How to get rich without getting lucky
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- Earn as much as you can from your own work. Take a 2nd job, change to a higher paying job, ask for more responsibility and a raise at your current job, go back to school for a more lucrative degree, ...
- Spend much less than you earn. Economize, share an apartment, buy an inexpensive car, shop at Trader Joe's and Costco, ....
- Learn how to invest. This is really important. The most deliberate and highest probability of ultimate success is likely mutual funds. Individual stocks can goose it, but should only a small portion of your wealth, as they start to bring a luck factor into the mix ...
- Protect your investments. Health insurance is really a must in the US, might be a must elsewhere. Work for a company that offers health insurance. Car insurance is a must. Other insurance is probably wise.
- Be patient. The compounding effect of investing takes a long time, but once it gets rolling, it's pretty much unstoppable.
Not to mention, your life is going to be pretty miserable if you're working two jobs and spending a lot of effort on living frugal. There's just something off-putting about the thought of spending decades living frugally and working yourself to the bone so you can retire and finally have fun.
The exemplar folks who advocate doing this, a'la Mr. Money Mustache, are real pieces of work too. They tend to hide the fact that they went into the process with an inheritance to fund their their nest egg and are working nearly full time in their "retirement" as paid frugal advocates.
I think there needs to be a balance. The trend of working crazy hours to save as much as you can, living overly frugal, etc. will not always lead to happiness or fulfillment. I like to think of it as how can I optimize my time and finances for "life" rather than retirement. That doesn't mean I don't have a nest egg, it just means that not everything is going into that nest egg.
This speaks to a common fallacy: the notion that happiness is a permanent achievement. Many people believe that you work hard so eventually you can achieve a position where you live "happily ever after". That's however not how the brain works. Happiness is a reward mechanism for effort bearing fruit. Once you stop doing things to become happy, eventually the happiness goes away because the brain adapts to its situation (this also works in reverse, you can get used to surprisingly horrible situations). The trick to being happy all the time is doing new things that make you happy all the time.
And as far as I know, he and his wife earned their money in tech jobs. The math is believable: let's say your household makes $130,000 a year (which I haven't done), and lives on $30,000 a year (which I've done... not fully voluntarily mind you but it wasn't hell on Earth either). You're saving $100,000 a year. In about 10 years you're a millionaire and could continue living on $30,000 forever without working. (Assuming 3% interest, which is doable without much investing effort, luck or expertise.) That's financial independence. Keep working at that point, and you only improve your lot. You can earn $10,000 a year as a full-time musician and live on $40,000. Or stay in tech and put 100% of your salary into principal while interest or dividends pay your living expenses.
Increase your monetary needs, i.e. your financial dependence, and it takes longer. Which is what most people do.
Unless you meant 130k after tax (which is doable today for many engineers).
Much quicker than that if you invest it at 7% (average real return on the S&P 500).
Agreed, but try not to be the person who refuses to ever go out because you're too focused on being frugal. A few times here and there won't really hurt you in the long run (and having fun with friends is important and worth the money), but making it a habit every night will. Just avoid the latter.
> Frugal is buying an old reliable honda/toyota for $3,000 vs picking up a $40,000 entry level benz.
Definitely agree. Americans in particular tend to buy way more car than they need, and the difference in price is on an order of magnitude that really does matter in the long run for many of us (i.e. if you invest that marginal $20k, $50k, or $100k and wait 10-30 years instead of buying a quickly depreciating fancy car).
https://www.wired.com/2017/02/watch-terrifyingly-bad-car-saf...
There's a whole range there. You don't have to live on ramen. But you can be really aggressive about insurance premiums, utility bills, etc. You can learn home & auto repair & maintenance. You can make major life structure choices (Can your family live with one car?). These all can make a huge impact on your finances, and don't hurt the way perpetually living like a college student does.
Counterpoint: Your chances of dying before "making it big" and retiring are somewhere in the 1-in-10 range.
If this is the "get rich without getting particularly lucky" advice, perhaps we should assume it's also the "get rich without getting particularly unlucky" advice. There's an endless list of terribly unlucky things that would ruin just about anyone, but don't generally bear planning for.
As someone who knows a lot about car and motorcycle maintenance, repair, and modification, this is not good advice, and I see it all over.
You're far better off simply buying a new, cheap compact and taking it to Walmart for oil changes. You will come out far ahead of the person who invests money in tools and space, and time into learning how to do something that is so easily outsourced.
The opportunity cost of maintenance is high. Don't get involved unless it's going to be a hobby that brings you satisfaction in and of itself.
Sure, learn some very basics so you don't get blatantly ripped off by unscrupulous shops (bringing you a filthy air filter that doesn't even fit your car is one example), but don't invest much time or energy.
It's really funny to read that. It's probably very american to think 2 cars per family is the norm. I think if I group the 10 adults I see the most on average, we own 2 cars together. And we are all between 30 and 55.
Whoah, do you have evidence of this? I mean, yeah, some people have certain advantages, but if they are being paid for advocacy and if it's a trust-fund baby thing that would be really interesting.
On balance though, I'm not really opposed to a message to live frugally. We live in a culture that continuously bombards us with materialistic advertising, and this doesn't really lead to long-time happiness. I'm skeptical that being frugal implies some kind of deprivation or overwork. In fact if you're frugal then theoretically you can afford to work less.
As for the paid advocacy, have a look at their financials. You'll see a non-trivial amount of income from advertising on the website and speaking.
EDIT: The house wasn't inherited - he got it from a failed house building business. It's unclear if the costs of building came out of the business funds or his own funds.
> I'm skeptical that being frugal implies some kind of deprivation or overwork.
OP was advocating working multiple jobs and living frugally.
Frugal living are habits that accumulate gradually, as are any other habits one aims to develop. Eventually you don't have to think about them, things converge naturally. Some people might enjoy working two jobs, because everything syncs together that way.
My parents said this quite a bit.
Of course, my dad did blue collar labor for an inflation-adjusted $30 per hour (the same position today pays around $11 an hour), plus overtime and a pension. My mom was a part time waitress to pay her way through 4 years of college.
It was surprising how quickly they stopped saying that when they looked at the cost of a new house because they had to move. Or when they looked at what it would cost to put their granddaughter through the same college my mom went to.
I'm so glad I went to school 15 years ago. Students today are totally screwed.
This belief could cost you a lot of money.
I'd like to see how you came to this conclusion.
Painting with broad strokes, one can retire after working in tech for 15-25 years. Start at 25 and they are done by 50. Current death rates for dying between 25 and 50 are less than 0.7% [0]; that's not even correcting for the fact that the wealthy likely have a reduced mortality rate [1].
[0] - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db293.htm#age_s...
