8 ms·

Are you rich? If so, how did you get there?

134 points by scrrr 16y ago

jacquesm 16y ago
Define 'rich'. If you're healthy and you have people to love and that love you in return and you get to write your own ticket in life then you are rich beyond belief. If you crave money for its own sake you will never be rich.
- maxklein 16y ago
  It's easier to make money than to love and be loved for some.
  - morphir 16y ago
    you wouldn't be able to make that statement without that being the case for you personally, now would you?
- davidw 16y ago
  > Define 'rich'. Not having to worry about money, and working by choice rather than out of necessity.
  - krschultz 16y ago
    Then I know a lot of people with >$30 million who are not rich, and I know a few with <$1 million who are rich. That doesn't make your definition wrong, but it does point out that being rich is a matter of personal choices on expenses just as much as income/gross worth. If you go to West Chester county NY you'll find hundreds of ex-Wall Street guys with foreclosures on their 5 million dollar houses and annual salaries >400k and little to show for it after the crash.
- StavrosK 16y ago
  My reply to the question "How did you become rich?" would be "I cut down on the amount of money I need to live".
- imgabe 16y ago
  Rich: having passive income that satisfies your material needs/desires.
  - marcofloriano 16y ago
    Rich: you have so much money that you cant find a way to spend it, no matter how hard you try, in the next 100 years.
- deltahat 16y ago
  I'm not "rich", but I'm cashflow positive.
  - marcofloriano 16y ago
    so what ?
- rikthevik 16y ago
  By learning what 'enough' is for me.
- sabat 16y ago
  I define it in a different way, and in more practical terms. Being rich in America means not having day-to-day concerns about money. Sure, the rich need to worry about their riches. But not like most of us who are far to close to becoming poor (definition: not enough wherewithal to care for one's self and family).
- illumin8 16y ago
  Everyone has their own version of 'rich'. In my experience the ones that are the richest are the most driven and don't consider themselves rich no matter how much they have. Like my grandparents who had a net worth into the $tens of millions and yet I watched my grandma spend a half hour looking for the cheapest can of food on an aisle at the grocery store - anything to save one or two cents. I think people become wealthy by being somewhat obsessed with saving money, starting businesses, or cutting costs in all aspects of their lives. Once they've achieved a certain amount of money, no matter how much it is, their brain is hardwired to save, so they will probably never spend it in their lifetime. I also get a kick out of people responding that they are rich with a net worth of $100K, and also have mortgages, car loans, etc, that they don't count against their savings. This is ridiculous- they brag that they can afford a nice car so they must be rich- no, I'm sorry, you're a poor wage slave who has more debt than savings; you are not rich. My definition of rich is pretty simple - if you can stop working tomorrow and maintain your present lifestyle - I consider that wealthy. You have the freedom to do what you want with your life. For some people this might be a few million, for some this might be much more.
  - weaksauce 16y ago
    I agree that you are only rich if you are not a slave to someone elses clock.
  - neilk 16y ago
    > If you can stop working tomorrow and maintain your present lifestyle - I consider that wealthy. Even for most rich people, stopping work would require some adjustments. Tom Wolfe documented this pretty well in Bonfire of the Vanities. A bond trader loses his job and has to live on his savings. He acknowledges that he could still live like a king if he just moved out of his Park Avenue apartment, but "going backwards" is just socially inconceivable. He'd have to quit the club that all his wife's friends are members of, etc. etc. However, I agree to some extent with your definition of rich. I just note that 'present lifestyle' is also a variable here. This is why adjusting your expectations provides, in a certain sense, the best ROI possible. It costs nothing and you can become fabulously wealthy as a result.
- alexyim 16y ago
  If you crave money for its own sake you will never be rich. What's the logic behind that? I see a lot of people making this claim (probably unwarranted).. where exactly is this coming from?
- prewett 16y ago
  Similar to jacquesm, my answer to the question of how I became rich was "I was born in America." Our poor people have access to more than anyone in the history of the world. Our poor people have magic boxes with which they can talk to people anywhere. Our poor people can go to a building where they have free books for anyone, and more magic boxes with which they can look up any piece of information they want, for free. Our poor people can walk into a supermarket and buy fresh fruit year round. (If they have kids, the government will even give them coupons) Our poor people have another magic box that receives 24-hour moving pictures of news, movies, entertainment, and educational programming. Many of our poor people have a metal box that you pour gasoline in and it moves by itself much faster than a horse can gallop. When our poor get sick, they can go to the emergency room and get doctors for free (the rich people's insurance and the rich tax-payers foot the bill). In a third-world country poor people wonder if they are going to have food today. If they get sick, they die. When they want to travel, they walk. If the crops fail, they starve. They can count on the fingers of one hand the number of suits of clothes they have. If you have a college degree, statistically, you are richer than 98% of the world.
BjornW 16y ago
I get the feeling HN has more posts on becoming rich lately and frankly I find it not very relevant for Hackers News. Yes, it's great if your hack/project/application allows you to gain a nice income, but personally I'm more interested in your hack/project/application and the process around it than the possible outcome of being financially independent. If that's your definition of 'rich'.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  HN is somewhat topical in that a topic will get some attention for a while and then fades away again. I've seen this happen with a variety of subjects and it really doesn't mean much. It'll happen with more hacking related subjects as well, and I think the fascination with the 'being rich' thing is that HN started out as more startup oriented and many people pursue the startup route out of a motivation for financial independence.
