Rethinking 'Fuck You' money | Hacker News Reader

Rethinking 'Fuck You' money

tonywright.com

164 pointsherdrick168 comments

His premise seems flawed to me. He says people should forget about F@#$ You Money because you can't depend on it to grow in this bad economy. That's reasonable.

But then he suggests you aim for “f@#$ you influence and credibility” because it "allows you to charge $30k+ for a 1 hour speaking engagement". But I know people who used to make $10k per speaking engagement and they aren't getting much work lately. In my experience the first thing people cut in a bad economy are the expensive speakers and while influence can probably get you a magazine column I wouldn't expect that to pay much at all.

So if the problem was finding a stable income in a bad economy his solution really didn't solve it.

He's saying you should forgt about a few million and go for a few billion.

I don't think it is what he's saying. He specifically says "give up on F@#$ You Money." Not "Go for a billion dollars because a million isn't enough F@#$ You Money"

What he's saying is influence is a better strategy than money and I'm disagreeing with the truth of that statement.

eh, I dono. To a certain extent, credibility can be transformed in to money... e.g. if you write a technical book, you will have a much easier time getting a job later on.

On the other hand, I think most things that get you a lot of money also gets you a lot of credibility, so going from just f-ck you money to f-ck you money plus f-ck you credibility isn't going to take much effort; you just have to be a bit more public, a bit more vocal about what you are doing.

I agree with you fully, the first thing to go when the economy isn't all that great is the stuff that you can do without.

So, no more lavish all employee trips to tropical islands and no more expensive speakers.

Time to get up and do some more work instead of talking about your previous successes.

And about dying penniless, who cares, you can't take it with you anyway. If you plan on passing your wealth to your kids better do it while you are alive and scale back accordingly. In plenty of countries that's the better strategy tax wise anyway.

I think it's not about dying penniless quite so much as messing up your calculation by a year or two and living penniless at the age of 87.

Isn't the general point more along the lines of not earning much on savings now quite possibily implies a need to do some work at some stage in future (even if its really easy lucrative engagements), and therefore staying in touch with the industry is probably a good idea unless you hit really big.

Personally I'd like to see influence and credibility more as an end than a means to speaking engagements and high-billing consulting though...

I wouldn't base your career change on the experience of your friends. You assume that because your friends are cheaper, that they'd have more business. I'd argue the opposite:

1. If you are bottom-end expensive, you get cut quickly. (e.g. $10k speaking engagement)

2. If you are middle-end expensive, you get cut... but not as quickly. (e.g. $20-30k)

3. If you are high-end expensive, you get cut dead last.

My husband and I did very specific, highly sought-after freelance services in the realm of visualization design/JavaScript. We are definitely high-end expensive.

As the economy went into the shitter, we only got more and more work.

Why? Because clients/customers often feel that the low-end and mid-end expensive people don't fully pay for themselves. Those people are basically getting "excess" budget, as opposed to being truly sought after.

Or they are a consolation prize: "Well, we could get Tony Robbins but he's $80k, then again, there's this dude, he's kinda interesting, how do you feel about $10K?"

Once even that $10k may be a stretch, they decide not to hire anyone at all.

Does the rule that you should get out of the stock market when random people tell you stocks are sure to go up apply in reverse?

If so, this is a pretty encouraging sign.

Isn't that what managers who buy undervalued stock do? Finding a stock everyone thinks is not going to do well (or much better), and buy a controlling stack of it.

Probably better to wait until people consider you weird for your investment thesis.

There are far more ways to be weird than ways to be right.

Not when we're in a great worldwide depression. When the US baby boomers, the world's biggest/baddest consumers, are retiring or being too expensive to be hired. When automation/free software have permanently reduced human worker needs. When the developed countries - the ones with trillions of debt and aging population - have willingly given up their factories to the emerging countries, and are desperately searching for other ways to pay back their debt besides financial engineering.

I get sick & tired of all this doom talk about a worldwide depression.

It's depressing.

If you play it smart then this 'depression' is an opportunity in disguise, more of a correction than a true depression.

The 1929 stock market crash set the stage for World War II, and it took until well after World War II before the world had finally recovered from it.

That was a depression.

The current situation is, compared to that, a mere bump in the road. As long as we're not seeing hyper-inflation, the general population still has food on the table and you can actually think about where you're going to take your holiday this year we're not even close.

The really bad effects of what is going on in the market are still limited to a number of markets, mostly financing and the more expensive consumer items.

There are knock on effects that hurt other industries but so far without the nightmare scenarios coming true.

One thing is for sure, the time of 'easy money' from stocks or real estate investments is going to be over for a while.

"all this doom talk about a worldwide depression." Pretty sure I'm one of the only few posters here that would say the words 'great depression'. and 'voldemort'.

"It's depressing" I know it is. But we as a population have to realize we are in a depression, not just a run of the mill recession like the mass media would have you believe, so we can react accordingly and not doom our future offsprings to even greater suffering.

"As long as we're not seeing hyper-inflation, the general population still has food on the table and you can actually think about where you're going to take your holiday this year we're not even close." Hyperinflation, not yet. 25% unemployed in the last depression, but they had soup lines to not go hungry. US has ~20% unemployment, and we have food stamps/unemployment benefits mailed to our house. As for the holiday..well you and I, we're in the lucky 80%.

It's not as if the normal conditions are 0% unemployment.

Also, society as a whole is so much richer now than it was in the last 'great depression' that even those that are down on their luck have it comparatively easy compared with 80 years ago. It's a world of a difference.

That doesn't mean there aren't individuals that are on really hard times, but there are only more of them, it's not like the phenomenon is unique to 2010.

No, it's not, but the current situation smacks of systemic job loss rather than cyclical job loss. It's a problem. What happens when people absolutely can't find new jobs? Self-feeding demand destruction?

"No, it's not, but the current situation smacks of systemic job loss rather than cyclical job loss."

Sounds like we're back in the 80's - 'the Japanese are taking our jobs! The robots did it!' and then we went into the 20 most prosperous years humankind has ever known. I hear people cry left and right that today's job loss is systemic, but I hardly see any factual arguments to support that position. Jobs were cut over the last two years, this quarter profits are back up, and if those improved profits repeat themselves for a few quarters the confidence will come back and more people will be hired. A regular business cycle, even if the nature of the drivers is changing.

