Man Built a $188M Fortune Investing in Stocks Then Donated It to Charity • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by jimbokun » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 3:54 PM UTC

misiti3780 wrote: post #76

jsjsbdkj wrote: 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.

Not $188 million rich.

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

#82

Post by Retric » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 3:59 PM UTC

woko wrote: post #33

FactolSarin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it takes money to make money. It's a lot easier to get a hundred million dollars when you start out with 1 million to put in the stock market.

One cannot transform 1 million into 100 millions without having 1 million in the first case (unless some debt leverage is used, but that is besides the point here). Right. However, I fail to see how that removes any value (or makes the task look easy) regarding Mc Donald's perspective. For that one guy who transformed 1 million into 100 millions, how many actually lost most of their initial million (in stock trading)…

The article points out 2,000x returns where possible if he started at 18 using the equivalent of index fund investing. So, he could have underperformed the market and turned 1 million into 2 billion let alone 100m. The critical issue was not spending his inheritance rather than needing to have amazing returns over that timeframe.

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

#83

Post by breck » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:00 PM UTC

lowercased wrote: post #42

andreilys wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

utilize my assets to earn additional income but that is illegal in my state What state would make investing illegal?

Possibly the poster was referring to a different set of assets.

All states make it legal for men to give each other brain damage in a boxing ring for money. Maybe women should make the rules.

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

#84

Post by jsjsbdkj » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:03 PM UTC

cik wrote: post #17

borplk wrote: post #9

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. Yes. It's capitalist propaganda. If you are a highly paid heart surgeon or CEO you can "accumulate wealth with habits". If you are anywhere between flipping burgers to many other types of jobs there's just not enough money "coming in" for these things to make a huge difference. You can be more sensible…

That's exceptionally untrue - though it can be true in context. In the city beside mine, renting a place downtown, and working in the grocery store it's very possible to save $500 per month. For reference, minimum wage is the equivalent of $1700 USD, and renting a one-bedroom, all in will cost roughly $454 USD. With cellphone (250GB of 5G speeds) costing the equivalent of $15 USD, and groceries and electricity costin…

> minimum wage is the equivalent of $1700 USD

Your first mistake is assuming you can get a minimum wage job for 40/hr (with benefits?). Maybe you can get 2 20hr/week jobs with no insurance, if you can schedule them right and travel between them fast enough.

> renting a one-bedroom, all in will cost roughly $454 USD

A room in a rooming house where I live costs $400/month, so I find this pretty suspect. Where is this extremely low COL city? Or is this assuming you have 3 roommates?

> With cellphone (250GB of 5G speeds) costing the equivalent of $15 USD, and groceries and electricity costing another $350, there's still plenty of space

$350/month for food seems low presuming you're working 40+ hours/week at multiple places. I'm assuming you're going to end up buying some prepared food at some point because you're run off your feet.

Your expenses don't include a car - does this extremely low COL city have an amazing public transit system that will help you get to your not-9-5 shifts? Or are you going to spend an hour waiting for the bus each way? How do you swing that if you have two jobs?

Assuming you don't have benefits, you better not take any prescription medication, or need glasses, or sustain any injuries. Even if you do, what's your co-pay like?

You still haven't purchased any clothes, shoes, any sort of entertainment, or enjoyed your life in any way. You need to wait until you're 65 to begin to live your life in any meaningful way, assuming you made it that far. And you certainly don't have kids to help take care of you!

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

#85

Post by tehwebguy » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #53

jsjsbdkj wrote: 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 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…

Struggling to find more because they don’t share common searchable text in the tweets but this has become the default format for these stories, on Twitter at least:

https://twitter.com/gavnugent/status/1359633577483378690

This is not to say it’s the majority of scenarios or anything, but it is funny to see how many headlines say something about how some “weird trick” helped people become millionaires and then the story mentions a significant inheritance or gift.

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

#86

Post by lucasmullens » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

vmception wrote: post #7

jsjsbdkj wrote: 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…

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…

I feel like "self made" doesn't have a useful definition anymore, since people disagree fundamentally on what it means. Arnold Schwarzenegger for instance argues there's no such thing as "self made".

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

#87

Post by jimbokun » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

jsjsbdkj wrote: post #80

zthrowaway wrote: post #75

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'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 y…

Without pre-existing wealth, the "Money Moustache" paradigm pretty much requires

1. Get college degree enabling 6-figure income.

2. Marry spouse making 6-figure income.

3. Live off of 1 income for 10 years or so, save the second income.

Then you can implement Money Moustache style finance plans. Or maybe for singles if you can make 6 figures and save over half of income.

But yeah, on 35k it's not very useful advice. Except "get a degree or training to get you into 6 figure income bracket", which may not be realistic, either, given existing time commitments.

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

#88

Post by sethc2 » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

Here’s a guy who saved his money and invested it and made a huge fortune from an inherited fortune, all so he could give it away.

The response - “ugh what an a-hole, who inherited his wealth”.

I’m so sick of hacker news. I mean if you were defending someone who squandered their opportunities but the bias was in the system, I applaud that defense. We should be very aware that some people are screwed and oppressed.

But it’s like you can do no good, unless you’ve overcome some huge gross injustice, or had zero privilege.

It reminds me of the Baptist’s who tell people they have no faith because you haven’t first went off and totally screwed yourself up and riddled yourself with addiction before “coming to Jesus”. If you respond well “I’ve just tried helping the poor, trusting and worshipping what I know of God, and being compassionate towards my fellow man” they’ll ask “but have you been first an awful human being then prayed the Jesus prayer?”

Likewise on HN - “I gave all my money to charity to help the less fortunate” response - “yeah but did you inherit that wealth?”

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

#89

Post by misiti3780 » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #81

misiti3780 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not $188 million rich.

why is that not possible - warren buffet didnt inherit money and became a billionaire. it's possible to get very rich on compound interest.

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

#90

Post by peterwoerner » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #81

misiti3780 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not $188 million rich.

Not $188 million rich, but certainly $2-5 million rich.