- alttab 16y ago
  I'm picturing a lot of guys who sold everything they have to move to SF to become a start up founder / rock star. This is not unlike moving to LA and being a waitress to tread water whilst trying to make it big in Hollywood. A portion of these guys are probably frustrated, burned out, and lost. The only way to reinvigorate in some eyes is to figure out how rich they need to get before they are happy. Never chase money because it will outrun you. Money is like girls, it only comes in bounds once you stop giving a shit. Ever wonder why you only get hit on by hot girls when you actually have a girlfriend? There are stories of teenagers making their first million and they're ideas are super-simple. I wonder if its possible some portion of the HN crowd is trying too hard to get rich by being smart.
  - Retric 16y ago
    When a million people try X, a few hundred can get really lucky. Tell a million people to go to take a grand to Vegas and bet their 1,000$ on 7 on a roulette table. Then have them take their winnings and do the same thing until FU money. Some of them would become millionaires, but collectively they would all be worse off. (They started with 1 billion.) The secret is to look for things where risk > reward. Unfortunately writing generic web apps is probably not it. But, the obvious cost is simply time which people tend to undervalue, so it's not obvious if the game is rigged or not.
dabent 16y ago
It seems the theme is business ownership. Of course, Reddit might be populated more by tech-savvy folks, leading to the talk of startups there. But overall, those who seem to make big sums of money are those who have equity in successful businesses. That includes the people who run used tire shops, electrician companies and fast food franchises as well as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Buffet is smart enough to have built a business that buys equity in other businesses (not to mention having the brains to know what equity to buy).
- habitue 16y ago
  Remember selection bias. There is usually a fair amount of luck involved in becoming rich, and asking rich people how they became that way just tells you how those people became rich, not necessarily how you can become rich yourself. It's a little like asking lottery winners how they picked their numbers (obviously becoming rich legitimately requires real work and isn't totally random, but you get my point).
  - dabent 16y ago
    There may be some bias in the Reddit thread, which is admittedly slanted toward sofware/tech startups, but I also draw on some other sources. The book "The Millionaire Mind," Thomas Stanley looked at a variety of wealthy people and found that many who accumulated wealth did so through their own (often mundane) businesses. Others were those with high-income jobs and enough sense to invest wisely. The Forbes list also seems to contain those who largely built or somehow own (through purchase, birth or connections) business equity. My personal experience confirms this. Those I know who seem to have legitimate wealth are a junkyard owner, a used tire store owner, an owner of an electrician outfit, an owner of a financial services company, and a couple of doctors who've invested well. Oh, and a retired NFL player who also didn't blow his cash while he played. There is luck in getting a new business to take off, for sure. I'm not trying to downplay the risks, but I am trying to show that there is a key to how those that made it did so. One could also have born to Sam Walton or a Hilton or something like that. But keep in mind that those parents made their wealth building businesses. If someone knows of a better way to do it, or other ways, I'm all ears. Winning the lottery works for so few, that I'm inclined to consider it negligible.
jim_dot 16y ago
My wife claims I have "value"... does that count?
winternett 16y ago
I suspect majority of the people who are technically "rich" as you put it have either inherited wealth or opportunity in life, and though they cloud it with epic stories of hard work, they started out ahead of the game, and with money to burn. There are very few "rags to riches" stories these days, and little reward and interest in ideas from normal people. The prospect of gaining financial stability [through even magnificent short term gains] is decreasing daily in the US. just look at foreclosures to see that people who though their lives were successful had the success rug pulled out from under them. We need to stop supporting mega-companies and bring development and even retail back to the mom&pop era. Your privacy is threatened BECAUSE Google has become a giant company, if small businesses ran individual development projects, they wouldn't have enough time to worry about collecting personal data on every human in the world. We are turning into a lottery society, and the ideal of being able to be successful is as much a myth as Santa Claus, even with hard work. Net neutrality and measures that mega companies will take to suppress competition will kill the possibilities for common folk to succeed even deeper into the "unobtainable/impossible" category. Get used to failed dreams... Sorry to be so grim.
- 5teev 16y ago
  There's a lot of truth to this, but you'll soon be shouted down by the very people you describe. Successful people--however they got there--only like to attribute it to their own very hard work.
  - m_myers 16y ago
    And now any disagreement can be immediately disqualified without further argument. Well done.
    - winternett 16y ago
      I said nothing about wealth/opportunity inheritors being lazy. Many work hard and aren't bad people. I was commenting about the dream of success and how its skewed to tell people that they can do whatever they want, and that they can create a start up that will succeed on ideas and marketing alone... There is much more at work in this society than whats written on paper, especially if you're reading Rich Dad Poor Dad.