Now I'm not saying it doesn't suck for those without a job, and I'm sure some people have it really rough, but come on like Jacques says - today's poor (in the West) live lives 10 times better than the kings of 500 years ago. I'm sure that's no consolation for a welfare mom who has to put her children to bed some nights crying because they're hungry, but overall, these are still great times to live in. Let's keep some perspective, put problems in the right context and fix the comparatively small deficiencies rather than cry wolf, pack cans of beans and ammo and head for the mountains.

"I'm sure that's no consolation for a welfare mom who has to put her children to bed some nights crying because they're hungry"

The weird thing is that it is more likely that mom and those kids suffer from chronic obesity, at least in the U.S. Doesn't change the fact, though, that the poor face much greater health risks than the affluent when it comes to nutrition. Just that the nature of those risks has changed, and take longer to manifest themselves.

When I was driving around in Northern Michigan in 2002 I realised that I'd been 'had' by hollywood and their depiction of rural America. Poverty was pretty common, people living in trailers rather than houses, bad education etc.

The difference between then and now is that some of the people that were affluent then are feeling a little bit of the heat right now and they're scared shitless. But given a slight economic upturn they'll forget about all that and it's back to business as usual. Except for the people that had it bad in 2002, they'll continue to live in a way that a civilised country ought to be ashamed off.

There is no crisis, there is only a totally weird distribution of wealth that has temporarily gotten a bit weirder. If we really wanted then we could solve this problem, but all the majority wants is to return to the situation of 5 years ago.

"we're back in the 80's " We're not. Baby boomers were in their prime during that time, therefore consumption still increased over time, and innovation still thrived. Now, the biggest consumer market in the world is disappearing, with no comparable replacement in sight.

"10 times better than the kings of 500 years ago." Yes, but both you and jacquesm are confusing technology advancement with an economic phenomenon, which is defined by high structural unemployment rate and many business failures

"pack cans of beans and ammo and head for the mountains." Nobody says you have to do that. 75% of the people that lived through the great depression lived a normal but frugal life. However, if/when the dollar suffers from hyperinflation, that's another story.

During the depression people lived in shacks made of cardboard, did have any money for clothing or even toilet paper and where in many cases starving.

And you are telling me we are in a depression now?

No, but I think you replied to the wrong entry.

Google "tent cities":

http://www.google.com/search?q=tent%20cities

And the reason you don't see it every day? The criminalization of homelessness:

http://www.google.com/search?q=criminalization%20homelessnes...

The cushion is slightly greater because the lifestyles before this depression were higher than in the Great Depression (e.g. people have tents), there are more laws to protect lessees from landlords, and, of course, many people have credit.

But those are just cushioning. Cushioning slows the fall, it doesn't stop it.

It seems like about 25% of all children live in poverty - and the US' lines for poverty are lower than in many other countries:

http://www.google.com/search?q=US%20percentage%20of%20childr...

The article has a serious point (there's no insurance against life, other than your own ability), but I too found the jump from an anecdote to a conclusion (with scenarios mentioned already being unrealistic) distracting.

That being said, I don't think this reflects negatively on Tony. There are many other writers who I respect who show this annoying tendency (somebody has pointed out that Malcolm Gladwell and Thomas Friedman are especially prone to this).

Top money manager at major Wall Street firm != random people. It doesn't necessarily mean stocks are about to go down either (Wall Street has certainly been wrong too, eg. 2000 or 2007), but it's a far cry from having a shoe-shine boy tell you to buy stocks.

No, I think "top money manager at a major Wall Street firm" and otherwise unattributed actually is random people.

Bernard Lietaer (former central banker, successful currency speculator, one of the architects of what today is the Euro, and nowadays complementary currency advocate) starts most of his post-crisis conferences by asking the public to raise their hands if they believe that the worst of the crisis is past/ahead of us. Generally, most people will raise their hand to state their belief that the worst is still to come. Here's an example, in front of an audience of financial journalists:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfMbYllbN6c

(Skip to 2:40 for the actual start if you want.)

Direct link to 2:40 of the referenced video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfMbYllbN6c#t=2m40s

That doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't buy stocks.

It is extremely unlikely that you will time the bottom of the market just right. So even if it will continue to get worse for a while, it might still be a good decision to continue buying into the market so that when the bottom does hit, you will have bought some stocks right around that time.

This all depends on your investment horizon, etc. etc.

There is still the possibility that a significant part of your particular investment vehicles will just vanish forever.

Do you mean to imply that the post's author was lying, the person he was talking to was lying, or that a top money manager at a major Wall Street firm's opinion is just as good as that of a random person?

If the last one, I'm inclined to think that someone who thinks about something full-time is statistically more likely to guess correctly about it than someone who doesn't.

Most of my friends on Wall Street say you shouldn't trust random top money managers at major Wall Street firms - that's not over the interesting competence threshold. I am, obviously, paraphrasing, but it's the impression I get.

Why trust your friends on Wall Street then? ;-)

Basically, his friends on Wall Street are telling him to not trust his friends on Wall Street when it comes to financial advice.

I'm struggling to determine whether this fits the Liar's Paradox, or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_witness more so than Liar's Paradox.

"I'm inclined to think that someone who thinks about something full-time is statistically more likely to guess correctly about it than someone who doesn't."

If the system they're thinking about is a system defined by other people also thinking about it, and they're all trying to outsmart each other, and the system itself is too large and complex for any one mind to grasp, maybe not. And in fact, I've heard (no citation) that you'll as well on average throwing darts at stocks as hiring a stockbroker, and you'll save the fees. Which is why I'm inclined to invest in an index fund and forget about it.

Even attributed it's still basically random people. The underperformance of mutual and hedge funds pretty much shows that the professionals are no better at predicting the future of the market than a monkey with a dart board.

But the shoe shine boy has no motive for lying to me. The "top money manager at a major Wall Street firm" may be lying to me in order to get me to do something that lines his pocketbook. For example, he may be front-running.

Wall St was right in 2000 and 2007. It was 1995-1999 and 1998-2006 when Wall St (and everyone else) was wrong (on tech stocks and housing, respectively).

A broken clock is right twice a day.

That's Warren Buffet's philosophy.

   "Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful"

"Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful" Warren Buffett. The second half indicates he thinks so.

I won't lie, I've been funding my IRA early lately.

