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I was recruited for that job by Boeing, so I can relate my experience.There are so few such positions, and the pilots hold them for such a long time, that I suspect no one has gotten one by simply filling out an application, making the cut, being interviewed, and then being hired.It’s a job in which it’s critical that pilots work together far more closely than at an airline. And, you can imagine that current Boeing pilots meet plenty of other qualified pilots. In my experience, when they need to hire a new pilot, they reach out to someone whom they know will blend into the current team.My story: I had a degree in aerospace engineering and was a USAF pilot who had done well enough to be flying in the Presidential Wing (89th MAW) at Andrews. Andrews was also headquarters to Air Force Systems Command (AFSC). AFSC is responsible for specifications and acquisitions of new aircraft and system. I knew and flew with the four-star AFSC commander, and I flew the AFSC test bed aircraft based at Andrews, “on loan” from the 89th.One day, back in 1979, I flew the AFSC commander to the Boeing plant, where he was to spend a few days with engineers. I walked the assembly line with the general and the engineers and made a connection with them. We got along well.The afternoon of the second day, one of them invited me to his office, where I discovered he was the head of Boeing’s test pilot program. They were hiring new pilots for the upcoming 757/767 development and he offered me a job. I hadn’t realized that all the questions over the past two days had been my interview, for a job I didn’t even know to apply for. I imagine that’s how most of them are hired. It seems unlikely they shuffle through applications hoping to find someone.PS: So, how did that turn out for me? Back then, I thought that the be-all-and-end-all of flying was to be an airline pilot, so I declined. Duhhh! I had no idea how boring airline flying is and how deregulation (passed a few months before I got this offer) would destroy the airline career that I so hoped to enjoy. After deregulation, the old fabled airline pilot job simply no longer existed, but I knew nothing about business and so, at that point, was clueless about what was to come.Contrast airline flying to the rewarding, interesting, and challenging fly career of a Boeing test pilot and, if I could go back, I’d say, “Thank you, and YES!”

Join the military.Relax. I know what you’re thinking. I’m going to be sent off to fight in a war I know nothing about. I might lose my mind, limbs or worse yet, be killed.Before you march your brain off to oblivion, let’s do an about-turn and consider this for a moment.The military has so many occupations to choose from. 250 or something like that. I don’t know. I didn’t look it up. But it’s a lot. What makes you think out of all those trades, you have to join one that will send you to the front lines?Conversely, pick something that can be transferable when you get out. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t come across too many job applications where calling in artillery was a sought after skill.Believe me.Become a vehicle technician. An aircraft mechanic. Perhaps a biomedical electronics technologist. I don’t know what they do, but it sounds interesting.You get the point, pick something that might appeal to you and can use after your service.The beauty of the military is they will give you everything you need to survive. I mean everything.If you’re coming off the street and all you have are the clothes on your back, don’t worry. The military will issue you everything from running shoes to underwear.Look at that! We’re already saving money.How else can you make your money grow? Let’s take a look.Money InEarning an income.Seems obvious. To make money, you need a JOB. Get you ass off the couch!With the military you will get a steady paycheque and won’t have to fear being laid off.Just show up on time, do as you’re told and keep your mouth shut.Easy-peasy.2. Money OutYou want more money coming in than money going out. Living below your means.Military is the best way.I lived in barracks for ten years. In that time I paid $50 a month. Yes, $50.That’s not a typo.Quick math lesson.50*12*10= $6000 