timcederman 16y ago
Disappointed that the top voted comment there recommends Rich Dad, Poor Dad and the rest of the Robert Kiyosaki dross.
- freakwit 16y ago
  Disappointed that this comment does not recommend an alternative.
  - timcederman 16y ago
    I've been doing just fine without any self-help books, why do I need to recommend an alternative? Rich Dad, Poor Dad is particularly terrible by the way. A sampling of the criticism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_dad_poor_dad#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_dad_poor_dad#Criticism
    - freakwit 16y ago
      Some of us aren't doing so fine. Knowing not to do something is good, but knowing how to do something is far better.
T_S_ 16y ago
Not the right question. Human nature works like this: If you think $5mm net worth is enough for you might get $1mm. If the figure is $20mm, you might get to $5mm. If you happen to achieve your goal, the figure will rise. Guaranteed. If you focus on money exclusively you will be very unhappy. There are other accounts, which don't send monthly statements and don't allow wire deposits. I know plenty of wealthy people that are unhappy because they don't realize this. For some people money is even a poison. A sudden increase in wealth would lead to personal disaster. So you see, nobody is rich, envy is wasted energy. Lecture over, here's the answer: Land investments, Equity + influence in a business.
istari 16y ago
People seem to consider it immoral to want to get rich too much. People are answering in a defensive way. Every other post here preaches the importance of true happiness, family, friends, health, etc vs money. I find this tiring. Imagine going to a website dedicated to the playing of tennis at a professional level, opening a post called "How do I win?", and having people stress the importance of enjoying the game and protecting your long term health versus focusing on the narrow and shortsighted goal of winning. I for one think there's more than enough hours in the day to both get filthy rich and be a happy, well adjusted human being, as long as you're smart about how you go about it. Ask yourself: does that idea seem offensive?
- smokinn 16y ago
  If your goal is to get rid of a bit of the stigma maybe you should start by not calling it "filthy" rich.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  I think the difference between the way you look at HN and the way I do is that I think this isn't a site that is strictly about 'how to win' in the business world but on how to improve your game in a much more general sense. It's about skills, not about 'how do I win'. And if enjoying the game makes you practice longer and harder that's a valid way to go about reaching your goals. Neglecting your long term health at the expense of trying to win means that if you don't win in the short term that you will not be able to try again. The narrow and shortsighted goal is one that you may want to achieve but I almost guarantee you that you're not going to be a winner without improving your game first and without enjoying the game even if you don't win and without protecting your long term health. There is no 'winning' in this sense in the businessworld, you can set a goal and by achieving that you can make money almost as a by-product. HN is (at least in my perception) partly about achieving those intermediate goals. If rich to you means having money then you're going to have to achieve that goal in an indirect way (or you'll have to rob a bank).
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  I'm sorry but your naivety abounds. I have family that have huge houses on acres of land, but make less than me (in my early 20's). Yet here to get that where I live, you literally have to be raking in the money. The reason so many people have a problem with wanting to get rich is because it is invariably at the expense of all else. This is where the naivety truly is, because those who are rich are there because of all those 'vs money' options. I can't work my job if I'm not healthy, I can't get a promotion if I can't make friends, I wouldn't even have my job if it wasn't for my family, and I wouldn't be happy if it wasn't for all of the above. You'll never get 'filthy rich' if you don't have people to help you. IIRC Google wouldn't even exist because the founders were friends with their professor, who encouraged them to stick with their method for the PageRank system. AFAIK their university studies appear to have both been paid for by their family. The idea isn't necessarily offensive in a moral nature for me, it's offensive because it's wholly naive.
msort 16y ago
Those tips for joining startups seems to be interesting: "For your first startup: You want a place with >10 folks but less than 200. I say this under the theory that you are mostly working there to find challenging work and smart people. A startup with >200 people is too close to becoming a big company (or a failure) soon. Be very strong in your field, if you are not yet that good practice until you are. Try to work on the hardest projects you can find at your current employer. You will probably not get rich at your first startup, but you will learn at least 3x more per week than you would at a big company. Don't obsess too much on how many options etc... - it really doesn't matter - you are mostly going there to do good work, learn and find folks who will make successful startups."
neilk 16y ago
I was born in North America to a family that lived within its means, above the poverty line. If you are like me, you were born rich.
known 16y ago
Is money a good measure of wealth?
1stwealthcoach 16y ago
Based on years of research,observations and trials, the most effective, legitimate and simply way i have identified to becoming wealthy is rather simply, straight forward and with little risk to your existing routine. And it is no other than leveraging. leveraging is the age old proven strategy of gaining wealth that has been and is still in practice from over 2,000 years ago. Even Jesus used leveraging to execute his successful ministry. Leveraging when understood and properly engaged can make you wealthy in no time. And I mean in as little as a few years
- 1stwealthcoach 16y ago
  adekunlewealthcoach@wordpress.com

