I saw the age question for lvl II candidates, reminding me of an email that a friend sent me. Got a chuckle out of it, so I’ll pass it along. When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious rantings about how hard things were when they were growing up… what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning … uphill BOTH ways…YADDA, YADDA, YADDA And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it! But now that I’m over the ripe old age of thirty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today. You’ve got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today YOU DON’T KNOW HOW GOOD YOU’VE GOT IT! I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, We had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, IN THE CARD CATALOG!! There was NO email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter … WITH A PEN Then you had to walk all the way across the street And put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! There were NO MP3’s & NO Napsters! You wanted to steal music, You had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio And the DJ’d usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! We DIDN’T have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called They got a busy signal, that’s it! And we didn’t have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, Your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn’t know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister! We didn’t have any fancy Sony Playstation video games With high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like “Space Invaders” and “Asteroids” and the graphics sucked! Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens; It was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting Harder and harder and faster and faster Until you died! Just like LIFE! When you went to the movie theater There no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you And you couldn’t see, YOU WERE JUST SCREWED! Sure, we had cable television, But back then that was only like 15 channels And there was no onscreen menu and no remote control! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide To find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV To change the channel and There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. DO YOU HEAR WHAT I’M SAYING We HAD to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons! AND We DIDN’T have microwaves, If we wanted to heat something up We had to use the stove. IMAGINE THAT! If we wanted popcorn, We had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop thing and shake it over the stove forever LIKE AN IDIOT! You KIDS WOULD NEVER have lasted five minutes back in 1980’s! Regards, The over 30 Crowd
and you would never have lasted 5 minutes back in the 1970’s…and on and on we go… 
whatever, I’m only 22, what do I know. I enjoyed the post, times really have changed, even in my short life. I remember my first computer - it was a packard bell, 1.2GB of space - I think my Ipod has 40GB now, and its 100 times as small.
don’t forget… When you wanted to make a phone call… you went back home or searched your pockets for a quarter and if you made plans to meet up with someone at a bar or a restaurant, you always showed up, because you had no way of letting them know otherwise. and…If you wanted to get somewhere, you’d actually have to plan out a route yourself using a map. A voice in your car telling you where to turn was usually just an annoying relative in the passenger seat.
I’m 22 and my first laptop was like 4 gigs. *random* I do feel old, kind of…especially because I have younger sisters. But this is a good post. I definitely remember the Saturdays for cartoons thing. CN was new at the time and I hated all the old cartoons, so I kinda feel your pain 
I’m 22 as well, but I completely disagree with this post. Sure, things are better now than before in terms of living standards, but because of it there’s wayyyy more competition now than ever, and not just domestically but internationally as well (as seen on this lovely forum). You “old guys” lived in a time where the financial markets were far more inefficient and striking it big was far easier than it is now… you “old guys” lived through the 1980s where America’s wealth skyrocketed through the fucking roof… you “old guys” saw the advent of the Tech Revolution in the 80s and then the Internet Revolution in the 90s… All this said, you “old guys” had incredible opportunities that were presented to you time and time again AND with far less competition. It was also much easier to get into an Ivy League school back in the old days. If I was your age I would not be complaining. And I also wouldn’t be taking the Level II of the CFA, instead I’d be wasting time counting my millions… I don’t mean any disrespect, but just trying to put things in perspective.
(I was going to post here, but I didn’t want to lose my place counting my million$$$!). Now… where was I… $1,000,001.01, $1,000,001.02…
Siam, I somewhat agree with you. However, with more competition therein lies greater opportunity…it’s just finding that opportunity before somebody else does, now that’s the hard part.
The OP is right. The fact that I survived before High-Def is miraculous.
I was born in 1972. My first computer was an Apple II. My first stereo had a CD player- never owned a record player. My first video game was Atari. My Cousin was born 6 years before me- totally different- 8 traks/records no video games, no cell phones etc My brother was born in 78. No difference between him and me really. By the time I was out of HS we had Macintosh w/ mouse but no windows. When he graduated in 96, Windows was just starting- that is when it all happened. I think for the 22 year olds, who grew up with the net, things are different, but late 20s early 30s no real difference. We all had nintendo, cell phones all remember computers w/o the net. BTW- I think the net is as much of a time waster as it is productive, at least with the card catalog you had to use your brain and you probably actually read the book- now you just go to wikipedia- right?
rowaytonite Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > all remember computers w/o the net. Or at least when the only thing was prodigy or the local bulletin board.