In a market full of speculators that is true. I think the money manager is talking about people who are moving money out of the market because they want to retire, medical expenses, income, etc.

Repost but a quote from George Foreman about longshoremen. What is real wealth?:

Mr. Foreman, who stared down financial collapse as an adult despite a troubled, impoverished childhood, said he knew real wealth when he saw it. “If you’re confident, you’re wealthy,” he says. “I’ve seen guys who work on a ship channel and they get to a certain point and they’re confident. You can look in their faces, they’re longshoremen, and they have this confidence about them...I’ve seen a lot of guys with millions and they don’t have any confidence,” he says. “So they’re not wealthy.”

in entertainment and sales, confidence is almost everything. The thing is, outside those fields, confidence is dramatically less useful. (granted, sales skills have a pretty wide applicability, but my point is there are jobs that don't involve much sales, where confidence doesn't matter that much.)

Confidence doesn't have to tie directly to the work you do. One aspect of confidence is knowing that you have the skill to find work, or the smarts and personality to get a new job and learn the necessary skills quickly. A person like that never needs to fear poverty, which is one aspect of wealth.

Not fearing and not needing to fear are two different things. Confidence can help get you jobs, but without competence, you will have a hard time keeping it.

If you ask me, the best way to invest the $2 million mentioned in the article in order to retire comfortably would be rental property. Take your $2 million and buy four $500K houses (or eight $250K houses, or whatever's appropriate). Pay an agent to take care of them, or do it yourself, depending on how much involvement you want. That should yield maybe $8,000 a month in rent, which after you've taken care of all the extra costs should still be enough to live on quite comfortably. Any capital gains you enjoy (and if you're smart you'll have invested in an up-and-coming area) are a bonus.

The best part is that you don't need to leave some money on the table to hedge against inflation, since in the long term rent will pretty much keep pace with inflation.

There are areas where this is a completely terrible idea due to rent controls and other landlord-unfriendly policies, obviously you shouldn't do it there. Also, avoid any area where you're likely to get undesirables as tenants.

Improvement on that is avoid family housing and go for industrial/commercial.

You can get a quality property with minimal leverage for your $2million. You will get a blue chip tenant like a national retailer or even a government department, and they'll sign a 10 year lease with mandated, upwards only, CPI-indexed increases each year. You won't even have to fork over 8-10% on a property manager because the tenant will maintain the property. And at the end of it, you'll have a property worth much, much more than what you paid for it.

Compare to a portfolio of houses, this strategy is higher return, lower risk and much lower management. The problem with family housing is that they are full of families, with all the associated problems that brings. Families split up, move out, get into trouble, have parties - blue chip businesses just keep their place tidy, make money and get on with life.

Commercial property is much more sensitive to cyclical downturns than family housing. 10 or 15 year leases are mostly in either downtown, prime location property (with very limited supply) or in new developments, where you only get them once. After that you're left to the market.

As usual, I think diversification if best for a stable portfolio. Mix various types of property, in various locations with various target markets, and then real estate is very sensible investment option.

Yes, I'm talking about a prime location property. That's why you are putting down $2million with leverage (say $4 million total buy).

Of course there are cyclical downturns, and also upturns. The idea is to get a low risk passive income, not to flip it and make money. Any blue chip property is going to stay blue chip regardless of market conditions, unless the location goes sour. But that's part of your due diligence.

> And at the end of it, you'll have a property worth much, much more than what you paid for it.

Unless there was a property bubble. Ireland recently had a massive property crash. Properties that were sold for €200million are now worth €20mil or less. Lots of people are stuck owning empty hotels and business centres with no tenants.

Well, obviously you don't buy an overvalued or speculative property. I'm talking about the dirt and building underneath an established business, like a fast food retailer, or, like I said, a government department.

For all the overvalued properties out there, there are still plenty which have maintained solid value based on solid cashflow from solid leases. As long as the lease is still going, then the value of the property is a function of the cashflow of the lease. The value of the lease is a function of the value of the tenant. If you do your due diligence all these mistakes can be avoided.

In my experience as a landlord "any area where you're likely to get undesirables" includes the entire land mass of the planet.

Unless you're a hands-on people person, I recommend running away from rentals as fast as possible.

Rentals are a shit-ton of work, even if you have an agent. If you always had dreams of being a landlord, I suppose this is the retirement for you, but for the rest of us, there's no way in hell this is a good idea.

You will have issues with tenants. You will invest heavily in maintenance, possibly due to your tenants. You will be hogtied by municipal and regional laws that heavily favour the rights of the tenant.

What you inevitably find is that if rent differs greatly from the amount of your mortgage (i.e this is profitable), all the good tenants have bought a house of their own. If it doesn't, you'll basically have a holding property that is gambling all your earnings on the property market. This isn't a very good strategy.

This is a terrible idea, unless you want a full time job. You didn't deduct from the $8,000 a month income - repairs, taxes, upkeep, insurance, potential loss of income due to bad tenants, tenants that damage your property - a bad tenant could cause $100K+ damage to your property and stop paying rent entirely. Also, property value loss due to deflation of the housing market, and other risks.

The average price of maintenance on a house is 1-3% of its value per year - this takes $20-60K per year off the top of your income. Be sure to take taxes off that as well as deadbeat tenants.

You could actually be in a negative situation, especially if you get a bad tenant that damages your property.

8% ROI is unrealistic, but a 2-4% is certainly possible especially with municipal bonds and insurance annuities. The former are also exempt from federal taxes, state taxes (if you live in the same state) and even local taxes (if you live in the same city). Both have guarantees against inflation (at the cost of lower yield) .

Nonetheless, I do think the is somewhat overrated. If I had fuck you money, I'd... write code, read books and papers. I'd have more freedom on how I write my code during working hours (and it's important not to understate importance of that, but the more senior you get, the more choice you have in what you work on what tools you use), but I'd also not have the focus that comes from working on systems that solve actual problems that individuals and organizations have; nor would I be solving these problems at scale that makes them much more interesting.

On the other hand, I'm pretty confident that if I were to spend my time chasing a big payoff I'd be working on problems that are far less interesting and more frustrating (which is almost axiomatically why these problems have the payoff). There's very few early-stage startups doing systems programming (and I'm speaking loosely here i.e., beyond just operating system kernels and file systems). For web companies systems programming only becomes needed as a scalability becomes a problem (in most cases it never does). The idea that may be I'll be able to go back to doing what I enjoy most of the time if the business succeeds won't be enough to drive me: I already do that (perhaps that's why so few "home run" startups have come out of Google?)