134 points by scrrr 16y ago

Define 'rich'. If you're healthy and you have people to love and that love you in return and you get to write your own ticket in life then you are rich beyond belief. If you crave money for its own sake you will never be rich.

maxklein 16y ago
It's easier to make money than to love and be loved for some.
- morphir 16y ago
  you wouldn't be able to make that statement without that being the case for you personally, now would you?
davidw 16y ago
> Define 'rich'. Not having to worry about money, and working by choice rather than out of necessity.
- krschultz 16y ago
  Then I know a lot of people with >$30 million who are not rich, and I know a few with <$1 million who are rich. That doesn't make your definition wrong, but it does point out that being rich is a matter of personal choices on expenses just as much as income/gross worth. If you go to West Chester county NY you'll find hundreds of ex-Wall Street guys with foreclosures on their 5 million dollar houses and annual salaries >400k and little to show for it after the crash.
StavrosK 16y ago
My reply to the question "How did you become rich?" would be "I cut down on the amount of money I need to live".
imgabe 16y ago
Rich: having passive income that satisfies your material needs/desires.
- marcofloriano 16y ago
  Rich: you have so much money that you cant find a way to spend it, no matter how hard you try, in the next 100 years.
deltahat 16y ago
I'm not "rich", but I'm cashflow positive.
- marcofloriano 16y ago
  so what ?
rikthevik 16y ago
By learning what 'enough' is for me.
sabat 16y ago
I define it in a different way, and in more practical terms. Being rich in America means not having day-to-day concerns about money. Sure, the rich need to worry about their riches. But not like most of us who are far to close to becoming poor (definition: not enough wherewithal to care for one's self and family).
illumin8 16y ago
Everyone has their own version of 'rich'. In my experience the ones that are the richest are the most driven and don't consider themselves rich no matter how much they have. Like my grandparents who had a net worth into the $tens of millions and yet I watched my grandma spend a half hour looking for the cheapest can of food on an aisle at the grocery store - anything to save one or two cents. I think people become wealthy by being somewhat obsessed with saving money, starting businesses, or cutting costs in all aspects of their lives. Once they've achieved a certain amount of money, no matter how much it is, their brain is hardwired to save, so they will probably never spend it in their lifetime. I also get a kick out of people responding that they are rich with a net worth of $100K, and also have mortgages, car loans, etc, that they don't count against their savings. This is ridiculous- they brag that they can afford a nice car so they must be rich- no, I'm sorry, you're a poor wage slave who has more debt than savings; you are not rich. My definition of rich is pretty simple - if you can stop working tomorrow and maintain your present lifestyle - I consider that wealthy. You have the freedom to do what you want with your life. For some people this might be a few million, for some this might be much more.
- weaksauce 16y ago
  I agree that you are only rich if you are not a slave to someone elses clock.
- neilk 16y ago
  > If you can stop working tomorrow and maintain your present lifestyle - I consider that wealthy. Even for most rich people, stopping work would require some adjustments. Tom Wolfe documented this pretty well in Bonfire of the Vanities. A bond trader loses his job and has to live on his savings. He acknowledges that he could still live like a king if he just moved out of his Park Avenue apartment, but "going backwards" is just socially inconceivable. He'd have to quit the club that all his wife's friends are members of, etc. etc. However, I agree to some extent with your definition of rich. I just note that 'present lifestyle' is also a variable here. This is why adjusting your expectations provides, in a certain sense, the best ROI possible. It costs nothing and you can become fabulously wealthy as a result.
