What would you do to become "rich"?

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Gilberto de Piento
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

2Birds1Stone wrote:
Tue Aug 04, 2020 7:59 am
I see, well as I'm sure you will get a few bites here, it might be prudent in finding a community which is interested/focused on this topic. Due to its nature, I'm sure most of those places are peddling get rich quick schemes and full of predatory individuals, YMMV.
The millionaire fast lane forums are good for "entrepreneur" type approaches. The bigger pockets forums are good for the real estate approach. Both are echo chambers but I don't think they are very scammy.

The millionaire fast lane book is also good.

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Alphaville
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by Alphaville »

iopsi wrote:
Tue Aug 04, 2020 4:26 am

So as per the thread's title: what would YOU (considering your skills, attitudes, etc) do to reach a "1%" tier net worth as fast as possible?
as fast as possible? come into this world already rich of course. pick your parents right!

barring that, join the knights of prosperity

7Wannabe5
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

What would you do to be in the top 1% for looks, health, brains, emotional resilience, number people likely to attend your funeral? It seems to me that achieving/being top 10% in 3 or 4 such categories would be much better than top 1% in just one.

classical_Liberal
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by classical_Liberal »

I've had some experience with the 1%'ers back in my banking days. Using @jacobs quadrant model, here we tend to idealize the renaissance man. However, IMO, one of huge differences between our thinking and that of a true businessman, is the idea of using leverage effectively. Don't believe me? how many RE'ed ERE's have a mortgage on their own home?

Self made 1%ers are almost always business owners. Many through real estate because it's easy to take advantage of subsidized leverage with it.

In the US, 1%ers tend to think more like working class people than the middle/upper middle class. They think in terms of people as a true source of value. "I have a gal/guy for that". Also, at this level of wealth one can begin to access the crony capitalism market. Supporting a local politician for city council to get a zoning law changed, etc.

The 1%ers, who are more healthy, at a certain age start thinking about legacy. That may be family or more abstract like funding larger organizations. 10 mil can make a difference to an organization or multiple heirs in ways a 100K can not.

7Wannabe5
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@c_L:

I think it's analogous to the conflict between Power vs. Freedom and what William James described as the Rational vs. Empirical or Tender-Minded vs. Tough-Minded. Although the Working Man and the Business Man are diagonally located in terms of Linearity and Coupling, they seem to be more similar in terms of Tough-Minded Empiricist vs. Tender-Minded Rationalist. I would also suggest that this very "American" division in philosophy goes a good distance towards explaining why Working Men voted for Trump.

Jason

Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by Jason »

DeToqueville's explanation would be the lack of materialistic envy between Trump and his supporters. The relationship is more reflective of a benevolent king to his subjects than an elected official to his supporters. It's an aristocratic relationship, not a democratic relationship. The billionaire to working class divide is so huge that the economic difference is not in play. The scale is incomprehensible. The closer one is to another in economic resources, the more the issue of envy is in effect. Trump is the absentee owner of the company who lives in a golden tower and makes an appearance once a year on Christmas Eve as opposed to the idiot professional who pulls into the the parking lot every day tp park their fancy car in their designated parking space to tell them how to do their job i.e. Hillary Clinton/Joe Biden or worse, their kids. I don't think it's a pure gender issue. I think it's more a basic middle class economic fragility issue. A billionaire is beyond fragility. A millionaire is not and therefore there are economic tensions between the lower middle and the upper middle class than the lower middle class and the 1%. A Trump rally is a basically an escape from economic envy and the guy who flies in on a plane with his name on it entertaining the audience wearing the stupid hats he sold them clearly knows it.

Those who follow Dave Ramsey to those who follow MMM to those who come here are all hedging against material scarcity in some way or another. Some hedge by trying to become rich some hedge by not needing to become rich. SWR vs. Size of Stash. But it's all falls on the basic middle class continuum of fear of material scarcity and that's where the knives really come out because that's how the game is rigged. To Donald Trump, total collapse is an opportunity to renegotiate commercial loans while he flies over Armageddon.

7Wannabe5
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Jason:

Would you say that the same holds true for Elon Musk and all the Robinhood investors buying small slices of his dreamscape future? ( as opposed to Trump’s dreamscape past re-enactment)

tonyedgecombe
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Jason wrote:
Thu Aug 06, 2020 6:04 am
Trump is the absentee owner of the company who lives in a golden tower and makes an appearance once a year on Christmas Eve as opposed to the idiot professional who pulls into the the parking lot every day tp park their fancy car in their designated parking space to tell them how to do their job i.e. Hillary Clinton/Joe Biden or worse, their kids.
If Trump loses in November I think I might well spend the next four years telling Republican voters how out of touch they were and how bad their favoured candidate was and how they deserved everything they are getting. :lol:

Jason

Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by Jason »

@7W5

EM is pushing a future, but he's not pushing his stock. There's a difference between buying a Tesla or a trip to mars and buying TSLA shares, and Musk at least says the latter is overvalued. The same can't be said for Trump. Musk is Edison meets Barnum. Trump is Ponzi meets Barnum. I find Musk truly compelling. His comparison of self-driving cars to automatic elevators for instance. If you get into an elevator that still requires an operator, you lose confidence in reaching your destination. But if you get into a car with an operator, you gain confidence. That's a loaded statement and one worth contemplating. I am admittedly a fanboy with one (1) TLSA share to his name but no inclination to buy his cars or leave the planet.