Keep in mind that while stock options after product/market fit (pre-IPO startups, public companies) account for only a tiny percentage, the chance of a payoff is much higher (which, again, is why it's a tiny percentage: you're no longer taking a risk). That payoff is certainly no fuck you money (except in rare cases e.g., Google in early 2000s), but it's often sufficient in terms of giving you more freedom e.g., to go back to school for a Ph.D.

Were I to have a vision for a business (rather than a science project, which most of my ideas have been) based upon interesting technology (i.e., not a website) I'd certainly consider pursuing it, but even then I'd have no illusions: I suspect, I'd spend more of my time doing what I don't like (general business operations) than what I do (coding); it would be the vision of bringing forth new technologies that solves real problems that would let me pull through that (as opposed to pure research or solving business problems with well known existing technologies) .

8% ROI is unrealistic, but a 2-4% is certainly possible especially with municipal bonds and insurance annuities.

Amusingly, municipal bonds are in the top 4 likely candidates for our next set of major financial problems. The others are default on consumer ARM mortgages, debt on commercial real estate, and repayment on private equity. Interestingly, the largest class of investors in private equity funds this time around are government pension funds, which will just compound the risks for the munis. (The last time there was a bubble the investors were Savings and Loans institutions, the result was the S&L crisis of the late 80s/early 90s.)

> Amusingly, municipal bonds are in the top 4 likely candidates for our next set of major financial problem

There's several kind of muni bonds, however, each with their own set of trade offs. The higher yield, the higher the risk. Some are guarantees, but only offer a very low yield. If the guarantees lapse, the problems are likely to be very deep, irrespective.

For what it's worth, I'm sticking with FDIC insured bank CDs across two banks, but I my expectation is more of "retain value" rather than "investment".

Insurance annuities are not as risky as municipal bonds. What's more, your state's insurance commissioner guarantees them, similar to the FDIC guarantee on deposit accounts, up to a certain dollar amount (I think it's something like $100K).

So you have $2 million in F-you money? Stick $100K each into 20 different insurance company annuities (staying below the guaranteed amount and diversifying your risk) and enjoy guaranteed monthly (inflation adjusted) checks for the rest of your life.

The only thing that will stop your income stream is the complete destruction of the entire US financial system. I suppose that is possible, but if that happens your money won't be safe anywhere, except perhaps gold bars buried in your back yard...

"His belief was that it was likelier to get worse before it got better and that it could be 10 years or more before the economy bounced back. “I think we’ll see Dow 4,000 before we see Dow 12,000,” he told me."

sure but as long as you believe the economy is going to bounce back over 10 years then if you took a good piece of your $5m and simply put it into an index fund now, in ten years (retirement) time you'd have a very healthy return on it.

i don't agree that now is a bad time to invest. i believe now is a bad time to invest for returns over the shorter/medium term but if you're talking about investing over a retirement time scale then it's during periods like the one we are in where big returns can be made.

People who think 6-10% returns are unrealistic are sheep, and know nothing about real estate.

A friend of mine, a complete novice, was able to buy a multifamily unit in downtown San Jose for 500K and rent it out for 5000 a month. His down payment is 100K. His expenses(400K mortgage, insurance, taxes, etc) is 2500 a month. His rate of return is (5000-2500)x12/100K = 30% or so.

He did this while violating the #1 rule of real estate investing: you never buy at market price. You pay 70% of what stuff are going for on the MLS.

I invest in courthouse foreclosure auctions, and manage about 40% cash on cash returns.

Investing in real estate is a skill, just like building companies or coding. Imagine how much a typical person know about building web apps. That is how much a typical person know about real estate investment.

So because your friend managed to get a crazy-good deal on one property, everyone else is sheep?

Arbitrage opportunities do exist in the current market due to the current craziness, but the present foreclosure pace can't last forever. I don't know how long "70% of MLS" has been "the #1 rule of real estate investing", but how easy was it to snap up properties for those prices in 2005?

My point isn't that my friend got a crazy good deal. My point is that arbitraging 12% rental income against a 5% mortgage rate is so easy right now you can do it by buying right off the MLS at market rates, in one of the most expensive(price to rent wise) cities in the US.

The original poster was moaning about how hard it was in TODAY's environment to make money off of several million dollars in cash(!). I wanted to provide a counterpoint to that attitude.

If what you say is true, why is all this free money still lying around? Is there some systematic reason for why hedge funds don't do it, or why too few people bid on courthouse auctions?

It's not free at all.

Buying a rental property off the MLS means you have to manage it, and is like starting a small business. This is fairly safe to do even for beginners, and is a good way to leverage a few tens of thousands and a good credit rating.

Buying at courthouse auctions is a completely different ball game, and requires you to

1. pay all cash(this eliminates 99% of competitors)

2. research title and liens on the property(if you screw up you might end up buying the second mortgage instead of the first and lose everything)

3. estimate the market price without being inside

4. be there on weekday mornings

5. have strong intestinal fortitude.

6. have heard about them in the first place and have taken the trouble to learn the system.

The above are why you can get discounts of 30% or more off of market price.

Properties need to be individually researched, fixed up and resold. Someone has to physically go attend the auction. It's MUCH too messy for hedge funds. It's ideal for individuals, or groups of individuals, with cash and local knowledge. More and more people are showing up at my local auction, and good deals are getting harder to find.

Are you in California? Go to your local county courthouse at 10AM on a weekday and look for a circle of homeless looking people holding large cashier's checks. Depending on the state, it might be once a month on a designated weekend. Let me know if you want more info.

Stop reading HN and get back to work on chapter 35.

Thank you for providing detailed and concrete information about how to go about buying foreclosure properties at courthouse auctions. I admire people who are confident/kind enough to share inside information about their business to the public, as opposed to most people on HN who just engage in self-congratulatory circle-jerk. You have a good day, sir.

I would like more info. I am in the position to invest on this scale and the idea of being a landlord is not too scary to me (actually sounds kinda fun in a twisted way). Some questions off the top of my head:

- What attributes constitute a good rental property?

- Is it ever worth it to hire a manager?

- How often do you have to visit the property? I live in SF but I understand being a landlord here is difficult due to renter protection. If I were to buy a property in an outlying area, how often would I need to visit it? I'd also like to take some extended travel in the future. Would being a landlord get in the way of that?

