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

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

#131

Post by cik »

jsjsbdkj wrote: post #84
cik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

As I mentioned, elsewhere, this is in Israel - and clearly not a HCL city like Tel Aviv. While I'm not the example, I pay less than this for many things, simply because of city I live in. My cell, with 250GB of data (as an example) is 29 NIS - about $9 USD.

Prescription medication, and glasses are covered by our equivalent of HMOs. Depending on income levels these are literally free. There are no copays - we have socialised medicine.

Yesterday, I bought a pair of jeans and a t-shirt at Fox, the local store. Their cost - 55 NIS (that's ~16 USD). For a further data point, a monthly inter-city transit pass costs ~256 NIS so Again, I don't think that someone doing this would have a high quality of life. I'm just saying that it is very possible - but it depends on many things.

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

#132

Post by lotsofpulp »

sidlls wrote: post #105
dionidium wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 20% of millionaires inherited their wealth. [0] (It may actually be far less than that, if you interpret "inherited their wealth" to mean "inherited over a million dollars." [1]) Almost 70% of those with ultra-high net worths are self-made. [2] [0] https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0810/7-millionai... . [1] https://www.chrishogan360.com/investing/how-many-millionaire... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/0…

These articles are all exceptionally light on details. A good example: Zuckerberg is considered "self-made," right? Except he had a wealthy father (dentist) with wealthy social connections who funded his company. It is at best misleading to claim Zuckerberg is "self-made", in that it completely elides substantial luck and money he did not, in fact, earn, to get where he is.

Zuckerberg certainly has the benefit of having parents a few standard deviations above the mean who could afford to send him to a nice school a few standard deviations above the mean and coming of age at exactly the right time that the internet was about to become ubiquitous.

However, compared to others, he is pretty self made in the sense that he did the grunt work to create his website and get it off the ground. Obviously, almost no one vaults themselves to the top with zero help, but Zuckerberg is a far cry from someone who inherited a trust fund and then placed various bets hoping to hit it big by funding someone else's work.

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

#133

Post by llampx »

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.

Onlyfans is legal

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

#134

Post by frongpik »

zpeti wrote: post #92
sethc2 wrote: post #88

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…

The religion analogy is great, because that's what this is. Wealth, privilege is now original sin for a lot of people. There is no real way to get out of it. See here. Even giving it away means you stay guilty. Never mind the guy didn't even spend his money on anything. Just having it is sin. I think the only way you can get rid of this original sin is by donating to climate change efforts or BLM or something similar…

We even have a prominent populist who "will return power to the people". And to be frank, when half of the nation lives in poverty, poulists won't have any trouble getting votes.

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

#135

Post by biolurker1 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #117
idrios wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this example going around because it's such an egregious example of attributing to hard work what was essentially just gifted, but I think "wealth is accumulated through habits" is not wrong. It's really just a statement about compound interest, that if you live frugally and invest you'll end up with tons of money. The statement is better characterized as something like "wealth is the product of habits and…

I'm going to say something heretical here, but: I'm increasingly convinced that the whole compound interest thing is bullshit. Not math-wise, the math checks out. Just propaganda-wise. In practice, with interest rates available to general population, a typical person isn't going to accumulate any meaningful wealth unless they were already wealthy. Say you're saving $500 a month for 10 years, on an account with 5% int…

All your argument is based on your ignorance of what investing and compounding means. Not interest rates. Investing in stocks, bonds and assets. Nobody ever has implied that you can build wealth by saving accounts.

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

#136

Post by dionidium »

sidlls wrote: post #105
dionidium wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 20% of millionaires inherited their wealth. [0] (It may actually be far less than that, if you interpret "inherited their wealth" to mean "inherited over a million dollars." [1]) Almost 70% of those with ultra-high net worths are self-made. [2] [0] https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0810/7-millionai... . [1] https://www.chrishogan360.com/investing/how-many-millionaire... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/0…

These articles are all exceptionally light on details. A good example: Zuckerberg is considered "self-made," right? Except he had a wealthy father (dentist) with wealthy social connections who funded his company. It is at best misleading to claim Zuckerberg is "self-made", in that it completely elides substantial luck and money he did not, in fact, earn, to get where he is.

