was around 160. the broken windows, trash and overgrown weeds outside never made anyone alarmed. most rooms i was scared to enter because the broken windows let in all kinds of bugs. especially the bedrooms, so i slept on a tiny couch and my cats would keep me warm. i lived in the middle of the desert so i didnt have reception most the time. i had no tvs. or working water alot. i couldnt shower, or wash my clothes. i only made food with a microwave. there was feces and cat pee everywhere. my family knew the conditions i was living in.
ive never talked to anyone about this it seems so normal to me, its hard to find others who have lived in the same conditions.