[1] - https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/cutler/files/jsc160006_01....
to get the probability of dying before 50 you have to look at the total number of deaths/pear, distributed by age: https://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/91-209-x/2013001/article/11867...
the area under the curve for 0->50 looks about 1/10 of the overall, so I'd say the op is about right.
Start at say 25 and that's going to give you a much better than 1:10 chance of being able to very comfortably retire someplace cheap. If nothing else 1 year of work = 1.5 years not working, but at 4% return (over inflation) and 15% investment taxes you can retire in 15 years.
If you’re not making enough, and having financial flexibility is important to you, then considering a career change is in order. You might need to go down before you go up. Invest in yourself through education and experience and leverage that to get into a higher paying path (see more on this here: https://ramenretirement.com/2018/04/30/wealth/)
Once you have some real savings and wealth, then it’s all about investing it properly to generate inflation protected passive income (IPPI). I prefer real estate for this (see here for more on RE investing: https://ramenretirement.com/2018/03/18/ultimate-guide-to-rea...). I don’t think enough people consider alternative investments. Putting all your eggs in public markets is a low cash flow proposition, along with lower long term returns (see how returns compare here: https://ramenretirement.com/2018/03/18/ultimate-guide-to-rea...). If you have excess savings, you don’t need all that liquidity and should consider less liquid investments that might have higher returns: https://ramenretirement.com/2018/02/23/youre-too-liquid/
Lastly, people talk about the 4% rule, but that’s bullshit for a whole host of reasons: https://ramenretirement.com/2018/01/21/4-percent-rule/
Save money. Build wealth. Invest it wisely, considering alternatives other than the stock market. That’s the path. Simple, but not necessarily easy.
Agreed. A few follow-up points:
1. Frugality isn't a binary state. There's a balance to be struck. Some people really do waste money on frivolous things that don't actually bring them much real satisfaction, and in that sense being more frugal is definitely worth it. But once you've eliminated most of the excessive spending habits, the payoff of frugality really starts to drop aggressively as you cut out more and more (diminishing returns). Skipping your $4 latte isn't really gonna change the game for you if you're trying to become Bill Gates.
2. Frugality to me is kind of the "lowest common denomitator" of financial strategies, which is why so many "experts"/"gurus" tend to preach it. "Spend less than you earn" is a dead-simple concept and worthy advice to a certain extent. But trying to increase wealth more and more by cutting out less and less is not really a great long-term strategy, especially if you're interested in achieving significant gains in wealth. It's arguably much more effective to invest time and energy into things that will increase your earning potential over time rather than fretting about small guilty pleasures or trying to squeeze a couple more basis points of return out of your portfolio of mutual funds. Things like: gaining a valuable skill that's in-demand; honing and improving those skills over time; taking on leadership/management responsibilities; starting a business; meeting and forming relationships with people who are smart & successful or at least aspiring to be; etc.
See also: https://xkcd.com/947/
Also, after being a small time landlord for a while, I've decided the true magic of interest is, over those ten years you didn't have to lift a finger. If you've got money to park while the rest of your life is chaos, interest is the totally-hands-free option, and I am coming to see that as magical.
If you're having $4 lattes once a week, they're worthless. If you have a $100 dinner twice a year... man, those are nice.
I've been hearing that forever. Yet still the market goes up an average of 7% per year after inflation.
> Any failure in your investment strategy
You'd still be doing well with a diversified portfolio even living through the 2000 and 2008 crashes. The 100% guarantee of failure is to do nothing.
My pay + company benefit == $650/month to Anthem.
I still end up paying $5000 for all pre-pregnancy costs out of pocket and the baby isn’t even here yet.
In Australia it would be 10% of that, purely because they got their shit together a long time ago.
Why? The 80/20 Rule ("Medical Loss Ratio" rule).
> The 80/20 Rule generally requires insurance companies to spend at least 80% of the money they take in from premiums on health care costs and quality improvement activities. The other 20% can go to administrative, overhead, and marketing costs.
Meaning insurance company executive wages can only come out of 20% of your premium, so if the CEO wants that pay increase they have to increase overall healthcare expenditure, premiums, and by extension their 20% cut.
While the 80/20 rule was a fantastic idea on paper, it changed insurance company's incentives in such a way so that premium increases are good for them.
You might be thinking "but in a competitive landscape people would just switch!" but there's nothing competitive about health insurance, people cannot even pick their own (their employer does) and most employers only offer two of the larger ones from that state.
Insurers do actively try to reduce healthcare costs but in many cases they are at the mercy of providers
All checkups + scans pre-birth were free.
It would have cost money only if we decided to go for a private obstetrician, I think it’s the same in Australia.
So if it’s one of the 90% of births with no complications, going for the free public option just makes sense.
Frugality (minimizing expenses) is the easiest strategy to execute and it covers the broadest range of individual situations.
I know some engineers that take the approach of aggressively maximizing income, which requires a different kind of investment/sacrifice, allowing them to achieve their goals without hyper-optimizing expenses or rate of return. I would make the observation that this strategy tends to take a human toll, so not for everyone.
The rarest strategy in the wild, because it is the most technical to execute, is hyper-optimizing rate of return. I only know a couple examples of this, including one who went from -$50k (debt with no assets) to financial independence in ten years (and handily beat the S&P500 every single year) on a modest engineer's salary. This requires a deep investment in understanding a foreign domain almost no one is familiar with and achieving a degree of mastery. It has the highest payoff long-term but it also requires the most diligence and effort upfront. Making this work requires an unusual kind of person.
Being frugal and investing in index funds is definitely the path of least resistance for many people, but many people (or their partners!) do not want to live a hyper-frugal lifestyle. Fortunately, there are other options available with their own set of tradeoffs and engineers are well-positioned to take advantage of them.
6 months of living expenses in liquid cash (savings accounts, rotating CD ladder, money-market funds, etc.).
Any money that you'll need in the next 5 years in low-risk, non-volatile investments (eg. bonds, T-bills). This usually applies to retirees, but also to folks like entrepreneurs or commission salespeople that have unsteady incomes.
Only invest in real-estate, individual stocks, crypto, precious metals, foreign currencies, collectibles, etc. if you know what you're doing. If it's not your full-time job (eg. a venture capitalist or real estate developer), no more than 10% of your net worth in these investments.
Put the rest into broad-based stock index funds.
1: http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/572/078/d6d...
Looking at the math, it's not difficult to find a mainstream mutual fund like FCNTX that has been pretty big for a long time. Since 1993, 25 years ago and encompassing both the dot com bust and the sub-prime catastrophe, it has returned, on an annualized basis, around 9%. I use that example because it's a pretty mainstream fund that has been highly rated by Morningstar most of those years, so it isn't hard to identify it as a fairly safe place to get excellent returns. I've been in it for most of those 25 years and when I first chose it, I was for sure a novice at investing. Note that today, it is only one of several funds in multiple sectors that I hold, I've diversified over time.
