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Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

joshuakennon.com

71–80 of 161 posts

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#71
post #3

From the article: Most millionaires opt for stealth wealth. Their friends don’t know, their coworkers don’t know, their extended family doesn’t know. In a few cases, not even their children know! Wealth is accumulated through habits; at least in a free society like ours. At the moment, something like 1 out of 25 households falls into the millionaire category, most of it self-made. From the comments: Your right in Jac…

What percentage of those millionaires are house-rich? I.e. the house they live in just happened to appreciate significantly and is now worth over $1mm? Those people can still feel as if they are not wealthy at all.

It's old retired people, mostly, I guarantee it. One million dollars doesn't mean what it used to. If you hit 65 and don't have at least a million dollars in retirement accounts, you'll be working as a Wal-Mart greeter. Healthcare's insanely expensive, even on medicare. A "household" at retirement is probably two people, so that's half a million a person and you're "millionaires" but sure can't live like the term implies. Retire at 65 a low-end "millionaire" and your kids may well not inherit jack-shit. It'll all go to hospitals and hospice care and such, before the end.

Add in that Boomers skew much richer at the same stage in life as later generations, and that they're a large chunk of retired people, and yeah, "1 in 25 households are millionaires" just means half or 1/3 of retired people aren't living on cat food, and were actually able to retire. Hooray.

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well this is mostly semantics: the quote does not contradict, most of the wealth was self-made. as in the profits accumulated during their lifetime, it doesn't say anything about how the first one million or any amount was made. your consternation requires you to have a fixed and shared definition of self made that is just not described at all here. it does leave a glaring hole about then which wealth was not self-ma…

> alimony? child support? Alimony implies marriage. In marriage all the money earned belongs to both parties. If there's only a single earner and the other is a nurturer, so what? It's still both party's money. Alimony is there to help the nurturer transition back to an earner. Child support is, well, you made them, support them. Simple.

What point did you think you were making?

Money paid in alimony has nothing to do with money earned in marriage. The divorce division of marital property covers that. Alimony supports the lifestyle. Would you consider a recipient self made or not.

Would you consider a recipient of child support self made or not.

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$20M net worth at 27 while being financially independent at 17 years old here. AMA.

What was the habit that made you rich?

It was making your daily coffee at home and forgoing avocado toast, wasn't it?

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Wealth is accumulated through habits" is a great story to tell people but it seems very often to be complete BS. I see a lot of these. One of my favorite examples is https://www.businessinsider.com/how-ebony-horton-paid-off-22... . "How one 31-year-old paid off $220,000 in student loans in 3 years" is the exciting title. You have to get to paragraph #7 to learn "work at your parent's charity" is one of the techniq…

$20M net worth at 27 while being financially independent at 17 years old here. AMA.

Did you inherit your wealth?

No further questions

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#75
post #3

From the article: Most millionaires opt for stealth wealth. Their friends don’t know, their coworkers don’t know, their extended family doesn’t know. In a few cases, not even their children know! Wealth is accumulated through habits; at least in a free society like ours. At the moment, something like 1 out of 25 households falls into the millionaire category, most of it self-made. From the comments: Your right in Jac…

> "Wealth is accumulated through habits" is a great story to tell people but it seems very often to be complete BS.

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet, but I encourage you to dig more into financial independence, and how living more frugally can help you save more money to invest in the right ways to generate wealth. There's plenty of books on these habits, "The Millionaire Next Door", and even some popular communities that attest to it such as https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/.

You don't need to be rich to generate wealth, but it takes sacrifice (like everything in life), or even habits to get there.

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#76
post #3

From the article: Most millionaires opt for stealth wealth. Their friends don’t know, their coworkers don’t know, their extended family doesn’t know. In a few cases, not even their children know! Wealth is accumulated through habits; at least in a free society like ours. At the moment, something like 1 out of 25 households falls into the millionaire category, most of it self-made. From the comments: Your right in Jac…

Compound interest is a thing. If you are fortunate to have a job that allows you to save money, and you put that money in the S&P 500 it will double every 7-10 years.

His wealth was inherited, but if you start to invest money in your 20s, and you invest every month at dont touch it, you will most likely get rich if you live to be a senior.

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If so, they still have $1 million more to spend on rent.

Certainly. If they've actually purchased the home, and are not mid-mortgage on it. Honestly, crunching the numbers in my high COL area, the cost for a ~$1 million mortgage and the cost for renting a nice two bedroom, at the current rates, are basically the same. Essentially what you're saying is that because someone has put money into mortgage payments instead of rent, they're better off financially, and I'm complete…

>the cost for a ~$1 million mortgage

The scenario in this thread was originally "the house they live in just happened to appreciate significantly and is now worth over $1mm". You're describing quite a different situation.

That owner by definition does not have a $1m mortgage - or if they do, they have quite literally cashed out.

That owner is, in fact, saving a proportion of everyone else's general housing costs, compared to new buyers and ongoing renters.

Someone with a $1m mortgage is in quite a different situation (while likely very rich in terms of net worth, does not have to be a millionaire in terms of net wealth).

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's as hard to do as turning $10,000 into $1,000,000. It's hard, but provably not as hard . If you don't need the money, you can afford to take more and better risk with it. More risk is enough to get this article (not even necessarily better risk) - if 100 people take a pure 100:1 bet, then 1 can get an article like this. [As mentioned in the sibling comment, if you have enough time, then hard becomes easy]

You said it was provably not as hard and didn't try to prove the point you're making. I agree you can take more risk, but there's no guarantee that you're taking better risk and nothing about what you claimed proves that. It's almost certainly more challenging to take better risks as the investment requires gets larger. All sorts of new challenges crop up that didn't exist with smaller investments. It's the reason wh…

> There are a lot of sharks swimming in the capital markets with deep expertise.

I would argue that you have proven my point - if I have a bunch of money, I can pay for expertise/management that is going to net me a higher return.

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Wealth is accumulated through habits" is a great story to tell people but it seems very often to be complete BS. I see a lot of these. One of my favorite examples is https://www.businessinsider.com/how-ebony-horton-paid-off-22... . "How one 31-year-old paid off $220,000 in student loans in 3 years" is the exciting title. You have to get to paragraph #7 to learn "work at your parent's charity" is one of the techniq…

$20M net worth at 27 while being financially independent at 17 years old here. AMA.

Please tell us how you built your vast empire while starting with only a meager $1mil loan from your father.

Re: Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity

#80
post #3

From the article: Most millionaires opt for stealth wealth. Their friends don’t know, their coworkers don’t know, their extended family doesn’t know. In a few cases, not even their children know! Wealth is accumulated through habits; at least in a free society like ours. At the moment, something like 1 out of 25 households falls into the millionaire category, most of it self-made. From the comments: Your right in Jac…

> "Wealth is accumulated through habits" is a great story to tell people but it seems very often to be complete BS. I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet, but I encourage you to dig more into financial independence, and how living more frugally can help you save more money to invest in the right ways to generate wealth. There's plenty of books on these habits, "The Millionaire Next Door", and even some popular…

If you make 35k a year, what would you sacrifice to save up to become a millionaire? What if you need a car to get to work because public transit has been gutted in your community? What if you have kids?

The whole "personal responsibility" myth is designed to fool comfortably middle-class people who still do labour all day into not resenting the elites who live solely off the surplus value of their labour. It tells you to aspire to "passive income", which is ascension from the worker class into the capital class, instead of redistributive policies that would harm the capital class. You're not poor, you're a temporarily embarassed millionaire.

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