it’s all relative, man in 50 years time your grandkids will be saying “Geez you had it easy compared to today. What was it like back in the good ol’days grandad? you know - back when you had things like cars, clean running water, cheap electricity, cheap clean groceries that didn’t glow in the dark, etc, etc>” Things always look easier in hindsight and always look uncertain in the future. Remember how you felt when you opened your first box of CFA books? You said something like “holy crap this looks huge - i’ll never get through it all” Then of course only a few months later you look back and say “pff - that wasn’s so bad after all. L1 was nothing compared to what I’m doing now!” Everything looks easy once you get through it and get a whole new set of things to worry about. There certainly are more oportunities now to make big money quickly - much more so than the “good ole’ days”. Before the 1990s it was quite rare to make a billion dollars in under 10 years. Bill gates, michael dell et al did it rather slowly compared to today. . Now of course its much more common for people to make billions in only a couple of years eg Jerry Yang, DAvid Filo (Yahoo), Sergey Brin, Lary Page (google), Pierre Omidyar (ebay), Tom Anderson, Chris Dewolf (my space), mark zuckerman (facebook), chad hurley, Steve chen (utube), etc, etc. It’s even possible now for a college kid to put up a home page and simply ask people for $1million - AND GET IT (Andrew Tew did it with themilliondollarhomepage.com). Ah life is certainly good now compared to the “good ole days”…
I started reading your post but my ADD kicked in by the third sentence and I stopped to go play video games.
Haha well, I’m 23 and I saw my first chocolate bar in 1991. My first computer was a 386 - in 1994 - had a black-and-yellow monitor. But none of my friends had a computer “back then” so it was pretty cool Granted, this was in Russia…
What’s wrong with Atari? I prefer playing on my Atari than these 3-d games which overwhelm my senses and give me eye-aches. I still write letters with a pen too, my friends love receiving my handwritten notes. Maybe I’m old fashioned.
wotz a pen? i can still remember ink wells in the desks at school - you know - dip & squirt, scribble & smudge. My first PC at citi was an IBM 8086, 8 hz clockspeed (Hertz, not mega-hertz) with 64kb ram, A&B floppies, (that’s a K not an M), no hard drive, just DOS, Lotus123 v.1 was the big deal. To do a simple calc you had to program the thing in basic and come back after lunch! Anything more complex than 2+2 you would need to stand in line at the Fortran machine until they plashed out and got an IBM system 34 - basically a thing the size of a washing machine that had less memory and storage than an HP12C. but so what? not much about the past is good - the past is dead - nowdays just need a b’berry…oh, and an HB pencil…
I’m 22…things have become more convenient no doubt and that has always been the case, thats how our Real GDP grows with technological advances as stated in the curriculum haha, ok that was geeky and random… But I do understand your frustration and jealousy with what you are seeing in today’s world…You wish you had it during your year’s…Don’t let those feelings overwhelm you…
who’s frustrated or jealous? It’s all relative - the trick is to make the most of whatever opportunities the current environment throws up. Eg. Made a killing in the 80s equities boom, then the late 80s property, VC in the 90s, recently most big wins have been in commodities in 00’s. What’s next? who knows?.. The key is to stay flexible, keep your eyes open for opportunities, then know what to do with them and build up a capital base to back your ideas. Doesn’t matter if you use a slide rule or abacus or super-computer - whatever’s current at the time. Would sure be boring if things didn’t change constantly!
agreed…cant argue your point…
If you were not working in the industry, the 80’s was far from great for individual investors. If you wanted to find that sweet undervalued stock, grab the wall street journal and look through the listings to see what bottomed out. Then do research on the company, through value line surveys and hope that the information wasn’t already months old. You could always get financials mailed to you, possibly faxed, if you had very good contacts, or a fax machine in your home and could stand the fax paper rolling up on you like some roman parchment. And then after months of finding out what is now the equivalent of what is on the company profile page on yahoo finance, you would call your broker who would charge you close to $100 and let you know what you got and for what price whenever he had the time. And to keep updated with your holdings, you’d scan WSJ daily to see if there might be a story about your undervalued company. Ahhhhh the joys of easy money in the 80’s for smaller invcestors.
jalmy8 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > and you would never have lasted 5 minutes back in > the 1970’s…and on and on we go… whatever, > I’m only 22, what do I know. I enjoyed the post, > times really have changed, even in my short life. > I remember my first computer - it was a packard > bell, 1.2GB of space - I think my Ipod has 40GB > now, and its 100 times as small. HA! My first computer was a TI (that’s right, Texas Instruments) Professional System, with no internal hard drive, no windows, no color monitor…just a green monochrome monitor, a dual 5 1/4" floppy drive, and a dual Bernouli drive (removable hard disks, for you youngsters). When you booted the system, it did nothing unless you inserted the boot disk in the floppy drive. Want to run Word Perfect? No problem…put the Word Perfect disk in the floppy and away you go! 
Those was the days…