There really is no way to get rich quickly that does not involve a large dose of luck. The <30 multi-millionaires in Silicon Valley tilted the odds in their favor via a variety of means, but I'd guess that for every example of those people, you'd find dozens who moved to the area, worked their asses off in startups for a few years and then crashed and either settled for a regular job or moved elsewhere.
I'm interested in this guy's[0][1] approach to take most of the downside risk out of recessions/bear markets/crashes compared to buy-and-hold. Basically, start with a diversified portfolio, and when any of them closes below their monthly 12mo moving average, sell it and buy treasuries.
I'm sure there are thousands of more sophisticated models out there, but the nice thing about this is its simplicity - minimal management, just rebalance once a month according to a single rule and forget about it. Looks like it works well, backtested against lots of historical market data sets.
[0] http://michaelritger.com/2017/10/19/tactical-asset-allocatio... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGnNGuo5ywg
Edit: To add to this instead of using the mutual funds as a store value and being scared of holding stocks, you can buy puts as protection on your stock. Or you can buy spreads on stocks you like.
Huh? Was that trying to say save money at the supermarket? Because those are two stores I don't associate with saving money, they're stores that offer premium products at reasonable prices, but they aren't going to compete with actual discount retailers.
It is just really odd examples/usage in that context...
I used those examples as a versus to the daily $7 Starbucks breakfast that many young folks seem to go for.
- Become a hermit
Saving money was so easy before I had kids. Once you have kids you need a car big enough to transport them. You need a house big enough to hold them. The missus insists that just going camping isn't really a vacation and they need to see some sights (real travel). And travel with kids isn't cheap. You gotta start getting the family insurance plans and the million little school fees and your bigger house has more stuff to break in it and the kids break stuff... Worst of all you multiply your chances of having some big medical problem--the death knell for any frugal living plan--the more people you have to care for.
Also, Costco doesn't really save you that much money unless you were the kind of person who always bought the top-of-the-line premium whatever. For people who typically only buy the base model widget the price is pretty similar or slightly more expensive typically.
After certain age family is the biggest and maybe the only close friend.
Social ties are important and usually healthy. Having kids and family can also be very motivating. After all, why do we live?
Small nitpick: You can always buy your own insurance. Obamacare made it harder to buy good high-deductible plans for yourself but even so, you can get your own directly. Don't go without health insurance, especially catastrophic coverage, unless rent and food are all you can afford.
I think the most valuable advice in getting rich is from people who are moderately rich.
Advice from people who aren’t rich is stupid.
Advice from billionaires seems irrelevant because their circumstances are so exceptional.
How did the friend of a friend make $20million ... there’s an interesting question.
I could give you advice on how to not get rich.... just make what are in hindsight a constant flow of wrong decisions about things that could have led to financial gain. I’m an expert at that.
So he went from being not-rich 10 years ago, to being very rich now due to his success with AngelList and related investments.
I think the advice he shares in this post is consistent with how he's built his own success. Both Naval and his brother, Kamal, have long been writing and speaking about concepts like stoicism, mindfulness and other techniques for developing good judgement and emotional health, so it's likely these ideas were imparted via their family and have influenced their thinking for a long time.
[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/02/06/naval-ravikant-of-ang...
Edit: https://angel.co/naval
Investor in Uber, Twitter, Postmates, Yammer, and about 60 others. Wouldn’t surprise me if that’s a fraction of the total. Not to mention cofounding AngelList. I doubt he’s scraping by :)
http://nautil.us/blog/-the-key-to-good-luck-is-an-open-mind
And I got the book mentioned in the article - The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman.
One of the exercises in the book is to think over how things have unfolded in your life - what would have happened if you took left inside of right when you met your partner or got a great job? And when I thought it over, there has been some element of luck involved. At my first job I wasn't supposed to be there for an interview but went along with a roommate as I had nothing better to do.
Now I believe sure you can work hard and do most of the work in Naval's list but all of it will ensure you are lucky when you run into one of the long term people in a long term industry. And everything will fall in place.
Meeting driven, creative and important people is a huge multiplier for luck. It, perhaps more than anything I've done, has changed my life for the better.
I had a solid job in Mobile, AL working for an ad agency. Although, it felt isolating from the tech world. To combat that I started a publication interviewing designers and entrepreneurs just to stay plugged into the community.
So much good has come from a couple years and dozens of interviews. I met a co-founder, was paid to host a similar podcast and have made a ton of friends around the world. Not to mention, I might not be working as a designer had I never started doing interviews.
Give yourself opportunities to be lucky.
> So much good has come from a couple years and dozens of interviews. I met a co-founder, was paid to host a similar podcast and have made a ton of friends around the world. Not to mention, I might not be working as a designer had I never started doing interviews.
This is a really cool idea that makes perfect sense. It's basically a way to get plugged into an ecosystem of effective and interesting people. And everyone loves to talk about themselves, so I'm guessing it wasn't too difficult to find interviewees (at least once you got past the first barrier of being a publication with no history).
How did you get the idea? Did you have any relevant experience prior to starting the interviews and then making a publication out of it?
What do you think might be some less intensive alternatives? Starting a publication is not for everyone.
I was bored. There were only a handful of designers and no tech people in Mobile. I was (and still am) a big fan of Andrew Warner and Mixergy. I was listening to a show and had this epiphany—what's stopping me from doing something similar?
Nothing.
Sure I couldn't go out and interview Bill Gates. But I had friends that were working on interesting things and started with them. I worked in various editor positions for the school paper in college and had an interest in niche publications. That was about all the prior experience I had.
As for an alternative:
—Make a list of people that you're genuinely interested in. It's helpful if they are in an industry you want to be in.
—Come up with a list of questions you'd like to ask them.
—Find their Twitter handles or email addresses.
—If they live in your city send them a tweet or email saying why you admire them, and ask to buy them a coffee. If not, see if they'd be open to a 15-30-minute call.
—Follow-up with them occasionally.
I have a friend who is about a year into her career as an occupational therapist. Recently she was asking questions about how she could get ahead. The above is what I recommended. I think it's a valuable exercise regardless of career.
You can make a living as an english teacher and translator in A LOT of places.
For the same reasons people flee into the US from all over the world.
You still have things pretty well. Sure they are getting worse, and it's worth fighting that process, but fleeing is not a great option.
- Student debt
- Healthcare
- Housing
- ?Determination + Opportunity = Luck
In short, you take frequent calculated risks when the downside of failure is low. I think a similar strategy can be very effective in life.
and i haven’t really played poker in the past 12 years.
