Climbing the Wealth Ladder • Hacker News Board

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#191

Post by C1sc0cat » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:09 PM UTC

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #45

CPLX wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I see this kind of logic in personal finance discussions all the time but it's bullshit. There simply aren't any spending decisions you can make that will change you from not wealthy to really wealthy. Those things can just move you from poor to middle class at best, or to a better level of middle class. Outside of real outlier status where you're paid really, really large amounts of money for your services (lik…

> like notable entertainer or cardiac surgeon Google says cardiac surgeons make $400-800k, assuming that's true a very talented engineer at FAANG can easily match this (staff or senior staff level) without being mired by an additional 10 years of school. I personally know engineers making 7 digits in liquid compensation. Obviously these are not your average engineers, but it's doable if you're the 1% (to be good enou…

I seem to remember some one on here recall hearing a couple of transplant surgeons comparing notes where the comp was measured in millions.

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#192

Post by esotericn » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #184

lowercased wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"not everyone can afford to take a week off work" even if you can , financially, it's often hard to do so mentally/emotionally. if you're taking time away from work, that means no income - whether you desperately need it or not may be immaterial to the mental state you've built for yourself.

Even if you don't need it, you really probably do. A lot of people talking about entrepreneurship and whatnot have some kind of blindness to the idea that one can fail at these things, and once you've eaten up your savings you're back at square 0 and back to the soul-crushing reality of job. Objectively it is wiser to simply keep the job in the first place.

Or they're just talking about different ratios of saving/spending.

As I posted below - the situation in which you have 40 weeks of spending set aside is radically different to that of having 4.

From my perspective, and I recognise things are probably very different in the USA with your health insurance catastrophe, taking a few months off work to unwind, or check out the job market, or whatever else every now and then is a completely normal thing to do.

My first software job came about because I left a job and bounced around for a bit. I had enough mental space and time to physically visit interviews without the sort of typical "pretend to your boss you're ill" stuff. Without that time I'd be somewhere completely different now.

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#193

Post by doubleInt » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #169

pathseeker wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A bit confused by this - you're now not actually buying anything that produces anything. I suggest you look up what stock ownership means. Most wealthy people only own non-controlling interest in most of their investments as well. If you own a share of stock, you own part of the means of production.

> I suggest you look up what stock ownership means. Stock ownership traditionally means partial ownership of a business. Except that you almost have no decision making power unless you own a lot of stocks, and that's not going to happen while working a simple middle class job. It also doesn't mean that the company will pay you a portion of their profits. It is entirely up to the company whether they want to pay you a…

Do you own stocks?

If you don't, and your reasoning above is the reason why, I strongly recommend you reconsider. There is more to be lost by fearing your lack of control and failing to invest than there is by investing, in say, index funds.

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#194

Post by C1sc0cat » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #169

pathseeker wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A bit confused by this - you're now not actually buying anything that produces anything. I suggest you look up what stock ownership means. Most wealthy people only own non-controlling interest in most of their investments as well. If you own a share of stock, you own part of the means of production.

> I suggest you look up what stock ownership means. Stock ownership traditionally means partial ownership of a business. Except that you almost have no decision making power unless you own a lot of stocks, and that's not going to happen while working a simple middle class job. It also doesn't mean that the company will pay you a portion of their profits. It is entirely up to the company whether they want to pay you a…

Your point is? a lot of the USA's railroads where funded by Investment trusts based in London and Edinburg which had small middle class investors going back to the 19th century.

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#195

Post by C1sc0cat » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #185

icedchai wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You own companies (stock) that produce things. It is true you have no active involvement or control over the business itself (unless you reach activist investor levels), but this is often a positive thing.

You own a portion of a company, but that portion can be watered down at any time, no? Can't a company produce more shares and disseminate them at any time? I know that conceptually you own a portion, but it's so watered down and abstracted it seems like a far cry from actually owning anything that actually correlates to an actual means of production.

No which country do you live in thease are not US employee stock options but real stocks.

There strict laws about that sort of things even more so in places like Germany and the UK

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#196

Post by issa » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

lazyguy2 wrote: post #86

Pfhreak wrote: post #27

I'm really not a fan of this breakdown because it seems to put each order of magnitude increase in liquid net worth as equal space on the graph. What percentage of people fall into each level. Maybe 50-60% of American adults fall into level 1? Surely, most folks will never reach Level 3 on this chart. While this is an interesting way for someone who has made significant increases in their income over the years, I don…

It's entirely possible for a wage earner to become a millionaire in the USA. Anybody with a middle class income can do it. It's not even complicated or hard to figure out. The problem is that it requires discipline and living under your means. The first step is to eliminate debt and don't make stupid purchases. Debt includes credit card, personal loans, car loans, and mortgages. Stupid purchases are things like expen…

As long as you don't have kids, don't get sick, and don't do anything fun, you'll definitely be a millionaire in 30-40 years.

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#197

Post by r0fl » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

disintegore wrote: post #8

I understand this isn't the point of the article, but it seems like a roundabout way of saying "don't overspend". This part in particular bothers me : > More importantly though, the best way to climb the wealth ladder is to spend money according to your level. As far as I (a non-economist) can personally tell, any notion of climbing up some abstract wealth ladder is synonym with a salary increase for the vast majorit…

Your example of a person with $10,000 accumulated wealth and no job makes perfect sense. However this does not hold true higher up the scale.

People with mid 8 figure liquid net worth, ex: $50-70,000,000 do not need to have any income for extremely long periods of time without having any large negative effect on their spending ability.

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#198

Post by OnlineGladiator » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

C1sc0cat wrote: post #191

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like notable entertainer or cardiac surgeon Google says cardiac surgeons make $400-800k, assuming that's true a very talented engineer at FAANG can easily match this (staff or senior staff level) without being mired by an additional 10 years of school. I personally know engineers making 7 digits in liquid compensation. Obviously these are not your average engineers, but it's doable if you're the 1% (to be good enou…

I seem to remember some one on here recall hearing a couple of transplant surgeons comparing notes where the comp was measured in millions.

I could easily believe that. I just went with the data I had. If you can find a source please share.

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#199

Post by grey-area » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:15 PM UTC

disintegore wrote: post #8

I understand this isn't the point of the article, but it seems like a roundabout way of saying "don't overspend". This part in particular bothers me : > More importantly though, the best way to climb the wealth ladder is to spend money according to your level. As far as I (a non-economist) can personally tell, any notion of climbing up some abstract wealth ladder is synonym with a salary increase for the vast majorit…

Capital is more powerful than income.

It is harder to accumulate capital but still worthwhile even if you can only do it slowly.

Re: Climbing the Wealth Ladder

#200

Post by leetcrew » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:18 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #29

disintegore wrote: post #8

I understand this isn't the point of the article, but it seems like a roundabout way of saying "don't overspend". This part in particular bothers me : > More importantly though, the best way to climb the wealth ladder is to spend money according to your level. As far as I (a non-economist) can personally tell, any notion of climbing up some abstract wealth ladder is synonym with a salary increase for the vast majorit…

Yup. I see this kind of logic in personal finance discussions all the time but it's bullshit. There simply aren't any spending decisions you can make that will change you from not wealthy to really wealthy. Those things can just move you from poor to middle class at best, or to a better level of middle class. Outside of real outlier status where you're paid really, really large amounts of money for your services (lik…

saving your entire salary won't make you as rich as Jeff bezos, but the end of your life will look a lot different if you save $1000 every month instead of $500.

if you have any disposable income, you can save for a decent retirement. it's useful to have a framework for deciding what indulgences you can pay for in the present without crippling yourself in the future.