(@) Tonyedgecombe

They will be too busy glued to Stephen Miller interviewing Roger Stone on The Trump Network to pay you any mind.

plantingtheseed
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by plantingtheseed »

to OP

If wealth is in real, tangible things, then true wealth can only be achieved through real work and real production, not through the gimmickry of financial engineering.
Last edited by plantingtheseed on Thu Feb 18, 2021 10:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Sclass
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by Sclass »

Gimmickry and financial engineering work well on those who do real work the same way robbery does. At least if we are just talking about getting rich.

I’ve noticed this strange pattern where the majority of rich people I can see use financial engineering rather than toiling away creating real value. For every great creator there are dozens of financiers backing him or her up and thus harvesting the real value by financial engineering.

plantingtheseed
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by plantingtheseed »

Sure running and managing a business to create wealth is work. It's a lot of work as a matter of fact.

But gambling on the stock market casino probably isn't. Other than providing liquidity, there is no creation of real wealth.

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Alphaville
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by Alphaville »

plantingtheseed wrote:
Mon Aug 10, 2020 8:42 am
Sure running and managing a business to create wealth is work. It's a lot of work as a matter of fact.

But gambling on the stock market casino probably isn't. Other than providing liquidity, there is no creation of real wealth.
to play devil’d advocate a bit: the work of financial activity is to maximize the efficiency of capital, which benefits the economy as a whole. in theory anyway.

plantingtheseed
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by plantingtheseed »

in theory agreed. :D

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Sclass
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by Sclass »

I guess I’m mentioning this because I didn’t make much off the things I created. 90% of what I have today was made off stock gains.

A bit of a blow to the ego since I was an engineer and an entrepreneur. But the cash is a consolation.

In my experience it was easier and more effective to buy low and sell high than to envision, create and sell. Finding somebody else’s pie and figuring out a way to get a slice on the cheap is easier than making a pie. Maybe your experience will be better.

This line of thinking reminds me of my friends and relatives ideals of how to attain wealth. In their eyes I’m kind of cheat who gamed the system by buying lucky lotto tickets. I didn’t make it with my products or my professional education. So it all has been discounted in their eyes like I’m some kind of porn distributor who had gained wealth but not in the “right” way. Maybe marrying money is a more common example.

Well, I guess the OP asked what to do to get rich. I say take a look at the rich people out there and see how they made their money. Most of the ones I know were buy low sell high, not envision, create and sell.

7Wannabe5
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

A lot (most?)of businesses are based on “buy low, sell high” rather than “envision, create, and sell.” Unless you count envisioning how to move stuff from one market to another as creative work.

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Sclass
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by Sclass »

Yes. Especially the ones that survive.

Along that same line of thought I can say this. In technology (where I tried my hand) there are dozens of financiers for each inventor. I think that’s just how the ecosystem works.

I was just saying it’s easier to get rich as the financier.

Edit - wait let me clarify that. There are more low hanging opportunities as a financier. There’s nothing wrong with being a great creator and visionary founder and it is a romantic image, but if getting rich is important one probably shouldn’t exclude other ways.

Like marrying money. Being popular. Sales commissions. Rents. Interest. Or bankrolling somebody else’s great idea.

plantingtheseed
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by plantingtheseed »

Yes, nothing is easy. It all takes some form of work and a skill set or two.
Last edited by plantingtheseed on Thu Feb 18, 2021 10:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Sclass
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by Sclass »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Mon Aug 10, 2020 11:14 am
A lot (most?)of businesses are based on “buy low, sell high” rather than “envision, create, and sell.” Unless you count envisioning how to move stuff from one market to another as creative work.
@7W just had a day to think about your book business. You are doing a lot more than moving books from one market to another. You’re reprocessing the product by filtering it and organizing it. Then you’re adding efficiency to an inefficient market. I guess what posts here are referring to as increasing liquidity.

I have a huge pile of old books at my mother’s place. On the spectrum of leather bound first editions of the classics and Nancy Drew Mystery stories they’re somewhere in the middle. I think I’m just going to donate them to the local library sale and let somebody else figure it all out and extract what value they have.

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C40
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Re: What would you do to become "rich"?

Post by C40 »

I did the math for my, picking up when I retired, as if I did not... If I kept doing my engineering work for a large company with these parameters:

Starting net worth, 550,000 at age 34
Income 100k per year pre-tax, grow by 5% per year. Tax rate 25%
Spend 15k per year, grow 2% per year
Investment growth rate 7%

I'd hit 10 million at age 60. I also checked and realized that since the investment income/growth is high and grows faster than income, the spending amount doesn't matter all that much.

If spend 15k per year: 10 mil at 60 years old
If spend 25k per year: 10 mil at 61 years old
If spend 35k per year: 10 mil at 62 years old
If spend 45k per year: 10 mil at 63 years old

It's so little difference that I feel like I need to re-check my math. But it's probably right. I think the big impact is having a really high savings rate for the first 5-10 years. Once you get a net worth of around 10x yearly income, the savings rate details start to matter less and less, and a person could "coast" (if spending more makes it feel that way for them) for the next few dacades and still have similar results to if they'd kept their savings rate very high.

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