If you're playing against 9 other skilled players, money will mostly move around the table, and the only winner will end up being the casino due to rake.
The easiest way to increase profitability in poker is to play against people significantly worse than you are. Not unlike life, where the biggest factor of success is being born in the right country to the right parents.
If you can ignore the constant “only rich people are meaningful human beings” message that is blared 24/7 from western culture, you might find that it’s easier to just go after what you want, directly.
- The ability to secure the best medical care for yourself and your family in a country where this takes money to do.
- The ability to walk away from abusive employment relationships without a second thought or any stress.
- The ability to engage in high-level economic actions, the kind that aren't designed for your failure. (Buying a few franchises vs. buying a payday loan)
- The ability to, fundamentally, own yourself instead of being forced to act according to the interests of people with the money to pay you. Maybe you'll use that time to act in the interests of people who can't pay you.
> The ability to secure the best medical care for yourself and your family in a country where this takes money to do.
I can only speak to the US but this is much more an insurance issue than a wealth issue. When I made $30k a year I had a ~$75k surgery and it cost me about $1200 all in, including follow-up copays with the surgeon, because I had good insurance through my employer. I probably had $15k in credit card debt at the time and rented a $400/mo room in someone else's house - certainly not rich by any stretch.
> The ability to walk away from abusive employment relationships without a second thought or any stress.
This is all about skills, not wealth. Most folks on HN could leave their job today and walk into something making 95-120% of their current salary without much issue.
> The ability to engage in high-level economic actions, the kind that aren't designed for your failure. (Buying a few franchises vs. buying a payday loan)
You don't need to be rich to get a franchise loan.
> The ability to, fundamentally, own yourself instead of being forced to act according to the interests of people with the money to pay you.
This is so esoteric it's hard to even know what you're trying to say here. I'm sure you could find plenty of people with $10+ million net worths who feel beholden to act a certain way in the interests of certain people.
Insurance is just to cover not dying. Being rich makes it a comfortable experience.
Yup, I believe that's their point. If you realize the reason you want to be rich can be had for less cost than actually becoming rich, you can save yourself a lot of time and stress.
Anecdotally, I cut my salary by 60% this year to directly pursue what I wanted, instead of saving to do it years later. I suppose I may regret it some day, but at this point I'm confident it was the right choice.
I think with OP is trying to say is that more money means more leverage – not in the credit sense – to only feel beholden to people that have interests that align with yours (family, peers, mentors) and less with those that don’t (boss, managers or people who know how to manipulate your behaviour by using lack of money as a tool).
However, you only get this peace of mind without being rich thanks to Obamacare (whose days may be numbered...). Before, you had to be rich to self-insure against the following events:
- What if you lose your job? It could take you longer to find one again than whatever Cobra covers, or a pre-existing condition could make individual insurance unaffordable.
- What if your insurance is not as good as you thought, and you hit a lifetime cap?
- What if the insurance company managed to conjure up a pre-existing condition to escape their obligations?
This isn't rich. Rich is the ability to direct people to research life extension and disease prevention. It's to be able to have access to the newest techniques and best doctor, regardless of world location.
It's the ability to have a sick child with 24/7 doctors and only worry about the child.
Rich is the ability to buy an island and create a clone army of yourself, using that army to construct the largest ai supercomputer the world has ever seen, then solving aging and disease ultimately merging with the machine, redefining and extending what it means to be human.
Err sorry wrong thread.
"I'll provide X" needs to be immediately though about on the terms that it will cost the planet (and everyone living in it) Y.
This is not exactly what you posted, but related: I'm not an environmental nut, I just think that this 'we create wealth' discourse more often than not ignores the fact that we're actually just borrowing quality of life from people in the future. They get to deal with bad water, worse weather, natural disasters, droughts, terrible air quality, etc. while we 'provide valuable insights to customer relations', 'maintain a pseudonymous decentralized currency' or some other obviously-not-worth-it bullshit
And even then, that just lets you live there. You don't become a citizen will full benefits for five years.
But once you meet those requirements... you're probably well-off enough that it doesn't matter anymore.
But as yayana points out, none of those factors depend on being rich in well run countries. (There are alternatives to the scandinavian models with a bit less nanny state that also achieve all of those factors, but the Scandinavian countries are the most famous for letting you not care about medical care and bad employers.)
I don't think it's only Western culture that is to blame. Middle Eastern, Indian and Chinese cultures seem to have even more ingrained versions of this core assumption.
Is this sarcasm? What are you basing this on? I don't think I've ever heard anyone opine this before.
Definitely a sobering thought. How rich I really am...
Though to me living here it seems that people are still all the time complaining and demanding more and more, though we have more safety nets than about any other place on earth.
Also living in Scandinavia and I would disagree with this advice. To be dependent on the welfare system is not exactly being free and have security.
Like the Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson said: "One who is in debt is not free".
And living off of the welfare system is in my view to be indebted to society. I would not be able to shake that feeling if I was, at least not if it was voluntarily. Add to that the social stigma, even from close friends and family. This would limit your freedom of having an agency in social interactions.
Also I would not consider it secure, since the rules of the welfare system changes quite a lot over time. Which you have no way of impacting, meaning you are dependent and not free.
EDIT: Just realized the question was about "security+free time". I guess you would have free time, which is not exactly the same as being free in any meaningful sense.
EDIT: Not sure why I'm being downvoted. But for clarification I can add that I think this applies if you voluntarily would live off of the welfare system, thus leeching from the ones who really needs it. It's of course a totally different story if you are involuntarily need to get welfare to survive and live a decent life.
It might not be the popular opinion on HN, but I would hate that. Make sure to structure things properly from the beginning so that you can leave when appropriate.
2. Avoid industries with boom and bust cycles. Additionally, avoid career paths that may become irrelevant in 20-30 years.
3. Instead, learn skills that will always be useful, regardless of the state of the economy. Typically this means the trades, but be careful there - certain trades are too dependent on a good housing market. Most medical fields (like nursing) are also pretty secure. Also consider boring fields like accounting or certain governmental positions. Many government jobs are a bit more stable than the open market - you are sacrificing income for reliability.
4. For bonus points, pick a field that allows you to easily freelance. In the future, when you have enough money and want more time, you can scale your work hours down.
Then the problem is to find a way to be happy enough, you can have enough money but be unhappy.
Many people in developing countries have less than $1,000 in monetary/material assets, but have plenty of free time and a decent level of security.
They may not have the nicest house in the nicest location (a tin or concrete square box on a dirt road in a rural location with no jobs), but they are not in any immediate danger in terms of crime or disease.
Another way to create this by proxy in the US is by living in a camper van or large car or perhaps a cheap used RV and parking in one of the millions of free locations we have in the USA (BLM land, national forests, street parking, private land negotiated with a friendly owner).
