Strategies for long term survival

 My family was never rich but we always had enough. My father made a lot of money but mostly we lived hand to mouth. We never owned a house until 1968 when my father and I built a retirement home Near Yucca Valley in the desert on weekends from 1968 until 1980 when they retired. I too, also bought 2 1/2 acres and with my father's help built a home on 2 1/2 acres in Mt. Shasta in the wildnerness there starting in 1980.

However, the way I started out after high school was to go to Glendale College. My cousin went to USC on a Scholarship and then to NYU Law School on another scholarship. He has been a successful immigration lawyer in Orange County pretty much since with this own law business and Law partners since then.

I went to Glendale College because I was interested in Working with and programming computers starting in 1966 there. My best friend went there to learn Jet Engine Maintenance so he wouldn't be drafted into the army  and killed as a soldier on the front lines in Viet Nam. So, he joined the Air Force after his training and spent his time overseas in Thailand fixing the jet engines of  American Fighting planes both fighters and bombers during the Viet nam War.

I learned to program in Cobol and Fortran and to operate various IBM computers and equipment at the college and i worked part time for the Glendale Board of Education processing IQ tests and other tests for the Board of Education of Glendale, California on the IBM 1620 mainframe computer at that time. I also used a keypunch machine to create ways to enter data into the computer to run then Batch files programmed by myself and others. EVerything was in Batch then instead of Random Access memory at that time in the 1960s in the college and business field. IF there were microchips then they were all at NASA or in the Military or in Darpa not in the private sector yet.

The strategy of going first to a community College is a reasonable and much less expensive way to get educated. It's true you get more status by going to a 4 year college or university but it is going to cost to 10 to 100 times more to do that. So, unless you are very very rich maybe save your family some money?

Also, you tend to get a better more well rounded education by going to a community college first and then transferring up in your Junior year. The ONLY real disadvantage I can see from doing this is you will likely miss the Junior year in another country as an option by going to a community college to start with.

But, like I said your education is far more well rounded usually going to a community college first.

Often in a 4 year institution you are treated more like a thing or a number rather than as a person.

You are much mroe likely to be treated as an actual human being in a community college and you are also much more likely to be able to stay at home rather than travel far far away from your family. So, this is going to save your family incredible amounts of money or save you an amazing amount of money repaying student loans too.

MY son did this too and saved maybe 100,000 dollars in getting his education this way.

As it was he had to borrow 40,000 dollars at the Junior or Senior level to get his bachelor's degree in Nursing. However, we promised him that if he actually got his degree we would pay back his 40,000 student loan which we did.

So, he graduated literally debt free because of our agreement.

 This is one strategy or group of strategies for long term survival here in the U.S. through the years.