over that span.Let’s say outside the military you were renting a modest one bedroom apartment with utilities included.600 a month seems reasonable.600*12*10= $72,000.I’ll let you draw your own conclusion on that one.You’re probably thinking, “How am I suppose to live in a one room shack for ten years”?There are far worse conditions you could be living in.Trust me.Suck up it, buttercup.By the way, that $50 a month included cable.3. No Student DebtAccording to Forbes, “Student debt is now the second highest consumer debt category — behind only mortgage debt — and higher than both credit cards and auto loans”. “ …there more than 44 million borrowers with 1.3 trillion in student loan debt in the U.S. alone”. Student Loan Debt In 2017: A $1.3 Trillion CrisisWell, shit!At least we got the mortgage debt already covered. 50 bucks a month!Guess what? The military will pay for your education as well.You have eliminated yourself from the top two debt categories that plague countless Americans because you decide to become mechanic for the military instead of Pep Boys: Manny, Moe & Jack.Not too shabby.4. VehicleFor the love of Pete, do not buy a car!You don’t need the monthly payment.One of your new found military buddies will have a car. I guarantee it.After a week of rides, pay the person $20 or $30.If anyone asks why you aren’t buying a car, just say global warming.Carpooling is your contribution to saving the planet.Case closed.In most cases, anything you need, or anywhere you need to go will be on base.“But how will I get there if I don't have a ride”?You have two feet and a heart beat.Walk. Its good for you.Great segue for our next money-making snippet.5. Health Club MembershipsOr as I like to call them, fitness spas.Gone are the days of hard-nosed gyms. Where the only sound that screamed louder than steel smashing together were grown men grunting.These days, spas consist of more than just weight lifting equipment. They have added towel service, saunas, group fitness classes, squash courts. A person, whose sole purpose is to make you a grass shot.Seriously, a grass shot.You name it, spas have racked it up. Along with your monthly bill. Yes, you're paying for those services, even if you're not using them.$40–$50 a month for spa service of this calibre isn't out of the ordinary.Don't worry guys. Military has you covered.You want to play squash ? Fill your boots.A nice steam? go ahead my friend.Its all taken care of curtsey Uncle Sam.Grass shots sold separately6. No TimeThe amount of things you have to learn in the military are astronomical. Im not even talking about learning how to fix an aircraft engine.Never mind that.You think you know how to make your bed?Think again.Your Drill Sergeant will be on your ass to make your bed properly. That means measuring blanket folds with a ruler. Ironing the wrinkles out of your pillow.You will be so busy and tired you won't even have time to think about spending money on getting white girl wasted with your friends.Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it!7. Too Much TimeWhat the heck, right?Not enough time. Too much time. Which is it already?Its both.Welcome to the military.At first you'll be overwhelmed and occupied.But after you complete all your training, guess what?You train some more.Not as intensely mind you. And because you have been grinding so hard for so long, even a sliver of free time seems like an eternity now.This is what we call time management. One of several valuable skills you will acquire during your service.You can do anything you wish with this time. Its yours. Own it. Make use of it.I learned to invest in stocks. I read a lot about investing.A lot.I also had a lot of money to invest because I didn't have the time to spend it.I read in one of James Altucher posts that the average millionaire has at least seven streams of income, or something like that. Start working on yours with your new found time.So if you can stick it out in barracks, let Uncle Sam pay for school, walk places, play squash at the base gym, make your bed with a ruler and learn a new money making skill, or seven, you'll be well off.I did it.Trust me. It works.Disclaimer: This post is by no means a recruiting ad. I am simply stating what has worked for me.

