Playing by the rules

I always hear people say that they are playing by the rules and still not getting to the point they want to be or they just got screwed up. By playing by the rules, I mean they went to school and college and got married and have kids and saved for retirement and paid their bills on time and still by some fluke of bad luck, they did not got what was rightfully theirs. And they are right in a sense that even going with all the rules of society, you still end up being in the dumps. For example the recent bankruptcy of the city of Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A. is a case in point (A post about it will be on this blog soon). People have been promised that when they retire they will get their pension but this bankruptcy filing has disrupted all their plans about their future retirement benefits since in bankruptcy all the promises are re-written based on the new reality. Also when your house prices go down, you feel cheated that your invested did the materialize as imagined because you played by the rules and it is not fair. I know that also life is not fair but you know I have been playing by the rules too and I got screwed too several times, but you learn through your mistakes and you still play by the rules but only the rules of working hard and devising new schemes to stay ahead of the game you are playing in. Don’t despair that you are not getting your fair share of the system as the new reality of global competition dawns in the rules of the games are constantly being changed and the trick is to learn these new rules so that they are advantageous to you and your family. Playing only by the rules will not cut it anymore; you have to play smarter with the rules.