- What else should I be thinking about?

Thanks!

Right a mortgage is 5% or so. So around 0.5% per month, roughly.

Rule of thumb #1 for rental properties is that if it can get 1% of its total value in rent per month in rent, you can get positive cash flow. 1.5% is worth your time. 2% is what you want to aim for.

Rule of thumb #2 is that the crappier the property, the easier it is to get a higher % of rent vs price. Multifamilies are in general more profitable to rent than single families.

Don't hire a manager when you're starting out. Do it yourself, invest close to home.

SF is too expensive, anyways. Everyone has their own comfort level trading off profit vs crappiness of neighborhood. I'm drawn towards slums, myself.

Richmond/Concord has some nice cheap properties, is close, and has good rents. Oakland is even cheaper but slummier.

The default first step would be to fire up realtor.com and craigslist, and compare prices versus rents. Start with the cheapest single and multi families in Richmond, Concord, and Oakland.

How much cash do you have? This is important since it defines your options.

Join bigger pockets, it's a great forum with lots of pros.

Always try to buy below the market price set by the MLS.

You can get away, but you'd need to get someone trustworthy on call to take care of emergencies.

Shoot me an email at foreclosurevision dot com, once I know exactly what you're looking for I can offer more targeted advice.

> His expenses(400K mortgage, insurance, taxes, etc) is 2500 a month.

A different point of view is that his expenses are 12500 a month and FedGov is paying him a 10k/month interest subsidy, and that he is upside down by 150k and accounting for FedGov price supports as an asset. Tick. Tick. Tick.

I know of a couple of entrepreneurs who made a good few mil by selling their startup and were looking to start a business as a lifestyle cashflow only business. When I asked him why, he said they did not want to dip into their savings for daily expenses and wanted to have a business that was sure to make them just enough money without way too much effort. I think this is not a bad strategy unless you just don't want to work, which I think is rare.

In terms of growth, I think its wiser to invest in BRIC where the core domestic markets are getting stronger and the stock market returns are a lot better, though choppy. Also if you diversify into real estate (recurring income), CDs (monthly income), and such other opportunities, then you can strike a balance for yourself.

Influence is VERY tough though. I wouldn't count on it as an indefinite opportunity to earn money when needed, assuming you are able to cut through the noise and build credibility (which itself may be tougher than having a decent exit. Plus it is not for everyone). New influencers constantly displace current influencers and it would take a lot more work to maintain it unless you founded Google or something.

Two words: permanent portfolio.

http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2008/12/22/permanent-portfolio-...

http://crawlingroad.com/blog/tag/permanent-portfolio/

I keep seeing this pop up on HN and I'm intrigued.

Any wealthy people out there using this who can comment?

I haven't heard of this before, but thanks for sharing. This is a remarkably simple yet well balanced portfolio that should work for retirement at any age.

what's the moral of this story? you most likely, even if you make a good amount of money, will not escape the anxiety associated with money. or, escaping the anxiety associated with money is not accomplished by making money. the idea of fuck you money is for kids. being able to say fuck you to anyone is more about what you've got on the inside than what you've got on the outside.

being able to say fuck you to anyone is more about what you've got on the inside than what you've got on the outside.

Sure, but the consequences will be different.

"Sure, but the consequences will be different."

Well I guess that with that reply you missed the whole point of the comment...

The first 3/4 of this article is fucking terrifying.

If you are not fucking terrified at the moment you're not paying attention.

There's nothing to be terrified of. Just live your life and do your best. If you're going to live your entire life with fear about retirement or debt, then by the time you reach retirement age you'll have lived most of your life in fear. Which is worse? Working during retirement age or living the vast majority of your life in fear? If things get really really bad you can always put a hole in your head or jump off a bridge. So don't worry about it. Just work hard, enjoy your life, and be happy if you want to be.

yeah live your life at the fullest,,,everything eventually works out.

And if worse case scenario it doesn't...and you are broke at 55-60....go rob a bank. If you succeed you get some cash...if you fail you get free room, food and health care.

> " If things get really really bad you can always put a hole in your head or jump off a bridge. So don't worry about it."

That philosophy might work if you're a single person.

That philosophy suddenly does not work so well if you have a spouse, children, and aging parents, perhaps sick or dependent families. Suddenly the whole "oh well, I can always just shoot myself" solution isn't so clean and practical.

I'm certainly not the only one to remember all the survivalist BS from the 80ies. Maybe that'd be a good business to be in these days. "Survive in the woods with only your wits and a loin cloth!" "Bob and Doug's guide to finding beer after the apocalypse!" and so on...

Why don't you just put your money in a global index fund instead? No one forces you Americans to invest your savings in your own country..in fact, that seems like a pretty bad idea in the first place, since this means that when the economy is bad and it is hard to find jobs is the same time it is a very bad idea to take money out of your investments.

Seems pretty obvious to me that the American economy as a whole has so much shenanigans going on that investing broadly in it is a bad idea. Is it really that hard to move your money to a foreign currency`

they say when America gets a cold, the whole world gets the flu.

Sure, the US economy is in pretty bad shape right now. but where else do you suggest we invest? this isn't a localized problem.

The terrifying part is that what you say is true, but America is still the best place to invest. Burying pirate treasure on an uncharted island is actually starting to look good.

Which country? Europe is worse-off than America, China likely has their own bubble. Japan has been in a funk for 20 years. Russia has recently been cracking down on political freedoms in a worrisome way, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to take your money out once you put it in. Same for many Latin American countries.

How about India? Indian economy has bounced back some time ago. Here is sensex over last 5 years.

http://in.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=^BSESN&t=5y&l=on&...

Risk-free return rate is still at around 8%: http://www.bajajcapital.com/gss/nsc.html

If I'm reading it correctly, that risk-free return rate is only available to resident Indians. In addition, even if international investors would be able to access it they'd be adding currency risk to the equation.

Yes, and Yes. I quoted the risk-free rate to give an idea about the economy and its risk-level. Equity market here can be expected to give decent returns (~15%). I'm not sure about the citizenship requirements but the equity markets should be quite open.

http://new.valueresearchonline.com/funds/default.asp

>Europe is worse-off than America

Citation and qualification needed (e.g. Switzerland certainly isn't worse off than America).