Question: “How was it possible that a family could be supported comfortably on a single income in, for example, the 1950s, yet today people struggle with two incomes?”OK. having actually lived in the 1950s and disagreeing with many of the posted answers I will have to answer this, giving real and verifiable examples. In particular, I must respond to an extremely inaccurate and misleading answer posted by Quora writer Heather Johnson.To put things in perspective, I grew up in southeastern and south central Wisconsin. My father was an engineer, i.e., he had a modest middle class income. My mother, although she had worked before marriage, was a housewife and parent without outside income. The family consisted of my parents and six children, all of whom went to college. Everything about our lives was normal mid-western, middle class.Johnson writes: “[A]ppliances were bought on 5yr hire purchase plans. Once you paid it off you kept it for 20 yrs”. NO. Just no!My parents paid cash for every appliance purchase, as did most people in the middle class. Credit cards, other than American Express and Diner’s Club, both for business use, did not exist. Consumer credit did not exist, other than time payments from Sears if you bought their Kenmore brand and small loans at bad terms from Household Finance stores which catered to the improvident. Sensible people never borrowed money. Other than gas cards, there were no non-business credit cards in the 1950s and ‘60s. No one had ever heard the term “Master Card” or the phrase “Minimum Monthly Payment”.Appliances, although well made and, unlike today, designed so that they could be serviced, seldom lasted for “20 years”. A heavily used automatic washing machine or dryer might last 5 to 7 years. A kitchen range might be kept for 10 years, after which maintenance issues involving heating elements, clocks, timers, and switches made replacement likely. Automatic dishwashers and garbage disposers and garage door openers all had limited life spans. Tube type televisions in the 1950s ran hot, needed frequent service, and lasted no more than 5 years before needing to be replaced.Johnson writes: “Houses were small…a kitchen resembling a walk-in closet.”NO. This is the house my family lived in in the 1950s.It had a very large kitchen, a separate formal dining room, a living room with masonry fireplace, 3 large bedrooms all with closets, a closed in porch, solid oak floors throughout, a full basement, a cedar shingle roof, and a separate garage, all on a large wooded lot on a quiet street. The quality throughout was far higher than that which one can buy today. There were two Bell System dial telephones, one in a telephone alcove in the dining room and one in my parent’s bedroom.It was a typical middle class home.In 1962 my father had this built.It had a large kitchen, with a dish washer (!), formal dining room, living room, two masonry fireplaces, family room, office, laundry room, four large bedrooms, 2 and ½ baths, hardwood floors, full finished basement (with a bar and a pool table), two car attached garage, patio, breezeway, all on a two acre wooded lot with a view. Again there were two dial telephones, one of which was in my parent’s bedroom. This was a very typical home for a middle class salaried employee. In the 1950s American middle class families did not live in tiny shacks.Johnson claims that Americans in the 1950s: “[B]ought one car and maintained it for decades.” NO! Cars did not last for “decades”.In the 1950s a car was considered old at 60,000 miles when it was traded in on a new model. It was unheard of to own a car whose odometer had turned over from 99,999 to 0. The odometers did not even have a 100,000 mile dial. Most people traded in their cars every 3 to at most 5 years. Many car guys had arrangements with their car dealer wherein they would trade in their car every 2 years for a new version of the same make and model for a fixed amount of money. These are some of the cars my father owned in the 1950s. Note the upward mobility shown by the car models over the years.And from 1958 on, like many middle class American families, we had two cars, one for my father and the other shared by my mother and the children. They always paid cash for their cars, regarding auto loans as wasteful.This was my mother’s car.Johnson writes: “You had a modest closet consisting of one Sunday best outfit, 2 work outfits and 2 casual outfits.NO! My father wore suits to work and casual slacks and golf shirts on the golf course. I never saw him in a t-shirt or a pair of jeans. My mother dressed nicely, owned a few outfits by Dior and Balenciaga and Chanel and had a seldom worn mink stole. Although she knew how to dress well, this was not unusual or extravagant for the wife of a salaried engineer. In the 1950s and ’60s one dressed up to go shopping downtown or out to dinner or take an airline flight.Johnson claimed: “You ate out infrequently”.Not exactly. Fast food joints did not exist. Nor did family casual restaurants, aside from Italian pizzerias or the Friday fish fry at the neighborhood bar. Families seldom went out to dinner with the children. But my father frequently took my mother out on Friday nights to a nice supper club with dancing afterwards.My family in the 1950s lived this way while my