My dad was a local truck driver, mom was a stay at home housewife. There were no ski trips, no vacations (except to see his sister twice in Phoenix), no air conditioning. I worked hard in high school and scored in the top 20,000 out of 2 million that took the PSAT. That got me in an engineering school. I then worked in banking after college, then a rural mail carrier and a night job. Saved for six years and quit to travel with my wife and 2 kids in America for almost 2 full years. Then I learned many trades from excellent guys and ended up building homes and remodeling for 30 years. If a tornado, a drunk driver, or an earthquake doesn't get you and cancer didn't get your forwarding address you just keep your head up and plow forward. There are never any guarantees anywhere in the world.