But if you were wondering like, you know, where can I get a free house with no property taxes in a nice city neighborhood with free health insurance, I'm afraid it doesn't exist unless you are the child of a rich and loving parent.
As someone with fairly deep knowledge about such a country, many poorer people tend to have no security when they get older or if they get a severe accident. On average, they have little or no savings and often significant debt. Having kids is their insurance against the future, but it is like playing roulette since many/most young people do not earn enough to support their parents (or even live comfortably themselves).
If they wish to raise their kids well, while not having much education themselves, they need to work really hard, not unlike two- or three-jobbers in the States. Otherwise, their kids will have bad education and often need to work minimum wage or only a bit better as an adult.
Free time, yes but only for those who don't prepare much for the future. Security, not really.
(Check out statistics of working hours in developing vs developed countries. People in developing countries often work harder and earn less even in PPP terms.)
Even if you love your job and would do it if you were wealthy, it's still the same analogy... it's much better to go drive from A to B for fun every day you want, than to have to drive from A to B for work every day. In fact, thinking of my own situation, I like my job and I like to code in my free time... but both being burned out occasionally and just having less free time means I do much less of the latter than I want to. So instead of writing some code I find interesting I have to fix somebody's legacy systems at work... or even create something nice at work, but less interesting to me (although more commercially viable, obviously) than what I would do otherwise.
Don't believe me? See how most people treat or think about rich children, who have no accomplishments beyond being born wealthy.
Interestingly, in this same way, money can also buy happiness, through happiness coaching. :)
Kind of like this? http://mimiandeunice.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ME_353_D...
> When you're finally wealthy, you'll realize that it wasn't what you were seeking in the first place. But that's for another day.
Highly recommend the podcast. At first I cherry-picked the interviews I thought I would be interested in, but they are all good, regardless of the company or industry.
If there is market value in a skill or knowledge, the market will find the people who can be trained in it, then train them. Perhaps a talent is required to be competitive.
Corollary: Beware of fields which have artificial gatekeeping. They are in a disadvantageous market.
Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.
Borrowed from Scott Adams: It's hard to become a top 5% in a given field. It's easy to get to the top 20%. So find two synergistic fields where you can get to top 20%. This makes you a top 5% cross-disciplinary expert.
There are no get rich quick schemes. That's just someone else getting rich off you.
Often, it's other people getting rich off of the efforts of a huge mob, while making a small sliver of that mob fantastically rich.
Massage Therapy is one. This varies state to state in the US, but you have to have a license.
The majority of them simply went into finance, consulting or real estate at a young age and invested their income smartly (retrospectively!). After the first million rolls in if you're young enough compound returns will take care of the rest if you can postpone altering your life-style.
Find out where high-status or wealthy people congregate for recreation. Pay close attention to their culture, mannerisms, language, and dress. Practice emulating them until sufficiently skilled. Frequent the same places as them until some begin to recognize you and believe you are one of them. Then, make them actually enjoy your company.
In modern times, this would probably be called “networking” or “sales”.
And, then there is marriage. Another ages-old strategy. But, pretty much the same strategy as above.
The rest of the wealthy people whom I personally know worked hard at software companies before the 90s and reinvested in equities, and later, real estate. (These cases could be considered luck, though. They had to be in the right place at the right time. And, that same strategy didn’t work only a decade or so later.)
However, in the US, with the amount of divorce (alimony / child support) it seems less than optimal to view marriage as an asset.
Or am I totally off the mark?
Keep an emergency fund of 2-4 months in cash or equivalents, and invest everything else that you can when young. Don’t buy the flashy new car, the rounds of $15 drinks, don’t carry a credit card balance, etc. When the inevitable market gyrations come, do not take the money out. Don’t try to time the market.
If you don’t have much money to get started, consider real estate as a second job. The leveraged nature of that bet is one of the few ways to start from relatively little money and build a nest egg. It’s a second job, though. If you pay a PM to manage it, the PM makes more current income than you do in most cases.
In addition to jacquesm’s advice to read MMM, I also recommend the jlcollins stock series: http://jlcollinsnh.com/stock-series/
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ (the older stuff is better, he's making bank through the blog so caveat emptor)
Most of my money is in this one: https://americas.vanguard.com/institutional/mvc/detail/mf/ov...
You might want to put some into a fund that comprises bonds, though they've performed poorly (for my investments) in recent years. If you're young (<40), I would put as much, if not all, in a fund consisting of stocks.
Also: this is a long play. Leave it there.
http://www.crsp.com/resources/investments-illustrated-charts
Check out the "Big Picture 2018" pdf, especially.
Edit - there is one specific piece of advice that you can see very clearly in the chart - reinvest your dividends!!!
Recognize who is giving you boring advice(index funds), look at the risk levels in their life, and then disregard them if they don't take chances on anything.
At a young age your risky investment % should be at it's highest. The exact amount will depend on your appetite.
All those dumb poor people wasting their money on food.
What I see is that most people just appreciate the luxury today more than the savings which would enable more luxury tomorrow. I think there's nothing wrong with that. You might die any day in a traffic accident, so why bother saving all that money? Those are quite subjective decisions.
Consuming means using resources on things that immediately loose their value. If you for example buy a house, that's not consuming since the house has inherent value.
But if you yourself the newest gaming rig, the gaming rig is consuming the money. This is what Americans mean when they talk about consumer society.
Consume here means non-essential needs such as always buying latest gadget (while previous one still works), changing your car early for no good reason (less than a few years), or even buying one if you don't need one, going out often at expensive activities etc...
They were talking about the people (of whom I've been one, earlier in life), who have been privileged enough to have earned a lot of money but wasted it.
> [they] invested their income smartly (retrospectively!).
This sounds like a contradiction?
...as in "you make your own luck".
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/06/nyregion/secretary-fortun...
So they followed at least part of the list.
And you start seeing mini prisoners dilemmas in all interactions. Maybe dated, but still loads of fun: Game of Life John Conway's Winning Ways For Your Mathematical Plays
https://annarchive.com/files/Winning%20Ways%20for%20Your%20M...
I'd add probability theory to the mix. Computer Age Statistical Inference is a modern classic
You would be rich, but also poor.
Another tip here is to surround yourself with people who also love having low expenses and are adventurous and open minded.
My gf originally wanted to plan a vacation that involved a flight, hotel, and nights out on the city.
When I took her car camping on the beach 45 mins away from our job and cooked her dinner on the beach, for an all in budget (gas parking food etc) of like $27, she never looked back from her newfound hobby XDD
If you are earning wealth while you sleep, it must be coming from somewhere. Either it is illusory (eg interest, which is cancelled by inflation), or it is being generated by other people working.
"Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible."