parents, after having struggled through the depression and war years, paid off a mortgage, paid for parochial school for the children, sent six children to college, had no debt, and invested enough money in the stock market to be well off in retirement. Unlike what Johnson implies, the American middle class in the 1950s did not live in some sort of austere deprived poverty.OK, how was that possible? The economic system of the post-war period was different.Unlike today where all of the gains in productivity in the economy are directed to the 1%, from 1945 to 1980 productivity gains were shared and enjoyed by all segments of the working classes.Employment was secure. If you were employed and did your job well you did not have to worry that you would lose your job to a KKR or Bain Capital leveraged buyout scheme or some balance sheet manipulator’s desire to create paper “share holder value” or enhance his own stock options. The term “down sizing” had not been thought of. Looting of pension funds, a standard tactic of leveraged buyouts today, would have been a criminal offense in the 1950s and 1960s..The forty hour week was the norm. Workers were not expected to either work when they were not being paid or take work home. Blue collar workers got overtime for anything beyond 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week. And that overtime was enough to allow my wife’s machinist father to pay off the mortgage of a new house in five years.Medical costs were reasonable. Hospitals were run by religious orders or owned by municipalities, not predatory corporations. The cost of having a baby, including days recovering in a pleasant sun lit room, was ~$250.Companies paid good wages and salaries and all good companies included medical insurance and defined benefit pensions.Employment included paid vacation time.Unions insured safe working conditions and good wages for working men. In the 1950s more than 30% of the jobs were unionized. (Today that figure is 11%, and most of those are public employees, i.e., cops and teachers.) Those union wages set a floor that kept up the wages of non-union workers and white collar employees.Union Pensions allowed comfortable retirements. I will describe for example the work and retirement history of a friend with whom we discussed work in the 1960s yesterday: Went to work in the late 1960s immediately after high school for an automobile manufacturer. Worked as a sweeper, i.e., a janitor. Retired after 30 years, and not yet 50 years old, on generous full pension. Pension includes excellent medial coverage from Kaiser-Permanente. Has been retired for 20 years. Owns, for personal use, a home in Florida and a condominium in Colorado, and farm land in Wisconsin. Travels.The public schools were good and staffed with good teachers. The courses included typing and secretarial skills and mechanical trades as well as academics. Thus, students graduated prepared either for college or for a trade.The cost of higher education was reasonable and a college education was easily affordable, especially at one of the excellent land grant universities, by anyone in the middle class or skilled blue collar class who qualified.Savings and Loan Associations and the post-war GI Bill offered affordable home mortgages while not lending either to speculators or those who were trying to live beyond their means, thus adding to both the growth and stability of home ownership. For a fixed rate 20 year mortgage the interest rate was ~4.5% in the 1950s and ~5.5% in the 1960s.Public transportation was better and far more extensive than today, offering an alternative to private cars.Work was closer to home seriously reducing commuting time and expenses for those who chose to drive to work.Americans who were adults in the 1950s had lived through the Great Depression. That taught those who were intelligent the value of savings and the danger of debt. Thus, they avoided consumer loans, paid cash for appliances and cars, put a large down payment on their homes, paid off mortgages quickly, lived within their means, and saved and/or invested.Finally, one must not forget that in the 1950s, because much of Europe had not yet recovered from the devastation of the war, American industry was given an extremely profitable decade and the American dollar was substantially overvalued making imports of goods to the United States, or travel by Americans to Europe, extremely inexpensive.The 1950s and 1960s were different. The American middle class in those decades did not live simple austere pleasureless lives. Nor did they lack nice things. But the difference was caused: 1) by a “Depression Mentality” which taught those who experienced the depression to avoid the debt trap, and 2) by structural differences in government regulations, differences in the tax system and who it was designed to serve, differences in business ethics, and differences in the economy. The different type of government in the 1950s and ’60s and different economy in that era allowed middle class families in the 1950s and 1960s to live nicely on one earner’s salary.As Quora writer Denis O’Sullivan said in the comments (see below): “ The old tradition of the poor getting poorer returned in the 1980′s. It was a good run from 1940 to about 1980 for both blue and white