I can't knock GED; I became a teenage father @ seventeen, got a cheap ass job only to see it was going nowhere. Got a GED, hired into one of the best manufactory companies in Louisville at the time at age 18. Went to tech school and from the eighties until I retired in 2006 at the age of fifty, I earned an average every year in the mid five to low six figures. So, it can be done and I'm living proof coming from a family of nothing to quickly being the black sheep because I was succeeding. Worked my ass off getting there but I did it. BTW, still married to the same sweetheart I fell in love with, very proud of that. 50 plus years