Success

Sadly, there are those who know "the price of everything and the value of nothing". Really wealthy "old money" people never discuss their financial situation wth strangers, but then one can't buy "class". My husband's mother and father fell under that category.

By the way, my very wealthy father-in-law left nothing to his children, because it was his belief that it would cripple them and make them weak! He had witnessed that in his family, and vowed to do things differently with his children. That was hard to accept, but I have to say, 11 years after his death, I realize there was some wisdom in that decision, though it certainly would have made ours and our childrens' lives a lot easier if he hadn't lived by that phiosophy!!

My guess is that a great number of the people living in affluent areas like Scottsdale, either inherited their money or stepped on a lot people climbing that ladder to what some consider "success". My experience has been that those are the ones who have the worst attitude toward persons they consider "lesser" based on their perceived (usually a rash judgement ) superficial 'social standing"..I have had quite a few of those kinds of "friends" in my life and, as I get older and hopefully, wiser, I have finally learned not to waste my time on those people.. Life is short, and there are simply too many nice people with solid values on which to focus my energies.

Lots of people I have known have worked extremely hard and yet never achieved what is considered "success" by popular culture. Some simply do not measure success by the house in which they live, the car they drive, designer clothes, vacations to exotic places, etc., etc . I guess one could say that my husband and I have achieved a modicum of that sort of success. However, we consider our greatest wealth, by far, the fact that we have a wonderful, happy long term marriage (38 years), beautiful, smart , successful children, both of whom we are blessed to have living within 10 minutes of us. Both of them have chosen great spouses and they are all wonderful parents to our granddaughters.

Our goal was to raise healthy (in body and soul) responsible, contributing human beings with good hearts, and I believe we achieved that goal in spades! One of my favorite quotes is "What is essential, is invisible to the eye". It was also Fred Rogers' favorite (Mr. Rogers).