From the article: The most accountable people have singular, public, and risky brands: Oprah, Trump, Kanye, Elon
Trump is one of the "most accountable people"? This sentence threatens to invalidate the entire article.
How to get rich without getting lucky
261–270 of 527 posts
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky
#262I 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…
I've always had a theory that there are some variable luck factors that we can control. Meeting driven, creative and important people is a huge multiplier for luck. It, perhaps more than anything I've done, has changed my life for the better. I had a solid job in Mobile, AL working for an ad agency. Although, it felt isolating from the tech world. To combat that I started a publication interviewing designers and entr…
> To combat that I started a publication interviewing designers and entrepreneurs just to stay plugged into the community.
> So much good has come from a couple years and dozens of interviews. I met a co-founder, was paid to host a similar podcast and have made a ton of friends around the world. Not to mention, I might not be working as a designer had I never started doing interviews.
This is a really cool idea that makes perfect sense. It's basically a way to get plugged into an ecosystem of effective and interesting people. And everyone loves to talk about themselves, so I'm guessing it wasn't too difficult to find interviewees (at least once you got past the first barrier of being a publication with no history).
How did you get the idea? Did you have any relevant experience prior to starting the interviews and then making a publication out of it?
What do you think might be some less intensive alternatives? Starting a publication is not for everyone.
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 real…
I found it on his own blog, though it's almost impossible to locate now. Basically he inherited a family house, lived in it for a few years, and sold it for a large sum of money (in addition to holding a $100,000 + a year job and saving from it). As for the paid advocacy, have a look at their financials. You'll see a non-trivial amount of income from advertising on the website and speaking. EDIT: The house wasn't inh…
>As for the paid advocacy, have a look at their financials. You'll see a non-trivial amount of income from advertising on the website and speaking.
Because as we all know MMM's plan was always
1. Spend 20's saving 2. Save $600k 3. Quit job 4. Make blog 5. Make millions.
Yes, MMM makes bunches and bunches of money but he is pretty blatant about admitting the "early retirement" was a lie.
He never wanted to retire. He just wanted the option to not work and choose to work on what he wanted.
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Live in country which has generous welfare system (scandinavian countries). Here I think people have all the basic needs pretty much covered. You can only get your things messed up if you get hooked up on drugs or alcohol. Though to me living here it seems that people are still all the time complaining and demanding more and more, though we have more safety nets than about any other place on earth.
This has a flipside though. If you do manage to find success (and say, own a profitable business or have an exit), you'll be taxed into oblivion. It might not be the popular opinion on HN, but I would hate that. Make sure to structure things properly from the beginning so that you can leave when appropriate.
Sorry, but this has to be the dumbest comment in HN.
The parent post was saying how living in a country with a generous welfare system can make a lot easier to have more free time and easier to take risks, and you're worried that if you take advantage of that, you might need to help pay that off if you're successful?
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky
#265The 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…
'bouts of unemployment' this is bad luck and you are correct that it can take the wind out of anyone's sails.
Looking at the math, it's not difficult to find a mainstream mutual fund like FCNTX that has been pretty big for a long time. Since 1993, 25 years ago and encompassing both the dot com bust and the sub-prime catastrophe, it has returned, on an annualized basis, around 9%. I use that example because it's a pretty mainstream fund that has been highly rated by Morningstar most of those years, so it isn't hard to identify it as a fairly safe place to get excellent returns. I've been in it for most of those 25 years and when I first chose it, I was for sure a novice at investing. Note that today, it is only one of several funds in multiple sectors that I hold, I've diversified over time.
There really is no way to get rich quickly that does not involve a large dose of luck. The <30 multi-millionaires in Silicon Valley tilted the odds in their favor via a variety of means, but I'd guess that for every example of those people, you'd find dozens who moved to the area, worked their asses off in startups for a few years and then crashed and either settled for a regular job or moved elsewhere.
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky
#266Earlier 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…
> 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 real…
Nobody hired them for advocacy, but e.g. the MMM webpage makes a lot of money in ads. A lot.
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky
#267The 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…
> shop at Trader Joe's and Costco Huh? Was that trying to say save money at the supermarket? Because those are two stores I don't associate with saving money, they're stores that offer premium products at reasonable prices, but they aren't going to compete with actual discount retailers. It is just really odd examples/usage in that context...
Yeah, for sure you can find $60k diamond rings and $30k cognac at Costco (not kidding, see Costco in M.V.). But you can also get the least expensive per weight corn flakes, milk, potatoes and beans. And croissants...
I used those examples as a versus to the daily $7 Starbucks breakfast that many young folks seem to go for.
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky
#268Re: How to get rich without getting lucky
#269The 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…
spending a lot of effort on living frugal. There's just something off-putting about the thought of spending decades living frugally
There's a whole range there. You don't have to live on ramen. But you can be really aggressive about insurance premiums, utility bills, etc. You can learn home & auto repair & maintenance. You can make major life structure choices (Can your family live with one car?). These all can make a huge impact on your finances, and don't hurt the way perpetually living like a college student does.
Counterpoint: Your chances of dying before "making it big" and retiring are somewhere in the 1-in-10 range.
If this is the "get rich without getting particularly lucky" advice, perhaps we should assume it's also the "get rich without getting particularly unlucky" advice. There's an endless list of terribly unlucky things that would ruin just about anyone, but don't generally bear planning for.
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no mustache and was born with no silver spoon, Had to work my way through college. This approach to building wealth worked for me.
It is impossible to 'work your way through college' now unless you are making $50k/year part-time. State schools start around $10k/year just for tuition. All in costs are $30k/year+. I'm so glad I went to school 15 years ago. Students today are totally screwed.
If in-state tuition is 11k (my case), you don't think you can make that while going to school? Granted, I worked and of course, there were other expenses, so I didn't get out loan free. But it's possible if you're some sort of penny-pinching masochist...