"Self-made" is one of those terms that one should probably never use, since it rankles otherwise generous readers. If you can get past that indiscretion, I think you'll see that I didn't actually make any claims that contradict your rebuttal.

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

#137

Post by croon »

biolurker1 wrote: post #135
TeMPOraL wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to say something heretical here, but: I'm increasingly convinced that the whole compound interest thing is bullshit. Not math-wise, the math checks out. Just propaganda-wise. In practice, with interest rates available to general population, a typical person isn't going to accumulate any meaningful wealth unless they were already wealthy. Say you're saving $500 a month for 10 years, on an account with 5% int…

All your argument is based on your ignorance of what investing and compounding means. Not interest rates. Investing in stocks, bonds and assets. Nobody ever has implied that you can build wealth by saving accounts.

Would you care to elaborate on what relevant difference there is between 5% interest in a savings account and 5% growth of stock portfolio?

Compound interest is compound interest. 5% or 7% or 11% matters, where that comes from doesn't.

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

#138

Post by jfengel »

idrios wrote: post #121
TeMPOraL wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to say something heretical here, but: I'm increasingly convinced that the whole compound interest thing is bullshit. Not math-wise, the math checks out. Just propaganda-wise. In practice, with interest rates available to general population, a typical person isn't going to accumulate any meaningful wealth unless they were already wealthy. Say you're saving $500 a month for 10 years, on an account with 5% int…

Honestly, I agree with everything you just said. I will say that if you continue the pattern for 20 years you end up with $200k, of which $83k was made in interest -- and after 30 years you'll have $400k, $200k made from interest. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 averages about 11% interest annual. The article is vague on some details, but if you did what it sounds like the man in the article did and invested $500/year into th…

The GP was talking $500/month rather than $500/year. That's a fair bit of money. It's nearly half the wage of a US minimum wage worker (and over half their paycheck, once taxes are taken out).

Even if you get a $15 minimum wage (as some places already have), it's still asking somebody to put away 25% of what they earn. That seems very unlikely. Not impossible, but a lot of life circumstances could easily result in it being impossible.

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

#139

Post by biolurker1 »

croon wrote: post #137
biolurker1 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All your argument is based on your ignorance of what investing and compounding means. Not interest rates. Investing in stocks, bonds and assets. Nobody ever has implied that you can build wealth by saving accounts.

Would you care to elaborate on what relevant difference there is between 5% interest in a savings account and 5% growth of stock portfolio? Compound interest is compound interest. 5% or 7% or 11% matters, where that comes from doesn't.

There are no savings accounts with interest comparable to stocks. If that was so nobody would invest in stocks because one has big risk and the other zero. You are very financially illiterate and I don't mean it as an insult. Sadly these things should be taught at schools. Also, there are currently no 5% saving rates in any of the big currencies.

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

#140

Post by peytn »

cik wrote: post #61
peytn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume the whole point of picking the S&P 500 and not, say, Bitcoin is that it is something that an average person would reasonably invest in. Presumably you don’t live in the US. Who exactly is working at a grocery store abroad and putting their savings in SPY for 45 years? Are there average people abroad who would’ve invested all their money in US markets for the past 45 years and considered that a financially so…

I'm in Israel. This is extremely normal. We have trackers on the TLV. If you work anywhere and have any sort of pension, the default (i.e you sign your employment contract, and forget about life) is 80% tracking the S&P 500. To be clear, pensions are a thing in this country - most employees are legally mandated to pay into them, with pre-tax dollars that are received as a credit, with an employee match. That amount i…

Interesting, did not know. Thanks.
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