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How to get rich without getting lucky

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Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#211

Post by joaomacp »

wilsonnb wrote: post #182
siberianbear wrote: post #97

I got rich in Silicon Valley from my equity compensation. I bounced around various companies and startups. Two of them were successful and had public offerings. Of those two, one was spectacularly successful. 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 afternoon…

> Having some talent at hiring and managing people helped. 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.

Then what isn't luck? Everyone reading this thread is lucky, since they have access to the internet, and were lucky enough not to be hit by a car and killed before in their lives.

You can still improve your chances substantially.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#212

Post by mistermann »

encoderer wrote: post #207
falcolas wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At this current point in time, you are both correct. It's gotten to the point where I'm genuinely starting to wonder if this state might be permanent, even though it's theoretically "impossible" because there will "always" be a reversion to the mean.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#213

Post by sokoloff »

notheguyouthink wrote: post #197
sokoloff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

30s is still young for retirement purposes, which for at least one of you is likely to extend out to more than 50 years from today.

When considering yield, always consider after-tax yield. Having a 6% non-tax-advantaged debt is better to pay off than a taxable 7% investment.

Here's a good "order of operations" guideline: https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/investment-...

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#214

Post by y4mi »

encoderer wrote: post #207
falcolas wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

it can also save him from wasting even more.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#215

Post by zeth___ »

mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #161
zeth___ wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the advice. How many new jobs have you taken in the last three years? I've had 8.

I agree with the strategy that hopping jobs results in faster income increase than staying put. I'm just saying that in my experience, there is a cap on how much you can make in any salaried job unless you are a very rare person. You may find it difficult to continue to raise your income by job hopping. You may need to think about selling value rather than time to exceed your current pay.

Given that I'm already negotiating for a 15% increase in my current job and shortlisted for 6 other positions I'd say I have plenty of room left to move around.

You are worth what you are paid.

I have had a job where the only thing I had to do was fill in a spreadsheet to keep the product manager happy because the CEO had some stupid ideas about tracking employee productivity. I was happy to trade $60,000 and 3 months for something not more taxing than a Sudoku puzzle. Market inefficiencies are everywhere, it's just that most employees never find them since they stay in one place for far too long.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#216

Post by ryandrake »

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…

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...

1: http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/572/078/d6d...

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#217

Post by dasil003 »

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…

> 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.

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.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#218

Post by alanfranzoni »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #179
alanfranz wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those indexed funds suggestions are biased by the fact that the stock market, overall, has increased in value OVER TIME: http://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-historica... Remember, the stock market does not create money, it's not a fundamental advancement for humanity. That just means that more people poured money into stocks, rather than other investments or savings. There's absolutely, ABSOLUTELY…

A stock is a piece of a company. That company should be creating value and that value should be worth money, maybe revenue or assets. The price of a company goes up because it is either worth more today than it was yesterday or people believe it will be worth more tomorrow than it is today. Usually people that own a company are trying to create more and more value. It's human nature bubbling up to the top. Why would…

Because it may be (already) overpriced, and maybe somebody will stop investing in the stock? Because automatic systems (e.g. AI, HFT) will lessen investors' faith in the stock market? Because better investment opportunities come out?

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#219

Post by erichate »

thisisit wrote: post #208

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 ha…

What is luck really?

Determination + Opportunity = Luck

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#220

Post by Mononokay »

tomhoward wrote: post #129
Mononokay wrote: post #2

Naval's always sounded a bit like a Facebook quote bot to me. 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.

I once heard PG say something like "It's crazy, but the YC startups that succeeded are the ones who followed our advice. The ones who failed, didn't". 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"...…

At the same time, PG doesn't have this whole "I am righteous and the most intelligent guy around," sort of thing Naval has the impression he is.
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