alexyim 16y ago
If you crave money for its own sake you will never be rich. What's the logic behind that? I see a lot of people making this claim (probably unwarranted).. where exactly is this coming from?
prewett 16y ago
Similar to jacquesm, my answer to the question of how I became rich was "I was born in America." Our poor people have access to more than anyone in the history of the world. Our poor people have magic boxes with which they can talk to people anywhere. Our poor people can go to a building where they have free books for anyone, and more magic boxes with which they can look up any piece of information they want, for free. Our poor people can walk into a supermarket and buy fresh fruit year round. (If they have kids, the government will even give them coupons) Our poor people have another magic box that receives 24-hour moving pictures of news, movies, entertainment, and educational programming. Many of our poor people have a metal box that you pour gasoline in and it moves by itself much faster than a horse can gallop. When our poor get sick, they can go to the emergency room and get doctors for free (the rich people's insurance and the rich tax-payers foot the bill). In a third-world country poor people wonder if they are going to have food today. If they get sick, they die. When they want to travel, they walk. If the crops fail, they starve. They can count on the fingers of one hand the number of suits of clothes they have. If you have a college degree, statistically, you are richer than 98% of the world.

BjornW 16y ago

I get the feeling HN has more posts on becoming rich lately and frankly I find it not very relevant for Hackers News. Yes, it's great if your hack/project/application allows you to gain a nice income, but personally I'm more interested in your hack/project/application and the process around it than the possible outcome of being financially independent. If that's your definition of 'rich'.

jacquesm 16y ago
HN is somewhat topical in that a topic will get some attention for a while and then fades away again. I've seen this happen with a variety of subjects and it really doesn't mean much. It'll happen with more hacking related subjects as well, and I think the fascination with the 'being rich' thing is that HN started out as more startup oriented and many people pursue the startup route out of a motivation for financial independence.
alttab 16y ago
I'm picturing a lot of guys who sold everything they have to move to SF to become a start up founder / rock star. This is not unlike moving to LA and being a waitress to tread water whilst trying to make it big in Hollywood. A portion of these guys are probably frustrated, burned out, and lost. The only way to reinvigorate in some eyes is to figure out how rich they need to get before they are happy. Never chase money because it will outrun you. Money is like girls, it only comes in bounds once you stop giving a shit. Ever wonder why you only get hit on by hot girls when you actually have a girlfriend? There are stories of teenagers making their first million and they're ideas are super-simple. I wonder if its possible some portion of the HN crowd is trying too hard to get rich by being smart.
- Retric 16y ago
  When a million people try X, a few hundred can get really lucky. Tell a million people to go to take a grand to Vegas and bet their 1,000$ on 7 on a roulette table. Then have them take their winnings and do the same thing until FU money. Some of them would become millionaires, but collectively they would all be worse off. (They started with 1 billion.) The secret is to look for things where risk > reward. Unfortunately writing generic web apps is probably not it. But, the obvious cost is simply time which people tend to undervalue, so it's not obvious if the game is rigged or not.

