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How to get rich without getting lucky

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Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#201

Post by rubidium »

systemtest wrote: post #149
pc86 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that "rich" means "don't need to work at all, for the rest of your life, to keep a roof over your head and food on your table," none of what you listed require being rich. > 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…

If you child gets a serious disease, can you take a year off from work to comfort him/her and give the best possible assistance in recovery? Can you take your child to private facilities that have individual rooms and private tutoring so they don't miss out on education? If the best possible treatment with a high success rate and a low-impact recovery is in Sweden, can you arrange medical transport on a plane to get…

The rich think of their wealth as a strong defense; they imagine it to be a high wall of safety.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#202

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

morgancmartin wrote: post #181
dnomad wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but it's a bit rich when people who literally won the lottery call for hard work. The reality is you got lucky. There were probably many people who worked harder than you and saved more than you who will never enjoy anything close to your success. 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 o…

Wouldn't you agree that the harder someone works, the greater their chance of becoming rich? 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 questi…

>Wouldn't you agree that the harder someone works, the greater their chance of becoming rich?

No.

>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.

Well let's start from the base. Do you think someone has a claim to wealth that they earned entirely due to luck?

>This is of course preposterous and easily disproved, so I'm curious to know what your answer to this question is.

I'm not sure how it's easily disproved. Again from the base. It's easily seen that a one day old baby's station in life is entirely due to luck. Two days old, two months old, two years old, all the same, all luck. At some point though we begin taking luck, say being born to hard-working parents who helped you develop a hard-work ethic, and label it a personal achievement. In this way we successfully launder privilege into "merit."

>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.

I actually think his situation is due entirely to luck.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#203

Post by ikeboy »

>There are no get rich quick schemes. That's just someone else getting rich off you.

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.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#204

Post by u90g4u8904 »

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.

False.

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.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#205

Post by jacknews »

imgabe wrote: post #140
executesorder66 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some would argue that if you make a profit from it, then yes it is unethical. 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.

That is assuming the raw materials cost $0 and there is no value to assuming the risk of the sales price. If you pay the worker $800, but it turns out the market only values the widget at $500, does the worker return the difference? Usually not. If you are not providing any value, why is the worker not just cutting you out of the deal and making and selling widgets directly?

There is great value in the infrastructure required to produce a widget, even if it's just a group of people "putting thier heads together" (which is why individual workers can't just quite and start producing on their own).

But usually both the workers and the owners contribute and help build and maintain that infrastructure, so it seems unfair that only the owners profit.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#206

Post by maxxxxx »

rc_hadoken wrote: post #174
afpx wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another strategy I’ve seen work very well: 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…

Isn't the marriage strategy primarily possible for the opposite gender..the prettier one that is.

John McCain and John Kerry did well financially with marrying for example.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#207

Post by encoderer »

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…

> Investing works mostly because of the current trend of artificially propping up the stock market.

This belief could cost you a lot of money.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#208

Post by thisisit »

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:

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.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#209

Post by aaavl2821 »

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…

Increases in premiums have always been good for insurance companies, just like increases in revenue are always good for other companies

Insurers do actively try to reduce healthcare costs but in many cases they are at the mercy of providers

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#210

Post by rustybelt »

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.

Not profit. The 20% is supposed to cover all overhead. 80% is mandated to be spent directly on claims.
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