Greece, Spain, Italy and to a lesser extent France are essentially bankrupt.

Initial citations/qualifications still needed and citations for these new claims needed as well.

The countries you listed (aside from Greece of course) are having some issues, which they are addressing. So what. From where I sit (live in Europe, have family and friends still in the US) the US looks much worse off.

The initial argument was that investing in Europe as opposed to the US wasn't going to get you anywhere. While we could debate ad-infinitum which economy is "worse", the point stands.

It's easy to establish that Europe is in at least as bad a position as the US. Your point as to Switzerland's health points exactly to why many (including myself) think this means that it is actually worse overall: Because of the Euro, each of these problem countries can't control their own interest rate, and so the likelihood of actually defaulting is greater.

http://www.moneyweek.com/news-and-charts/economics/europes-e...

>that it is actually worse overall

That what is actually worse overall? Europe or Switzerland? Switzerland isn't in the EU and doesn't have the Euro. It's true they've bought a lot Euros to try and keep the Franc down but they've bought a lot of US dollars as well (for the same reason).

Indeed. There are investments here in South America that pay off so much better than what is described in the article.

The trouble is, you have to really fear the kleptocracies in charge, and even in the more sensible countries (like Chile, Costa Rica or my own, Uruguay) you have to be on your feet.

As usual, higher returns means higher risk (real or perceived - I suspect the risk difference between here in Uruguay and the US is more perceived than real).

By the way, if you want an investment that is mostly risk free, I'd look at finite commodities: steel, oil, uranium, copper, etc... (my uncle actually buys physical steel plate as a hedge - it can be used as input to his business but it's also a savings account).

eh, it's been a long time coming. corruption is endemic to the system; shareholders have outsourced management of their companies without providing any supervision. there's really no way that is sustainable.

Terrified of what? The bogeyman? Everybody reading this still has internet access, which is not exactly one of the prime requirements for living.

You've got very little to be terrified of, other than your lack of self confidence in your ability to make the best of a mediocre situation.

Guess George Foreman is going to give you the thumbs down once he looks you over. [see longshoreman comment above ]

It's actually silly to think that stock market ROIs won't rise again. They're abnormally low now, but we've seen it many times before.

Market returns are based on the amount investors need to take the inherent risks. Unless stock market investing gets considerably less risky (seems quite unlikely) investors will leave the market for less risky vehicles until rates return to the amounts needed to justify taking the risk, which have historically been around 7-10%.

Stocks, real estate, bonds, and all other market-based investment vehicles will always have returns in-line with risks in the long run.

Nobody should ever retire hoping to get a steady income from the stock market or real estate or other volatile investments. By the time you're ready to retire, you should be entirely in FDIC-insured CDs and the like. If your retirement plan is contingent on 6% annually you're asking for trouble, and you're probably going to get it if you live long enough.

One thing that worries me, and I'd love to hear other people's opinions, is that as baby boomers retire they will be removing their retirements from the stock market. Whether they move their money to other non-stock investments or whatever. But don't you think the transfer of money out of stock-related investments by such a large percentage of people is going to cause some problems for those of us who still have money in stocks in the market?

The author also seems to forget about dividends. If the market doesn't move at all in a period of time, it doesn't mean the companies I've invested in won't pay any dividends.

It is important to buy companies based on their fundamentals.

I think after you get fuck you money, your goal should be to create a lifestyle business. Something that can more or less run on autopilot and generate money for you to live on.

If you are a web guy, you can create some software product(or pay someone to build one for you). Then charge $50 a month...and you only need to make 6 sales a day(via adwords) to make $100K/yr.

If you are not...you can buy a franchise...i.e. McDonalds franchises make something like 1-2 million a year. And you as an owner don't need to do anything...just hire a good manager...and it'll more or less run on autopilot(from your perspective)

If you can make something that makes you $100k/yr why wait until you have already made your fuck you money?

because a lot of these niche $100K/yr products...hit the ceiling at 150-200K. So you have no security like you do when you have 5-6 million in the bank. Anything can happen...Google might slap your adwords account, someone might release a competing product etc.

And starting a lifestyle business with FU money, means that you can tough it out as it grows from 1 sale every other day, to 1-2-3-4-5-6 sales a day.

If you can build a $100K/year product, why not do that, and then use that money as your runway while you build your five million dollar product?

building a company is /much/ easier if you don't have to worry about where rent is coming from three months from now.

because at that point it's very easy to get complacent...and building up to $100K for a niche business still takes time and money.

personally, I'd rather try to run a starup while fighting complacency than while either trying to wrangle investors or working a dayjob. I think complacency would be a lot less distracting.

Just FYI: It's actually very hard to get a McDonalds Franchise these days. McDonalds controls where their restaurants can be built and how far they have to be from other restaurants. Plus McDonalds Corp. makes most of its money of real estate so the company has to be able to acquire land to sell to you. When there is land available in the U.S. there's usually a bidding war between existing franchisees making it hard for an individual to get a foot hold.

Plus you have to sign up for a 20 year term or face a steep termination fee (I heard it was in the arena of $100 Million).

I'm not sure it goes to your point I just thought it might give perspective on how even easy money isn't all that easy to get.

> And you as an owner don't need to do anything...just hire a good manager...and it'll more or less run on autopilot(from your perspective)

Actually, it won't.

Good managers are very expensive and they leave to make their own FU money. Okay managers require constant supervision.

And you as an owner don't need to do anything...just hire a good manager...and it'll more or less run on autopilot(from your perspective)

This is probably true for many fast-food franchises but not McDonald's. Franchise owners a called "Owner/Operators" they are expected to work in their restaurants. McDonald's does not sell franchises to "Owner/Investors".

As an Owner/Operator you will go through "Hamburger University" in Oak Brook and learn how to make every product the restaurant sells. You will learn how to project sales, schedule employees and order product. You will learn how to manage labor and food cost, and how to manage your management team. You will spend some time working ordinary crew jobs and shift manager jobs at a restaurant.

Then, once you get your restaurant, you will have to be an active "chief executive" of the management team. You will have to recruit and hire trustworthy store managers... they are the ones who will be running your restaurant day to day and if they are not good at it you will not make any money or worse they will be stealing from you.

It is definitely NOT a passive investment.

