How to get rich without getting lucky • Hacker News Board

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#191

Post by k__ » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

erjjones wrote: post #186

If you were to take a random room of people. Reset all of their incomes to square one. In a few years the same people that were rich to start would emerge "rich" again. Some people are willing to be disciplined and motivated to change. While others talk without the walk.

Funny thing is, most people who talk about how they got rich had some luck in the first place.

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...

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#192

Post by thebigspacefuck » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

davedx wrote: post #90

whataretensors wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't listen to risk-averse engineers. You are young, invest in high risk things you believe in. Make it an active investment if you can. 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.

Easier said than done. What high risk (low effort) investment opportunities are there for non accredited investors? I guess there's real estate but I don't know if that qualifies as 'high risk'... And cryptocurrencies, but I'd call that 'gambling' not 'investment' :)

ATMs - put one in a popular spot, there's an app that tells you when it needs to be refilled, go refill it. You can find people selling their ATMs already set up in locations. You have to drive around and refill them so the biggest risk is that someone robs you. Liquor store is another good one. A friend's roommate bought one for $400K and makes $16K/month. He just refills inventory and sits around selling booze. A lot of that goes towards his loan but after that he'll be making way more than I probably ever will. The risk again is that someone robs you. I always check bizbuysell.com to see what kinds of things are out there.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#193

Post by falcolas » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 1:54 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #22

plop_ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have advices for young people in long term investments ?

Go read mr money Mustache (but take it with a grain of salt and ignore the cult bits) and 'the millionaire next door' https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ (the older stuff is better, he's making bank through the blog so caveat emptor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire_Next_Door

Keep in mind MMM started with a sizable inheritance to kickstart his nest egg and currently works full time talking about living frugally.

Take from that what you will.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#194

Post by frgtpsswrdlame » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 1:55 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #185

nojvek wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the US insurance companies themselves are meant to fight to keep prices down, but right now due to a miscalculation during the creation of Obamacare ("Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act") they're incentivized to INCREASE medical costs... 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 h…

So insurance in the US wants to take even more than 20% as profit? Am I correct in thinking that this actually makes socialized systems more efficient? They never have to front any profit overhead.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#195

Post by 11thEarlOfMar » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 1:57 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #187

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #158

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. Thi…

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 wor…

I have no mustache and was born with no silver spoon, Had to work my way through college. This approach to building wealth worked for me.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#196

Post by frgtpsswrdlame » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 1:58 PM UTC

erjjones wrote: post #186

If you were to take a random room of people. Reset all of their incomes to square one. In a few years the same people that were rich to start would emerge "rich" again. Some people are willing to be disciplined and motivated to change. While others talk without the walk.

No they wouldn't. Most rich people aren't particularly disciplined or motivated to change. They're just lucky.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#197

Post by notheguyouthink » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 1:59 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #39

plop_ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have advices for young people in long term investments ?

If you have money to invest, invest in low-cost, broad-based index funds. I personally bias slightly towards small cap (said more precisely: I avoid biasing toward large-cap, but to many people, that looks like biasing towards small caps). One specific choice is VTSAX from Vanguard, but there are many others. Keep an emergency fund of 2-4 months in cash or equivalents, and invest everything else that you can when you…

Any thoughts on strategy's for not "if your young" people?

My wife and I (early 30s) have been getting her school debt settled but with little retirement outside of a small 401k, we've started looking at aggressive retirement plans.

At the moment we're just treating everything as the most yield (compounded or not). So her high interest debt is the most yield, however once half of those are out, a lot of investments will yield higher than her debt, so we'll likely shift priorities towards those.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#198

Post by yayana » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #168

yayana wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound like you want to be rich, it sounds like you want to move to northern Europe, probably Scandanavia.

Which you have to be rich (or at least well off by most American standards) to do. To move to Sweden, for example, either you need a salaried job with full benefits (including the health insurance and employer lock-in that the parent is looking to escape from) that's willing to relocate you to Sweden, or you need to have ~$25k in savings (~$35k if you're married, more if you have kids), plus proof of positive cash fl…

I think most of the people on HN are well off and apparently considering considerable sacrifice over a significant period of time to have odds of getting rich..

When asked why, they need only the things they would get from living 5 years of an imperfectly richer life first?

(Is there a probable way to get from an education and/or 25k in the bank to the rest of rich in less than 5 years and/or with better partial benefits during the interval?)

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#199

Post by sulam » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

shove wrote: post #152

maehwasu wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. Western culture is probably the least materialistic of all major cultures (500M+ people).

>Western culture is probably the least materialistic of all major cultures Is this sarcasm? What are you basing this on? I don't think I've ever heard anyone opine this before.

I wouldn’t call it the least materialistic but capitalist culture is dominant in most of the world now. Honestly I think the lack of materialism in most cultures is largely mythologized. If African tribes measure your wealth by how many animals you have, well, that’s just materialism via other materials and I’m sure leads to its own kinds of conspicuous consumption (invite the whole village to your party for instance).

Religious orders seem to be the easy-to-identify exception and those exist in all the large cultures.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#200

Post by Someone1234 » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #194

Someone1234 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US insurance companies themselves are meant to fight to keep prices down, but right now due to a miscalculation during the creation of Obamacare ("Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act") they're incentivized to INCREASE medical costs... 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 h…

So insurance in the US wants to take even more than 20% as profit? Am I correct in thinking that this actually makes socialized systems more efficient? They never have to front any profit overhead.

No, they want to increase how much that 20% share is worth.

If premiums increase from e.g. $500 to $600/month, the insurance company makes $20 more per insured via their 20% share.

The other 80% ($480) really does go towards medical costs, but the issue is that insurance companies aren't incentivized to help you keep those medical costs down (via negotiation with hospitals/drug companies), but may be incentivized to increase them. That's a problem.

In an ideal world insurance company's incentives and their customer's goals should be aligned (e.g. both save money). That makes them the ultimate advocate for you and fighting to keep healthcare costs low, that isn't what is happening (either before or after Obamacare).