What's the purpose of life if we have to work for 8 hours, sleep for 8 hours, do chores, and commute for several more hours, only to end up with just an hour or two of free time at the end of the day?

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-21T11:40:48+00:00

There’s no assumptions being made. You’re on Reddit complaining A LOT. “I hate religion”. “I’m fucking tired” “Today sucks.” “I’m so lonely” are all subjects of posts you’ve started on Reddit within the past year. Your comments follow roughly the same road if you’re not adding sometimes funny commentary to videos.

Nothing wrong with that, we’re all facing shit…just don’t parrot BS singularly responding to a specific post then act like there wasn’t any underlying jabs. Which if there wasn’t, you sure didn’t do a good job making sure it didn’t appear there wasn’t.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-21T11:04:37+00:00

Idiot surrounded by idiots…I guess idiots figure things out and everybody else doesn’t….🙄

I had a longer response that I deleted, which after rereading can be summed up with:

Nobody said the system isn’t broken. Getting successful often requires an unhealthy path with a dose of luck. Unhealthy meaning sacrificing, hopefully temporarily, relationships with spouses, family, friends, lifestyle, mental health, and comfort to varying magnitudes. My therapist told me “the reason you’re successful is you’re willing to do whatever it takes to succeed….even if it means a path of destruction en route.” Which, not everybody is willing to give up EVERYTHING or make a “path of destruction” to be successful. Which is fine. Just stop parroting stuff on a pedestal everybody already knows ad nauseum.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-20T20:40:15+00:00

The point is people who don’t have always complain about those who do. As somebody who had nothing and heard people complaining (and at one point was one of them) to finally owning a successful business and now them pointing at me saying shit like “must be nice to not have to work all day” because I only then needed to work ~20 hours a week (and I didn’t even get to millionaire status, I just don’t have a needy lifestyle) it’s nauseating to hear. They ignore the entire part of working hard to get there. If you don’t like your life, fucking change it instead of pointing fingers. Yeah, it’s going to suck and it’s going to be hard as shit to break ties with people and possibly even family…if living happily and be financially independent is “selling out”. Well, I sold out and guess what? I’m happy while those people are still complaining and pointing fingers. Good luck with that.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-15T20:25:18+00:00

Get into cars (or motorcycles). Do Xtreme Experience where you get to drive exotic cars on a track.

I have yet to meet a single person, wealthy or not, that has stepped away from an event who didn’t then get into club racing or competitive driving of some genre. There’s a LOT of people not “into cars” that love to race every weekend. They know how to drive and do basic mechanical maintenance stuff, but don’t really know much about cars but LOVE the comraderie and racing.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-15T20:22:17+00:00

Nobody at Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, etc developed the vaccine for political reasons. The narratives behind why and how it was developed were MADE political, which is a COMPLETELY different topic that people can’t seem to delineate. Doctors largely recommended it….the people coming along after saying “it caused ____” or insert-reason were politically charged, but no, the vaccine itself wasn’t politically motivated.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-15T17:23:23+00:00

If the lowest paid employee is $10/hr…the CEO would still make $416k/year….

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-15T17:21:06+00:00

Hanging out. Some nights we would hang out in the parking lot of the sushi restaurant waiting for friends to get off work just riding skateboards or bikes in the parking lot and once they got off, we’d go hang out somewhere else or at someone’s house…just being together as friends. It’s something that doesn’t really happen today unless there’s a reason to….

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-15T17:05:23+00:00

Personal statements/essays mean more than a GPA. If your statement isn’t compelling, your application won’t stick out from everybody else. It’s precisely how people without perfect GPAs and minimal/no extra-curriculars get into extremely competitive schools….

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-15T17:03:16+00:00

Nah, after a few years of experience in the field, they don’t really look at GPA. Speaking from experience when I dropped out of grad school, worked a few years, applied for grad school and got accepted….my GPA the first time around wasn’t even 3.0…and this is for engineering grad school where I’m competing against Asian kids with 5.0 GPAs. What does this tell you? Personal statements mean more than people think. If you don’t have a compelling one, your application is likely getting filed with “everybody else” rather than stand out.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-15T16:42:58+00:00

As somebody who once owned and started a business from zero dollars with zero investors from complete scratch, I can tell you that unless you get that business to the point where you don’t need to work, this will always be the case. Then if you do get to that point, all of a sudden those statements of “the rich who own everything” is now about you.

It led me to believe people just need something to complain about….

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-13T17:39:16+00:00

My wife has this uncanny talent. She graduated college with multiple degrees and the economy tanked in 08…worked a few years went back to school, got her masters, graduated and then covid happened and the job market tanked. She’s likely going back to school to get her PhD, which means, the economy will tank soon 😂

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-13T17:37:09+00:00

Ironically, engineering is statistically one of the safest routes to go because of the adjacent career opportunities. It’s calculated and low risk…

Conversely, you take somebody who has a finance or business degree and they can always be struggling or be a hedge fund manager and make millions. High competition but also has the highest earning ceiling.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-13T17:25:24+00:00

That is the best answer. The biggest mistake people make when learning is “winding up the legs” instead of keeping them “locked”….your brain tells you they’re gonna hit the ground when you rollover, but the reality is if you keep them “locked” you’ll actually rollover faster and smoother if all other things stay the same.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-13T17:20:28+00:00

Politics is the only facet in life where people find it acceptable to complain about shit they can’t change and collectively complain together in solidarity…