>I think after you get fuck you money, your goal should be to create a lifestyle business. Something that can more or less run on autopilot and generate money for you to live on.

my god, man, if you are capable of building a business that pays you a good salary without doing much any work, why not do so /before/ you get f-ck you money? I mean, at that point, you'd have a lot of time to pursue whatever startup ideas that might get you f-ck you money.

Well, there must be some correlation between money and influence. If Paul Graham is right, then the guy who has $5M at 30 by virtue of a startup exit has created enough value to be compensated as such. Which of course, leads to influence.

FYM in it's old-world sense (retirement) is probably getting more obsolete anyway. As Tim Ferriss put it, "The goal isn't to work less. It is to live more."

I come to this thread late but couple points:

1. Low return on money. That's because money itself worth more now; the Fed has destroyed whole bunch money via credit tightening. We have gone through an asset deflation phrase and the money you have can buy more assets now. It's ok to have low return on money for now.

2. Asset allocation. Should not just put your FU money in stocks or Treasury. Read up on asset allocation. Have better downfall protection and better return.

3. 4% withdrawal rate. Studies and simulations have found that annual 4% withdrawal rate of a portfolio can make it last for very long time adjusted for inflation. 4% of 2M is 80K, which can provide a nice living.

4. Count net worth, not just cash. That 80K makes a big difference with a paid-for house.

5. Don't discount Social Security/Medicare/IRA/401K/Pension. The discussion of couple millions of PRESENT day often ignores the age restricted retirement funds. Those can be substantial.

What about dividend paying stocks? Good companies are usually very reluctant to cut dividends even in bad times and with stock prices suppressed, this should lead to higher dividend yields. Probably not a total solution but should be looked at.

In theory, shouldn't all stocks be dividend paying? If your stock doesn't pay dividends, what makes it any different from baseball cards as an investment?

In theory yes, that's essentially the dividend discount model of stock value.

But is it correct? I mean, AAPL is priced sky-high along with Google, and it apparently last paid out any dividends 15 years ago (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=AAPL). What on earth dividends are people expecting in the future to push the share so high, especially considering that Apple has said nothing whatsoever about any planned dividends? (And at 9B in profit according to Wikipedia, it certainly could if it wanted to.)

It's different from baseball cards because a given baseball card can't start paying dividends if all the people who own the card have a vote and decide it should.

I used to spend a lot of time playing Railroad Tycoon 2, and in that game a good way to get rich is

1. Put all your money in to a railroad you control.

2. Grow your railroad. As your railroad grows, the value of your stock in it grows. This causes your purchasing power to rise, allowing you to borrow money to buy more stock in your railroad.

3. Eventually you're in a ton of debt, but you've also got a ton of stock in your (presumably successful) railroad. Then raise the dividend paid by your railroad's shares and rake it in.

The problem with raising the dividend paid by your shares early on is that it will give your railroad less capital to expand with. So you only want to execute step 3 when your railroad is making more money than you know what to do with.

I think there's a good argument to be made that companies like Google know what to do with the money they're making.

"I think there's a good argument to be made that companies like Google know what to do with the money they're making."

There's a good argument that a company like Microsoft doesn't anymore, which is why they were pretty much forced to pay out a big dividend a few years back. Just to give an example at the opposite end of the corporate life cycle.

Just found this article suggesting it's still an issue:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-22/microsoft-may-use-c...

Dividends fell by about 30% in the recession: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=SPY&a=00&b=29&c=...

But yeah, I do think that would be the generally best bet with $5 million. I would most of it in a dividend paying ETF or mutual fund, like DVY or Vanguard Utilties. These funs will pay 4% in dividends, plus, the dividend payout will generally rise at nearly the same rate as income inflation. That's a much, much better deal than CD's which pay 2% a year with no inflation increase.

maybe it safer strategy not to think of retirement at all and try to find what really motivates/fulfills you. If you get good at it whatever it is, there will always be a way to make money with it.

Slightly myopic given that we're still very much in a recession, but good points nonetheless.

I would have to disagree, though, because fame and influence fades. You still have to work hard to maintain it.

this may be good advice for people who have the potential to earn fu money. the corollary to average people seems to be that it's no longer possible to retire.

how did we go from an age in which average people could hope to retire, to one in which someone with 5M needs to worry?

A couple of folks are tossing in that you can get 2-4% returns nowadays. Here's the historical rate of inflation (scroll down for the recent years):

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-in...

Looks like about 2-4%. :-(

If we get deflation, as many people are predicting, then you can get several percent "interest" just by holding your money in cash. That's built into the interest rate expectations for a lot of securities right now. You wouldn't see these near-zero interest rates unless people were expecting the dollar itself to become more valuable in the near future.

The Fed, with all of the T-bills out there, will never allow deflation. It's not in the government's interests.

I have a really hard time believing that there will be no investments for 30 years.

am I the only one who sees a flaw in the math here? I mean I wasn't a math major in college, but i did take financial math, and think he's forgetting a key thing called compound interest.

I can't figure out his math, either. In his second example, if you put $4M in a bank account that gets 2%, and can still save $10K a year you'll have $7.6 mil in 30 years. If you can get 8% (which I think you can, all arguments to the contrary) you will have $41M. Maybe he just means once you get the cash, you quit your job, put the money under the mattress and spend it all?

yeah, he ignores the money growing on its own.

$5M is definitely not retirement money if you're only 30 years old. I figured at that age you'd need about $15M, and even at that you'd need to make sure you invest it properly to at least keep up with inflation.

I've always thought that FYM and retirement money are two different concepts. If I had FYM, I can quit my job. I would still be looking for what's next, but I can take my time. (Usual disclaimers apply re: deadlines)

I'd have no problem extracting 250,000 in annual income from 5 million, after it's been invested for a year. Whether or not that's enough t decide to go walkabout depends on the person.

What would your strategy be to get that 5%?

Tax free municipal bonds.

Come back and tell me about dumping all your money into tax-free municipal bonds in two years.

<neutral question> What is the reasoning behind your comment?

See btilly's comment that mentions them. There is a lot of chatter about bankruptcy. It's still just chatter, with a small number of exceptions. Let us all hope it stays that way.

Mind you, I'm not guaranteeing they'll all go away, but it won't take very many bankruptcies for your returns to go below inflation. (Or worse.)

I might invest in specific municipalities, if that's possible for a mere mortal investor, but I wouldn't think it's necessarily a safer assert class than anything else right now.