Thus, this statement is dubious in the context of "wealth while you sleep".
Added as part of a reply:
Certain systems create value in excess of individual components you put into it. (That system may include a variety of resources that you pay market costs for, not only just your personal labor.)
The creator of the system can earn that excess value because it wouldn't otherwise exist. There is a term for this in an Intro to Economics textbook I read a long time ago, but I can't recall.
If you have created some kind of lock-in which allows you to extract rent indefinitely from some initial effort, then you have some degree of monopoly, which would be ethically questionable.
Neither are wealth crestion while you sleep.
These examples use an absolute measure of wealth, of food. Whereas, labour amplification in our society is neutralized over time: when everyone has the same tool, your labour is no longer (relatively) amplified.
The typical application of these ideas to todays society involves a moat or artificial barrier that prevents your labour from being commoditized, while you benefit from everyone else's labour, which is commoditized. Typically, "you' are an in-group, with special knowledge and powers.
If worker A makes product P, and you sell product P for $1000. And then you pay worker A $800 for the work, you make $200 profit.
Worker A did $1000 worth of work, but only got paid $800. You did $0 worth of work (with regards to actually making P) but you got $200.
Hence it is unethical.
Most investing relates to Real Estate. I've been involved and knee-deep into real estate investments for most of my life, as someone who had always wanted to "get rich" (not obsessively, but still with a strong focus). I am not rich now, but I can't really complain.
Most real estate investments are made in a silly way. Most of the people I gave advice to showed me countless mistakes on the way up. They could be way richer if only they spent a few dozen hours more on understanding investing or specifically real estate investing.
The most common mistake involves the usual "rent vs buy" dilemma. It's a hot debate every time it comes up. There are plenty of "online calculators" that are supposed to help you figure out what's the best decision. However, most people ignore important factors that go beyond the financials. I believe this is important, and in fact I wrote an extensive blog post trying to list a dozen important questions to ask yourself when you are considering whether you want to buy a house or not [0]. I don't mean to self-promote here, that blog post was the result of a few hours of work, prompted by the N-th discussion on the subject, and I believed there was a need to put something clear in writing.
Now, when someone asks me for financial advice that relates to real estate, I point them to the blog post first, and then I'm happy to discuss more if they need to.
[0]: https://medium.com/fabrica/the-rent-versus-buy-dilemma-12-im...
1. First decide what is the median lifestyle that you want to live. Then decide how much it costs.
2. Next decide what are the tasks which make you most satisfied. Consider doing those tasks that would earn you at least what is required as per above criteria. As a rule of thumb, the most satisfying tasks(ex: world tour with your spouse) will earn the least.
3. Invest, so that you could switch to doing more satisfying tasks, as your threshold of money to be earned via job will go on decreasing.
There's no point in working hard, doing a job you don't like, to earn millions/billions, when you won't be spending most of it. After all, you might get hit by a car today, and you'll never know how those millions of yours got spent by your kids.
"Go slow and you'll make it" puts a cap on success and is not very stimulating. If your idea of life is sitting in a room under a roof you nominally own watching TV with an up-with-the-Jones' car, you've already lost.
In youth while time rich invest in yourself to develop skills and experience, focusing if possible on areas others miss and cannot learn effectively through formal educational programs (eg. R&D, deep science, extensive practical knowledge in a trade, languages, travel and worldliness, etc.). Never allow rigid formal education to destroy your innate curiosity - cherish it: it is the most powerful force for learning and achievement that you have.
Be a talented generalist, not a specialist. High value and high growth opportunities do not emerge consistently from one area but rather general industries. A capacity to absorb and manage cross-disciplinary knowledge rapidly and effectively is worth ten times more than extreme specialization, 99 times out of 100. Don't over-skill in areas that age fast (eg. programming frameworks, design fads, many formal qualifications, etc.).
In young adulthood invest in a partner, they will be your strongest asset in times of need and provide strength, a sounding board and risk-hedging as an alternate actor for all future ventures. If you can, find one from another culture and continent with a different passport, perspective and language... this will give you and any children half a world more options in the future.
Take risky career path moves. Following a crowd might help you to survive, but never to thrive. Just make sure you accrue some capital so that you have options.
Finally, invest in high leverage opportunities in potentially high growth businesses in which you hold substantial equity. If you can't find one, start one. By the time you've done a couple (ideally in a couple of sectors or markets) you'll be worth funding by deeper pockets (read: superpower obtained - partially outsource venture risk) and quite capable at executing. Your first successful exit will place you ahead of your peers, who you will feel empathy and pity for realising they have wasted decades conservatively limiting their own life experience.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8581
(audio book) https://archive.org/details/art_of_money_getting_librivox
> In the United States, where we have more land than people, it is not at all difficult for persons in good health to make money. In this comparatively new field there are so many avenues of success open, so many vocations which are not crowded, that any person of either sex who is willing, at least for the time being, to engage in any respectable occupation that offers, may find lucrative employment.
> Those who really desire to attain an independence, have only to set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do in regard to any other object which they wish to accomplish, and the thing is easily done. But however easy it may be found to make money, I have no doubt many of my hearers will agree it is the most difficult thing in the world to keep it. The road to wealth is, as Dr. Franklin truly says, "as plain as the road to the mill." It consists simply in expending less than we earn; that seems to be a very simple problem. Mr. Micawber, one of those happy creations of the genial Dickens, puts the case in a strong light when he says that to have annual income of twenty pounds per annum, and spend twenty pounds and sixpence, is to be the most miserable of men; whereas, to have an income of only twenty pounds, and spend but nineteen pounds and sixpence is to be the happiest of mortals. Many of my readers may say, "we understand this: this is economy, and we know economy is wealth; we know we can't eat our cake and keep it also." Yet I beg to say that perhaps more cases of failure arise from mistakes on this point than almost any other. The fact is, many people think they understand economy when they really do not.
How to be a Silicon Valley thought leader: talk like a Catholic’s handbook but replace “God’s mercy” with “wealth”.
set your focus on what you love to do, not on acquiring more than you need. that probably won't make you happy anyway.
if you chose to work in IT because you enjoy it, you're already super fucking lucky anyway. you're sought after and money's good (generally speaking).
if you feel like you need more, do the actual work to make it happen. don't listen to generic one-liners by some pretentious investment guru.
There's a great moment in an interview with him where he says that he watched multiple friends get rich and not become happier.
These are some of the least accountable people I know.
Ask a group of rich people if they made their money in real estate, and most of them will say yes.
Sure, luck played a role. But my pure grit and tenacity also played a role. Taking on hard bugs and solving them played a role: I solved a lot of hard bugs that others couldn't solve. Spending Saturday afternoons at the library reading books on topics like software program management and phase locked loops played a role. Having some talent at hiring and managing people helped. Spending my teenage years writing clever little programs in 6502 assembly language on my Commodore 64 instead of smoking weed and partying helped. Having a strong knack for math and computer science helped. Living simply and reinvesting my profits helped.