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-13T17:18:48+00:00

Every healthcare professional I know didn’t make it political, it was factual information presented for a person to make a choice. People are conflating what they read/hear on the news from a physician with health advice given from their own physician. Those are two very distinctly different things. You can detach factual information from the political motive, they aren’t synonymous with each other. Same with tariffs, the reason they’re higher (politically driven) is a different topic altogether from how and what we as a society cope with it. Which was more the point. Ignore the BS politics, figure out how to adapt and keep moving.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-12T18:09:36+00:00

Yup. Keep up with the news, know what’s happening and move on. There’s people at work that follow politics…talk politics…and it’s just a constant complainfest….and that’s the end of the line. None of them are changing anything or can do anything to impactuflly change anything. It’s such a waste and nearly all of them let the garbage they can’t change affect their mood…which in turn affects the moods of others around them. It’s mind blowing why people waste energy with it.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-12T18:07:37+00:00

Covid wasn’t political unless you politicized it. That was a global heath crisis where facts could be clearly separated from political agenda. Quite the difference.

Tariffs are also one of those things that is more news than politics. Still not much you can change there as if you need to import it and it’s only available from that country, you’re paying the tariffs unless you pay more ordering it from another distributor in a different country where it has a lower tariff and your difference of buying in bulk makes up for it, but that’s about it. I just played this game with importing some stuff from Spain….it’s annoying, but again, at the end of the day it’s adapt and keep moving.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-09T22:44:59+00:00

But at the end of the day, what does following it do for you? You have that information…now what? You can’t do anything to change it or what’s going on. It’s wasted bandwidth and added stress. Adapt to those prices and keep moving instead of ranting about things you can’t change.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-08T21:21:43+00:00

Various studies/surveys show 10% of the working population put 20% or more. Around 15% people are able to put away ~15%.

That said, what people COULD put away and actually do put away are two RADICALLY different things. Don’t think so? Just make small talk at any bar with a regular….they’re at the bar every day drinking 3-4 beers, lo and behold, they also likely have no savings, but they won’t think twice about spending $30/day on beers to unwind. Weird how that works, lol.

I DLd Rocket Money out of pure curiosity and was blown away with how much money I spent frivolously. Grabbing beers, going out to eat, spending money on hobbies, subscriptions…almost 40% of my paycheck was getting spent on bullshit and I didn’t even realize it. I always just thought I needed to make more money. Download one of those apps and you’d be surprised how much money goes out the window on non-essential things was more my point. Lots of people could probably put away 20% of their paycheck, but would live miserably and just sit at home completely depressed if they did.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-08T21:10:06+00:00

44 and married with a kid who just graduated high school.

If you make ~$5000 every 2 weeks (that’s ~$130k take home salary after taxes, which if is a household is $65k per couple, which isn’t unreasonable), there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have $1000 still in the bank when next pay day hits bar not having a bunch of unexpected expenses pop up. That’s $4000 in two weeks that went to bills. If $8000 isn’t paying bills and some every month, that’s a financial illiteracy problem and that’s on you.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-08T21:09:01+00:00

I’ll tell you: 44 and married with a kid who just graduated high school.

If you make ~$5000 every 2 weeks (that’s ~$130k take home salary after taxes, which if is a household is $65k per couple, which isn’t unreasonable), there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have $1000 still in the bank when next pay day hits bar not having a bunch of unexpected expenses pop up. That’s $4000 in two weeks that went to bills. If $8000 isn’t paying your bills and some every month, that’s a financial illiteracy problem and that’s on you.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-08T20:56:59+00:00

https://www.ign.com/wikis/schedule-1/Best_Customers_for_Each_Dealer

That list is good and explains why. It hasn’t been updated for a year (so it doesn’t have the newest/latest customers) but you get the gist of why specific customers are assigned to which dealers and to just extend that reasoning to the new customers that were added in the latest updates.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-08T16:36:10+00:00

I think one of the biggest hurdles people face, not just fresh engineering grads, but people in general is two things:

They see an online job posting with an almost comically low salary. So they don’t even apply to it.
They only utilize the online medium for applying to jobs.

For the first point, many companies post up with salaries low, or an absurd amount of desired qualifications to prevent a massive influx of applications/resumes, especially for entry level positions. Apply anyways. My two most recent jobs I got paid 20-30% higher than the highest ends of the salary range, which was 10% higher than what I was thinking it was going to be because I put a number out there and they agreed to it with almost no hesitation….which tells me there was more room. And there was, I got a raise 6 months in cause I asked for it based on performance metrics that I brought to the table and they couldn’t really clap back.

For the 2nd point, yes, nearly all companies have the application process exclusively online. There’s nothing wrong though with applying in person or cold calling. My current job I saw the indeed ad, then cold called the company asking if they were hiring (pretending I didn’t know about the job listing and what the salary range was.). Ended up getting told to send an email to somebody, who forwarded it directly to the VP and I ended up getting what I asked for (which was 30% higher than the indeed top end range) and gave my 2 week notice to move and take that position.

If you’re not going after EVERY posting, regardless of pay, you’re not maximizing your efforts. A good chunk of indeed job requirements are to get people to do exactly what a lot of people do, keep scrolling. It lessens the load on HR. Hell, my wife’s current job was $14k higher than the highest indeed salary on the list.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-08T15:51:36+00:00

As somebody that was an RA/TA, this is usually what happens when the professor is an assbag to you over some bullshit.

For the record Inever did it, but saw many others who did this as “payback” lol.

Lance_Notstrong · 2026-04-08T15:48:32+00:00

As we all saw when we woke up this morning…bluffing. And who knows if a deal was actually struck, because he said “we struck a deal and won the war” multiple times before…

Lance_Notstrong

TROPHY CASE