The highest probability for success for the 'everyday person':
- 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.
Counterpoint: Your chances of dying before "making it big" and retiring are somewhere in the 1-in-10 range. Investing works mostly because of the current trend of artificially propping up the stock market. Any failure in your investment strategy leave you in the same boat as the current boomer retirees who are trying to get back in the workforce.
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.
Health insurance is a must in US because the entire country systematically doesn’t give a shit about how inefficient it is. I guess some people make fat bucks at the expense of people’s lives.
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.
Even simpler, it is an equation with three variables: income, expenses, and rate of return on savings. An important point is that you do not need to hyper-optimize all three variables to achieve a good outcome, which makes it adaptable to many lifestyles and circumstances. Hyper-frugality is not the only path. There are multiple viable strategies that can be built around optimizing one or two variables and paying minimal attention to the others.
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.
Hmm... I’m still sitting here waiting for that “magic” of compounding interest to take effect. So often HN (and r/personalfinance) investment advice reminds me of the ol’ Draw the Rest of the Owl meme[1]. Just “do mutual funds” and you’ll one day be a millionaire because Compounding Interest. Ok well thanks to a few recessions, poor timing of grad school and bouts of unemployment, my retirement is not much more than what I put into it. So there seems to be some other secret step between “buy mutual funds” and “retire comfortably“ that I’m missing...
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...
- Make sure you don't marry, or if you do absolutely don't have kids.
- 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.
"Work for a company that offers health insurance. "
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.
I really doubt you can get rich by not being lucky. I was like Naval and thought many of my achievements were due to sheer hard work. And then I read this article about luck:
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.
In poker, the fastest way to climb the ladder in stakes is to play a tight-aggressive style and be conservative with your bankroll (make sure you have plenty to cover the variance of the stakes you’re playing), but also occasionally take ‘shots’ at higher levels with a small portion of your bankroll. If you run good during your shot, you stay at the higher level. Otherwise, you move back down to rebuild.
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.
This gets broken down and fails against skilled players who are adept at noticing conservative play styles just like this. It's quickly punished by small pots on what should be big wins. The trick isn't just conservative play, but deceptive and difficult to track play with an underlying trend of conservatism.
I’m going to take a contrarian view and say: figure out why you want to be rich, first. For most people, money is a proxy for respect, status, power, security, social skills, romantic attraction from others, free time, or otherwise.
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.
Here is a list of reasons that "enlightened" (i.e. not scrooge) people would want to be rich:
- 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 constant “only rich people are meaningful human beings” message that is blared 24/7 from western culture ...
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.
I read the article as pro-wealth, not pro-money. The author says that wealth is ownership of assets that generate money while you sleep. Ultimately, I see wealth as freedom of time. But there are two other big categories of wealth: health and social network. If you have FU money but also brain cancer or live on a planet by yourself, the money doesn’t mean much.
Reminds me of this quote, can't remember by whom (maybe Tim Ferris?) something along the lines of: "You don't really want a million dollars; what you really want is the kind of life that you think you need a million dollars to have"
To start, basically regardless of a person, money is time (at a certain standard of living). Too many people internalized working for money as something expected and/or inevitable... I'm not saying it's not normal, or unfair or bad; it's simply something you put up with, like driving - if your car drove itself, you'd never drive except perhaps for fun occasionally.
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.
I've been listening the entire back catalog of NPR's "How I Built This" blog. The interviewer always asks if their success is due to hard work, skill, intelligence, etc. or luck. All of them acknowledge some luck is always involved. But the best quote I recall, but don't remember he interviewee, was "The harder I worked the more luck I found I had."
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.
Specific knowledge is knowledge that you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else, and replace you.
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.
I know very few people that got rich without getting lucky and none of them would have been rich if they had followed this list.
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.
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
If we define rich as not having to work, it could be achieved with a low income, but low expenses. At an extreme, perhaps, self-sufficiency, using knowledge and technology (even robots?) instead of back-breaking stope subsistence farming.
This is basically my life right now and I am loving every single second of it.
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
How do you define being poor? My definition: having to think about money or surviving all the time. With stable low-income job or even with small savings without job, you can live quite stress-free life if you keep your living expenses low. Meaning that you just have routines and hobbies that are inexpensive - cook home, live in cheap area, commute with bicycle, etc.
"Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep."
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".
If you have a decent chance of getting rich (read: well-paying job or income source), then the biggest impact on your "wealth" is going to come from two things: your ability to invest wisely, and your ability to optimize your taxes. (that's my two cents, of course - happy to be challenged on these two assumptions).
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.
I think a better strategy than trying to be rich is,
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.
I don't know why people can't be normal and just have a reasonable career plan with reasonable savings & investment plan for retirement. Seems like people who write on websites don't give a shit or want to work 80hours a week so they can retire at 38
I blew so much money on this young girl in 15,16,17 it put me in a hole and we aren't together anymore. Was making close to 300k/yr in an area where that's a shitload of money. I could have paid off a bunch of debt, IRS, put a chunk in retirement, lots of stuff. Would I do it again? Oh hell yes because it was an incredible experience. Money ain't shit unless it facilitates an experience you'd never, ever get otherwise. There's different motivators for making money. I've definitely found mine. Writing a new revenue generator right now and I've written so much code I definitely wouldn't have the energy to do this much work unless I had experienced what I did.
"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.
my last response didn't post, so here's the link of an ordinary person doing it: It's the invest a little and wait a long time approach:
96-Year-Old Secretary Quietly Amasses Fortune, Then Donates $8.2 Million
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/06/nyregion/secretary-fortun...
> 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.
[+] [-] 11thEarlOfMar|7 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] falcolas|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nojvek|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jandrewrogers|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ryandrake|7 years ago|reply
1: http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/572/078/d6d...
[+] [-] Someone1234|7 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] jandrese|7 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] joeblow9999|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hoechst|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orasis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heedlessly3|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] empath75|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hguhghuff|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] thisisit|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] danenania|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] test6554|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubicon33|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] keiferski|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] whatshisface|7 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] pavlov|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mmcconnell1618|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bootsz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianN|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sershe|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ryanwaggoner|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zuck9|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fwdpropaganda|7 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] justherefortart|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] shanecleveland|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] orcdork|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stcredzero|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ConfusedDog|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] indescions_2018|7 years ago|reply
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
https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/CASI/
[+] [-] hyperpallium|7 years ago|reply
You would be rich, but also poor.
[+] [-] anoncoward111|7 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] jerguismi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voctor|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacknews|7 years ago|reply
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".
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|7 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] RandomCSGeek|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] internetman55|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jksmith|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] contingencies|7 years ago|reply
"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.
[+] [-] pascalxus|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carapace|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pavlov|7 years ago|reply
How to be a Silicon Valley thought leader: talk like a Catholic’s handbook but replace “God’s mercy” with “wealth”.
[+] [-] jerguismi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeth___|7 years ago|reply
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