dabent 16y ago

It seems the theme is business ownership. Of course, Reddit might be populated more by tech-savvy folks, leading to the talk of startups there. But overall, those who seem to make big sums of money are those who have equity in successful businesses. That includes the people who run used tire shops, electrician companies and fast food franchises as well as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Buffet is smart enough to have built a business that buys equity in other businesses (not to mention having the brains to know what equity to buy).

habitue 16y ago
Remember selection bias. There is usually a fair amount of luck involved in becoming rich, and asking rich people how they became that way just tells you how those people became rich, not necessarily how you can become rich yourself. It's a little like asking lottery winners how they picked their numbers (obviously becoming rich legitimately requires real work and isn't totally random, but you get my point).
- dabent 16y ago
  There may be some bias in the Reddit thread, which is admittedly slanted toward sofware/tech startups, but I also draw on some other sources. The book "The Millionaire Mind," Thomas Stanley looked at a variety of wealthy people and found that many who accumulated wealth did so through their own (often mundane) businesses. Others were those with high-income jobs and enough sense to invest wisely. The Forbes list also seems to contain those who largely built or somehow own (through purchase, birth or connections) business equity. My personal experience confirms this. Those I know who seem to have legitimate wealth are a junkyard owner, a used tire store owner, an owner of an electrician outfit, an owner of a financial services company, and a couple of doctors who've invested well. Oh, and a retired NFL player who also didn't blow his cash while he played. There is luck in getting a new business to take off, for sure. I'm not trying to downplay the risks, but I am trying to show that there is a key to how those that made it did so. One could also have born to Sam Walton or a Hilton or something like that. But keep in mind that those parents made their wealth building businesses. If someone knows of a better way to do it, or other ways, I'm all ears. Winning the lottery works for so few, that I'm inclined to consider it negligible.

jim_dot 16y ago

My wife claims I have "value"... does that count?

winternett 16y ago

I suspect majority of the people who are technically "rich" as you put it have either inherited wealth or opportunity in life, and though they cloud it with epic stories of hard work, they started out ahead of the game, and with money to burn. There are very few "rags to riches" stories these days, and little reward and interest in ideas from normal people. The prospect of gaining financial stability [through even magnificent short term gains] is decreasing daily in the US. just look at foreclosures to see that people who though their lives were successful had the success rug pulled out from under them. We need to stop supporting mega-companies and bring development and even retail back to the mom&pop era. Your privacy is threatened BECAUSE Google has become a giant company, if small businesses ran individual development projects, they wouldn't have enough time to worry about collecting personal data on every human in the world. We are turning into a lottery society, and the ideal of being able to be successful is as much a myth as Santa Claus, even with hard work. Net neutrality and measures that mega companies will take to suppress competition will kill the possibilities for common folk to succeed even deeper into the "unobtainable/impossible" category. Get used to failed dreams... Sorry to be so grim.

5teev 16y ago
There's a lot of truth to this, but you'll soon be shouted down by the very people you describe. Successful people--however they got there--only like to attribute it to their own very hard work.
- m_myers 16y ago
  And now any disagreement can be immediately disqualified without further argument. Well done.
  - winternett 16y ago
    I said nothing about wealth/opportunity inheritors being lazy. Many work hard and aren't bad people. I was commenting about the dream of success and how its skewed to tell people that they can do whatever they want, and that they can create a start up that will succeed on ideas and marketing alone... There is much more at work in this society than whats written on paper, especially if you're reading Rich Dad Poor Dad.

timcederman 16y ago

Disappointed that the top voted comment there recommends Rich Dad, Poor Dad and the rest of the Robert Kiyosaki dross.

freakwit 16y ago
Disappointed that this comment does not recommend an alternative.
- timcederman 16y ago
  I've been doing just fine without any self-help books, why do I need to recommend an alternative? Rich Dad, Poor Dad is particularly terrible by the way. A sampling of the criticism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_dad_poor_dad#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_dad_poor_dad#Criticism
  - freakwit 16y ago
    Some of us aren't doing so fine. Knowing not to do something is good, but knowing how to do something is far better.