collar employees.”Note re wages and prices in the 1950s: In 1957 the Federal Minimum Wage was $1.00 per hour. Adjusted simply for inflation that would be $9.20 today. The Georgia State Minimum Wage today is $5.15…half of what adjusted for inflation the Federal Minimum Wage was in 1957. The median income for an engineer with 10 years experience in 1957 was $10,000. Beginning pharmacists earned $125 per week or $6,500 per year. In 1955 the median income of a physician in general practice was $15,000. In 1957 a classroom teacher in a city of 50,000 earned $4,500 per year. The hourly wage for an automobile assembly line worker worker was $2.27 per hour, for a tool and die worker $2.95 per hour or $118 for a 40 hour week. The price for the 1950 Ford Deluxe V8 shown in the above photos was ~ $1,100. The 1953 Nash Ambassador sold for $3,100, the 1958 Oldsmobile $4,200. The two story colonial house shown in the photos sold for $17,500 in 1957. It was originally built in 1937. The 1962 house with attached garage was built for $34,000. In 1950 an Admiral black and white console television with radio and phonograph cost $500. In 1954 a top-of-the-line Admiral Dual-Temp two door refrigerator-freezer cost ~$500.Note re union wages in the 1950s: In unionized plants workers were paid time and one-half for hours worked over 40 hours per week and double time for working on holidays. Overtime was available based on seniority. My wife’s father was a skilled machinist at an automobile plant. Having started his employment there as a young man before enlisting in WWII, he was one of the 6 most senior employees in a factory of thousands of workers. He, thus, could bid for and get well paid overtime work whenever he wanted. One year he worked every day of the week including Saturdays and Sundays and Holidays for at least 8 hours per day, taking off only for one day, Christmas. By doing so he paid off the mortgage on a new home in five years. The UAW Pension allowed one to retire after 30 years regardless of age at full pension. That pension included full medical coverage including eyeglasses and dental care.Note re charge plates: The embossed aluminum charge pates issued by some department stores,gasoline station charge plates, Diners’ Club cards, and American Express cards used in the 1950s and ’60s were not credit cards as we use the terms today. These cards had to be paid off in full monthly. Diners’ Club and American Express cards, which were printed on paper with typed in names and addresses, were for business, not personal, use and were only available to the trustworthy and wealthy.Note that the above card from 1955 is described as a CREDIT IDENTIFICATION CARD. It was a card that informed the merchant that the holder’s income and reputation for paying his bills had been verified. Merchants and restaurants who accepted charge card placed the sticker(s) for the card(s) they accepted on the entry door. But you could not trust that. Restaurant owners would terminate their contract with the credit card issuer without removing those stickers.Department store plates could only be used at one store or one association of stores. They were often limited to a relatively small amount, often $50 or less. These were in use into the 1970s. Gas station cards, of course, could only be used at named gas stations. Sears did offer a “Revolving Credit Account” to holders of its charge cards. But these, again, could only be used for purchases at Sears stores. The Sears Roebuck and Co. card eventually became the Discover Card. The first actual Credit Card was the Master Card. (known as Interbank from 1966–1969 and Master Charge from 1969–1979). The first Interbank Cards were issued in 1958 to a restricted group. Charge Cards were not widely distributed until well into the 1970s. And even in the ’70s one had to check with restaurant servers before ordering to determine if your card or any card was valid at that restaurant. Many businesses refused to accept charge card purchases below a set amount.As late as the 1970s women desiring a Department Store Charge Plate had to get it in their husband’s name and the application needed his approval and signature, regardless of the wife’s employment or income. My wife encountered this when she applied for an account at Charles A. Stevens, a woman’s fine clothing store in the Chicago Loop, and was told she needed my approval and signature although she had a better job and higher salary than I did!Note re Changes in Relative Costs: In the 1960s my best friend’s father was a factory worker at the big dirty, but unionized, Fairbanks-Morse plant. My blue collar family friend could afford to take flying lessons and, before he was allowed to drive a car, had a private pilot’s license and enough flying hours by the time we were in high school to have both an instrument rating and a dual engine rating.As teenagers we were allowed and could afford to rent and fly aircraft, usually a Cessna, over Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois, sometimes taking our dates out for night flights. We were high school students, and we paid for those flights with our own earnings from part time or summer jobs. Today flying lessons and airplane rentals are only available to the rich.Life was very different in the 1950s and 1960s.