Here's one recent link (far from the only long-form article I've read; reminds me of some of the articles I read before the tech and housing bubbles burst):

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_municipal-bonds.html

$5M is surely retirement money at 30. At benchmark inflation that is $1.5M when you are 90 years old.

If you can earn just 1% a year (in real terms) on that cash, you'll be fine. (At $100k annual expenses, you'll drop 1% per year. That'll still last a lifetime.)

ok, thats all nice, but if author is so much worried about his financial perspectives in US, he should look at other markets. Hey in Asia, even somewhere Europe after some research you can easily find that 6-8% safe investment opportunities. So retirement with 2M is still no problem if you are willing to open your eyes, and see that there is something going on outside US.

Personally, I'm not at all motivated by money so long as I can pay the bills and have some modest standard of living. If I had been interested in accumulating money I would have taken a quite different career path.

FU money can be just enough to buy a patch of land and build one of these:

http://earthship.com/

Oh yes, you shouldn't sit on your ass after banking a wad of cash and expect to live forever, not doing a thing.

But neither should you rely on influence and credibility, because those things still imply gatekeepers. You have to have influence and credibility... to convince somebody else.

Why not just rely on yourself? Why not foster the ability to make money in any circumstance?

I cashed out my IRA because, so far, the money I've put into my SaaS has paid back itself 1000%, not 10%.

Based on that, and my other efforts/products, I know I could easily earn 7K euros a month just by working a few days. Training is lucrative. My information products are lucrative. I'm about to open my "your first product" launch class again - last time it made $25k (as I was building it!), this time I aim to double that. Shouldn't be too hard.

Sometimes I sit back and think about it, and I can't help but laugh (in a nervous way), that I can earn more in a few weeks than one of my parents' yearly salaries from when I was a kid.

Now, back to my influence/credibilty/gatekeepers argument - the perceptive HNer will point out that I am using my credibility to bring in customers. That's true, at a few hundred bucks a pop -- which is a far cry from hoping somebody will hire you for a sweet job (which means, of course, that you have to work that job), and miles away from trying to use your credibility to get millions in investment.

My way is very do-able for a normal person, the other is incredibly hard and requires much luck in addition to a full-out effort.

A very easy solution to this: Go live in a cheaper country. Go now, before the heavily debted countries lock down money transfers (In which case, buy gold/silver)

Off-topic but don't you think that the owners of that debt have a slightly vested interest in avoiding complete collapse/keeping the system going, even if it is barely functional to get some of their ongoing interest payments?

Or will the environment rapidly devolve to: http://ferfal.blogspot.com/

I agree, but just like a bubble crash, when one major party loses confidence and sells his stake, all the other parties panic and sells as well.

How does crazy paranoid stuff get up-voted here? Very Sad.

Cheaper countries can be fun, but there's lots of downsides as well. If you are asocial, it could be your dream to live there. I'll always want a vacation there, but not to live there.

Berlin is pretty social ;)

I concur. Not known for being super cheap I'd imagine though.

I have a feeling you've never traveled to other countries. How sad.

Lol. I'd upload my passport but that's silly. Europe is not exactly cheap.

Europe includes such countries as Iceland, Ukraine and Romania

Meta: I say something else. You retort something unrelated to your absurd initial declaration about the soon to disappear money order (I assume that wire transfers will have to go to).

This level: I'm done.

ffs man, I'm with you on the US not being the place to be at the moment but Romania??? If you're going to call someone out for not being traveled you should at least avoid listing places you clearly haven't been to yourself (if you have been there and still recommend it then you have some pretty low standards. Don't expect anyone else to adopt them on purpose).

Actually it is. During the cold war it was split between East and West, and when it got reunited there was a lot of cheap condos, stores, etc. in the East, and lots of entrepreneurial Germans in the West.

The combination is a cheap city full of life. If you have the chance you should definitely go check it out.

Cool, thanks for the tip. I definitely want to do a German beer tour at some point.

Just out of curiosity, how cheap would you say it is? Any crime issues?

Not sure where you are getting your information from. Travel isn't cheap, food isn't cheap, and rent isn't cheap, if you want to live anywhere near town.

Yes, great place to live or visit, full of life, great people, but not cheap.

Maybe you want to look further east.

I'm from Copenhagen, a rather expensive city, so maybe I'm biased.

I have found Germany to be one of the most expensive places in Europe, certainly much more expensive than the US. It seems the further south you head, and the further east you head, Europe gets cheaper, with a few exceptions.

Curious to know what is cheaper in Berlin compared with Copenhagen, I am surprised there is much difference. Did not find much difference in Denmark when I passed through, and spent quite a bit of time in Stockholm, avoided light beers. Did not find much that was more expensive.

The Nordic countries are quite a bit more expensive than Germany (and have worse bread). Which stems from the slightly lower VAT in Germany, less regulations and taxes on the sale of alcoholic beverages and the fact that Germany has Aldi, Lidl, Penny, Plus, Netto, etc. (all of them competing discount stores).

Median income also tend to be less in Germany than in Nordic states, and welfare safety net less extensive. All adds up to cost of living.

It is a bit paranoid, but then again, you've never been in a country that locks down money transfers, right? You still believe you can emigrate anywhere.

It's currently unlikely, but I suspect the U.S. could implement that much faster than you think if it keeps going downhill. It already implemented a ban on holding gold in the past, for example ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 in place until 1974 ). It's not the scenario I envision, but thinking "The U.S. would never do that!" is naive.

By the way, I believe the original post had a reasonable suggestion... you could live like a king for your lifetime in, say, Uruguay or Costa Rica with 5 million (and those are reasonably safe countries). Yes, emigrating is a quite hard decision, but it is a possibility.

Keep in mind that 1974 was 36 years ago. I am working with a very different model of the world than you are I think. Capital controls exist in the world and some are quite harsh. However, no serious person is even close to advocating them (for wealth nations like the US). What problem do you imagine they would solve?

I have a counter solution: go to a more expensive country to live. Things will cost more but the pay will be higher. It's probably going to have a lot of other advantages as well.

You never want to be in a race to the bottom.

IMO Fuck you money is not just when you have enough for a life of mindless consumption, but enough for when you can do the things that you really really want to do.

eg save the world from malaria, build that skyscraper with your face on it, start an iron and blood revolution (there are a few governments that I would want to overthrow).

More like 'fuck other people over" money.

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