T_S_ 16y ago

Not the right question. Human nature works like this: If you think $5mm net worth is enough for you might get $1mm. If the figure is $20mm, you might get to $5mm. If you happen to achieve your goal, the figure will rise. Guaranteed. If you focus on money exclusively you will be very unhappy. There are other accounts, which don't send monthly statements and don't allow wire deposits. I know plenty of wealthy people that are unhappy because they don't realize this. For some people money is even a poison. A sudden increase in wealth would lead to personal disaster. So you see, nobody is rich, envy is wasted energy. Lecture over, here's the answer: Land investments, Equity + influence in a business.

istari 16y ago

People seem to consider it immoral to want to get rich too much. People are answering in a defensive way. Every other post here preaches the importance of true happiness, family, friends, health, etc vs money. I find this tiring. Imagine going to a website dedicated to the playing of tennis at a professional level, opening a post called "How do I win?", and having people stress the importance of enjoying the game and protecting your long term health versus focusing on the narrow and shortsighted goal of winning. I for one think there's more than enough hours in the day to both get filthy rich and be a happy, well adjusted human being, as long as you're smart about how you go about it. Ask yourself: does that idea seem offensive?

smokinn 16y ago
If your goal is to get rid of a bit of the stigma maybe you should start by not calling it "filthy" rich.
jacquesm 16y ago
I think the difference between the way you look at HN and the way I do is that I think this isn't a site that is strictly about 'how to win' in the business world but on how to improve your game in a much more general sense. It's about skills, not about 'how do I win'. And if enjoying the game makes you practice longer and harder that's a valid way to go about reaching your goals. Neglecting your long term health at the expense of trying to win means that if you don't win in the short term that you will not be able to try again. The narrow and shortsighted goal is one that you may want to achieve but I almost guarantee you that you're not going to be a winner without improving your game first and without enjoying the game even if you don't win and without protecting your long term health. There is no 'winning' in this sense in the businessworld, you can set a goal and by achieving that you can make money almost as a by-product. HN is (at least in my perception) partly about achieving those intermediate goals. If rich to you means having money then you're going to have to achieve that goal in an indirect way (or you'll have to rob a bank).
electromagnetic 16y ago
I'm sorry but your naivety abounds. I have family that have huge houses on acres of land, but make less than me (in my early 20's). Yet here to get that where I live, you literally have to be raking in the money. The reason so many people have a problem with wanting to get rich is because it is invariably at the expense of all else. This is where the naivety truly is, because those who are rich are there because of all those 'vs money' options. I can't work my job if I'm not healthy, I can't get a promotion if I can't make friends, I wouldn't even have my job if it wasn't for my family, and I wouldn't be happy if it wasn't for all of the above. You'll never get 'filthy rich' if you don't have people to help you. IIRC Google wouldn't even exist because the founders were friends with their professor, who encouraged them to stick with their method for the PageRank system. AFAIK their university studies appear to have both been paid for by their family. The idea isn't necessarily offensive in a moral nature for me, it's offensive because it's wholly naive.

msort 16y ago

Those tips for joining startups seems to be interesting: "For your first startup: You want a place with >10 folks but less than 200. I say this under the theory that you are mostly working there to find challenging work and smart people. A startup with >200 people is too close to becoming a big company (or a failure) soon. Be very strong in your field, if you are not yet that good practice until you are. Try to work on the hardest projects you can find at your current employer. You will probably not get rich at your first startup, but you will learn at least 3x more per week than you would at a big company. Don't obsess too much on how many options etc... - it really doesn't matter - you are mostly going there to do good work, learn and find folks who will make successful startups."

neilk 16y ago

I was born in North America to a family that lived within its means, above the poverty line. If you are like me, you were born rich.

known 16y ago

Is money a good measure of wealth?

1stwealthcoach 16y ago

Based on years of research,observations and trials, the most effective, legitimate and simply way i have identified to becoming wealthy is rather simply, straight forward and with little risk to your existing routine. And it is no other than leveraging. leveraging is the age old proven strategy of gaining wealth that has been and is still in practice from over 2,000 years ago. Even Jesus used leveraging to execute his successful ministry. Leveraging when understood and properly engaged can make you wealthy in no time. And I mean in as little as a few years

1stwealthcoach 16y ago
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