In my 20s, I couldn't understand why people at my same wealth level in Silicon Valley were often driving $100K cars and engaging in other types of ostentatious spending displays. I was constantly surprised by the people making lots of money who didn't really have any clue how money works. Wall Street has its own game to separate you from your wealth, and they'll do it if you don't understand how the Warren Buffets of the world value equities and read balance sheets.
You have to get up and out and play the game to win. If you play, you'll lose a lot of games. When you lose, don't lose the lesson. There is a secret message embedded in every failure. Figure out the message, get up and go at it again. Sometimes, you'll suffer a humiliating failure a few more times before you get the lesson.
Of course, someone who is too lazy to go play the game will ascribe success to "luck." And the person who just can't "get" the secret messages embedded in their failures will ascribe success to "luck."
I've been dirt poor. For a whole year at the university, I slept on a camping pad on the floor because I couldn't even afford a real mattress, much less a bed. I've also been middle class, and now I'm rich. It's clear that being rich is better than being middle class, and being middle class is better than being poor, but being rich has its own problems. Even if you don't advertise your wealth, malicious actors smell it on you and try to separate you from it. Rich people sometimes say things like, "My only real friends are the ones who were my friends before I got rich." I get that mindset completely.
Money lubricates a lot of things in life, but it doesn't completely solve very many issues. The one single thing that I appreciate the most about money is that I'm no longer obliged to sell my own time just to survive. I spent my afternoon today, a weekday, taking a walk in the park, meeting a friend for a late lunch, going to the gym and then reading a book. In my previous life, I would have been stuck at work and wouldn't have done any of those things.
I read through the list and agreed with every item. Some are very broad, and I'd add some caveats if I were discussing them in detail. The one that made me think the hardest was "Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games." That's true, but sizing people up and figuring out what "game" they're playing is part of being successful.
Luck.
> Spending my teenage years writing clever little programs in 6502 assembly language on my Commodore 64 instead of smoking weed and partying helped.
Lucky enough to grow up with access to a computer in a time when that wasn't common.
> Having a strong knack for math and computer science helped.
Luck again.
No matter the example, you could always narrow it down to "luck".
"Lucky you didn't get run over by a car"
"Lucky you didn't get cancer and die"
"Lucky WW3 didn't start and destroy your country"
What's the point?
You can still improve your chances substantially.
My dad taught me about investing when I was a teenager. I actually applied this for the next 20+ years. Was this luck?
I'm not particularly wealthy, but I agree. And you have my sincere congratulations on your success, which I, unlike others, recognize as the product of your hard work and risk-taking.
And that's okay.
All wealth is based on luck or coercion (really, just coercion). This is trivially true if you understand what wealth is: claims on the labor-time of others. Since most people aren't in the habit of freely giving away such claims in order to accumulate such claims you either need a gun or you need to stumble upon something that other people need so much they'll surrender their labor-time -- literally they're time on earth -- for. I say stumble upon because presumably when you were born you didn't "own" much of anything. (And yes, to complete the analysis, the only thing that prevents others from simply seizing whatever it is you've lucked into is somebody else has guns and stops them in return for a cut. It's coercion all the way down.)
And that's okay. While capitalism doesn't alter the essential nature of wealth -- it's not magic -- it does strongly incentivize those with wealth to try and accumulate more wealth. Capital demands to be put to work immediately, always, 24/7, to acquire more capital.
If you understand this then it should be clear the article is silly and there are and there will always be only three ways to get "rich" (which again, just means to accumulate labor claims).
1. Be lucky.
2. Get some guns, some men, and declare that you are now rich. (This is what people mean when they say sovereigns can "print money" or that sovereigns cannot default. The wealth of sovereigns is structurally inherent. As Keynes might say, a sovereign is wealth, that is, it is labor claims.)
3. Go to work for those who are already wealthy and make their lives better, that is literally make "the rich richer."
The article rambles and uses a lot of silly words to say #3. And while the author may mention society understand that whatever you want to do "for society" will require you begging for capital from rich guys like the author.
When I explain this to bold young college students who are very hesitant to go to work for the "Man" (in finance or law) it always leaves them very depressed. To lighten the mood a bit I will say this: not all capital is subject to free, anonymous exchange (the logic of the market). This is the key insight of Marx: there are relations that can produce wealth (labor claims) that do not require price signals. Which is just a fancy of way of saying you can actually make yourself quite wealthy without buying/selling anything. (Unless you're one of those insane Randroids who believe when a mother sings to her newborn baby she is somehow profiting from the "exchange.") The interesting thing about what Marxists would call such "non-reified" capital is that it can have tremendous though hard to measure effects and it can operate at global scale eg open source software and many world religions.
You seem to argue that the OP has absolutely no claim to the wealth that he has worked for and his preferable situation is due entirely to luck. This is of course preposterous and easily disproved, so I'm curious to know what your answer to this question is.
Assuming your answer is, "no, not entirely" then my follow up question would be, do you believe that his situation is due _mostly_ to luck, and only marginally to his hard work? This is a more interesting question and one I would be interested in discussing assuming it's your take on the matter.
Edit: a word
but, i don't really agree with this part: "When you're finally wealthy, you'll realize that it wasn't what you were seeking in the first place"
He reiterates common knowledge in less concise ways than normally said while using the persona of a monk.
...Actually, that can sum up a lot of Tech Twitter.
Just a couple days ago was an article on front page of HN by Sam Altman about how to run a company, whereas he himself has had one failed startup. Softbank exists more or less because of a huuuuge bet on Alibaba which paid off. In the end, I doubt any of these "How to" articles hold up the test of perseverence.
But survivor bias aside, it's still interesting to see how VCs think, and helps gain insight into their inner monologue.
”Silicon valley is full of people who stepped in shit once, and are therefore now experts on horses.”
He's never claimed there's anything particularly brilliant about his advice. Indeed he's joked that his presence in office hours sessions could be replaced by a 3-line shell script. "Make something people want", "talk to your users", "spend less money than you make"... that's pretty much it.
I think most of the really good VCs would be similarly modest about the value of their advice.
The principles are really simple and easy to convey.
The hard part is actually doing it.
I don't see it in Naval.
He's neither excessively/falsely modest, nor an egomaniac blowhard like plenty of others in that sphere.
He just shares the concepts he thinks have been beneficial to himself and others in achieving success.
His success speaks for itself, so it can't be dismissed as shallow.
If no one is predicting that then the biggest thing YC is doing is making lots and lots of deals.
They are just looking for founders who can follow the build+release+test+repeat cycle as quickly and effectively as possible, and their claim is that if founders can do that really well in a large, valuable market, they will find success.
Freedom is what you were seeking all along.
Eh. There are a handful, they're just unethical and sometimes illegal. E.g. https://www.aqr.com/cliffs-perspective/virtue-is-its-own-rew... explains how you can easily beat the market by investing in sin stocks.
Similarly, you can make money really quickly if you mess around with grey market goods, shady affiliate networking products, "health" products, etc. But every so often some of those guys get busted.
"Paul : E-commerce was not my life’s work. I didn’t actually want to spend my life working on this. I did it to get money and make that money."
Assuming you meant something else, most rich people in America are first generation rich. Of course, growing up here in a middle class or upper middle class household didn’t hurt, but they’re not rich because someone dumped $5mm in their bank account when they turned 18.
If you're asking how to get rich at all, then getting lucky is a valid strategy.
This article is about the former.
Felix Dennis rode a wave and rode it well, there are more Felix Dennises in the world (every European country had their own it seems), so it was more a matter of place and time than anything in particular about Felix Dennis.
I found his take on being wealthy very refreshing, for that reason alone it is a good book to read. But do pirate it, wasting money on books with titles such as 'How to get rich' is counter to the writers wishes ;)
I'm a little surprised that —since every other thread on HN is about hacking your diet/wardrobe/matress to counteract the crushing depression you get from your job— nobody is putting one and one together.
There is more to life than money.
I don't want to sound too hippy but there is. There is value in relaxing with friends and taking time out to raise your family, and living with clean air outside a big, machine-like-city.
The struggle to become rich is an immense burden with its own serious costs. You might make it, but I'd suggest you ignore "aspirational" money posts on HN and learn to be happy with what you have. Just strive to be good at what you do. It's not the American Dream™ but you'll get a hell of a lot more from life.
> When you're finally wealthy, you'll realize that it wasn't what you were seeking in the first place. But that's for another day.
I'm saying that prioritising money makes you unhappy. It's a toxic culture where only a few make it. Author is saying those few still aren't happy.
Subtle distinction but I think I'm going much further.
Then you proceeded to tell everyone else how they should live their lives.
Understanding how to effectively generate wealth, build companies, etc is something that has certain advantages. For instance, this will allow for more time to appreciate the other things in life.
Warren Buffett spends most of his day reading, which he loves to do, for example.
He’ll be donating 99% of his wealth.
Your life is your choices but, quite honestly, you’re adding noise to the conversation that people were trying to have.
I'm not telling anybody to do anything. Just opining my view that outright happiness is not a hard state to reach. One can be content with very little. When your goal in life is "more", fulfilling it is nigh on impossible.
But you do you.
He was simply provided as an example of an extremely successful person who is living life on his own terms.
What does "space of careers" mean?
probably should amended to create vehicle that gives off passive income, then sell the vehicle's future cashflows for better tax treatment.
Some people are willing to be disciplined and motivated to change. While others talk without the walk.
They got a good paying job or they got a big lump (>50k) of money somehow (heritage, insurance, lottery)
Then they talk about how they invested it in real estate or something.
The hard part is getting to the baseline needed for profitable investments...
Donald Trump is rich because his dad left him an inheritance. His businesses were fraught with turmoil. If he just kept the money in an index fund, he would be richer than he was today.
http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/
So reset everything to square one, and there's one person who's not going to make it on their wits.
Need more examples? How about Bill Gates? No doubt, a very smart guy. But he would not be where he is today without that fateful meeting with IBM, where MS negotiated providing DOS for the PC. How did he get that meeting? His mom worked for the United Way, and knew IBM's CEO.
https://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/software/286148-the-rise-o...
Then consider everything else that led to that day. He grew up in a fairly well-off family which could afford to send him to MIT. He was in the right place at the right time when Gary Killdall dropped the ball. He had the benefit of excellent timing, as the window for establishing OS dominance on the PC was very small. I'm sure Gates would even tell you - his success is, in large part, a product of luck.
What I'm saying is, to become rich, it's not enough to be talented. You have to get the right opportunities and seize those opportunities when they come to you. In my experience, there are more people with talent then there are opportunities. So that random room of people is always going to turn out different.
The author is right-- anyone can become rich, if they simply spend less than they earn and invest it for the long run. It's been proven over and over again.
Trump is one of the "most accountable people"? This sentence threatens to invalidate the entire article.
I'd be interested in reading why those four people strike someone as the most accountable people.
But at my current level of worldly enlightenment, its not evident on its face to me.
+ "Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep." : Really? Are we playing the "let's redefine everything so that it works out like I say" game now?
+ "You’re not going to get rich renting out your time." : the top 1% of Americans are dominated with doctors and lawyers who, guess what, rent out their time.
+ "You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get." : The concept of "first-mover disadvantage" should really solve this. Look, Palm produced a smartphone, and Apple also produces smartphone; Apple make trillions, Palm died. The society clearly want smartphone. Why did Apple succeed but Palm failed?
+ "Specific knowledge is knowledge that you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else, and replace you." : please see above for doctors and lawyers, whom are all trained by the society. Plus, if other humans (i.e. the society) can't train you, who does? God sends angels to you?
+ "Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now." : And if you are interested in, says, building rafts (or horse-drawn carriage, or any of these things), you will get rich so fast that your stomach will starve.
+ "Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others." : sigh. Right.
+ "The most accountable people have singular, public, and risky brands: Oprah, Trump, Kanye, Elon." : Ummm. One, Trump brand and accountability have adverse relationship. Two, some of the most rewarded people on earth don't do business in their names. Bill Gates used Microsoft, in case you forget. Corporations exist for a reason.
+ "Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true." : Yes, and the best vendors always win! And Windows is the greatest OS on earth! And Facebook is the best social network! You get my sarcasm.
So, conclusion?
My father taught me this, which I believe to be true: small wealth is by hardwork, great wealth is by Heaven. If you want to be affluent, be industrious at work, be acceptable to society, be prudent in finance; and you will eventually get there. If you want to get richie rich rich, well, pray (plus all of the things for little wealth). This kind of "I get lucky now I will give stupid advices" things really should go away.
Pessimism is what keeps you from following the herd of lemmings over the cliff.
Reality: there are millions of people out there doing exactly the things listed. And they are not rich.
BTW, does anyone really think Oprah, Trump, Kanye, and Elon are "accountable?"
And then:
"Don't partner with cynics and pessimists. Their beliefs are self-fulfilling."
I see this a lot in these sorts of "pro tips", and it always makes me check to see if my pocket is being picked. Somebody needs to point out the holes in your grand scheme. But then, I'm a bitter, albeit moderately wealthy, cynic.