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To truly become rich, you need to stop acting like it

• nutjob123 16y ago
  A penny saved is a penny earned - ted turner
• bambax 16y ago
  But... why bother being a millionaire if you can just pretend? The author of this article seems to assume that it's better to actually be a millionaire, even if it means living like the poor. I would think it's better to drive a luxury car (whatever that is) and drink expensive wine, even if you can't afford it, than the other way around. It's "bad" to pretend, only if it doesn't end well: if you have to repay what you borrowed, and can't -- but if you die before you're bankrupt you win! Now, none of this means much; it doesn't matter to live like a millionaire, or to be or not to be a millionaire, etc. What matters is peace of mind, happiness, fulfillment. A subject for another article maybe? Although probably not in the "Color of Money" column.
  • megablast 16y ago
    Why? Do you really believe that driving a fancy car and buying expensive wine actually makes you happier? This is the illusion. It seems better to me to be able to buy a fancy car and know that you don't want one, than it is to live in a fantasy world were buying stuff makes you happy.
    • timcederman 16y ago
      I certainly derive a lot of pleasure out of driving a nice car and drinking a good wine.
      • matwood 16y ago
        I've driven very nice cars, drank super expensive wine, and done other things that cost lots of money. They were fun for a short period of time, but were not lasting. Time is what I want. I want to be able to do what I want when I want to do it. If the waves are good I want to surf, if I find a cool OSS project I want to work on it. IMHO, that is where real pleasure comes from.
        • timcederman 16y ago
          Enjoy things because you enjoy them. Not because they're "super expensive". I don't see why I have to buy a $10 wine when I don't derive enjoyment from them nearly as much as I do out of $30 bottles. Going out to a nice restaurant with friends, travelling the world and enjoying good food and fun activities all costs a decent amount of money, yet make me happy. As someone else in the comments said - you should want to acquire money to use towards the things you want, not for the sake of acquiring money. You like to do free stuff that just involves time. That's great. Other people enjoy restoring cars, going on vacations, building new companies, or food and travel like I do, and these require money as well as time. Ostentatious and pointless displays of money, or purchases which adversely affect your monetary base should be avoided, but not "just because".
    • gyardley 16y ago
      Buying expensive wine - no, that doesn't make me happy. Drinking high-quality wine, which sometimes happens to be expensive - absolutely. I enjoy that very much. Claiming that my enjoyment of high-quality wine is an illusion because you can't see a difference is just arrogance. The same goes for the consumption of any other luxury good you might not have a taste for yourself.
      • _delirium 16y ago
        I do think that there are high-quality things that are expensive, but I think people buy by price rather than by blind quality tests relatively frequently. There are good expensive wines, but the wine price/quality correlation is not very strong at all. If you actually know what you're buying and how to judge it, though, by all means buy whatever you want! I've personally been something of a beer aficionado for 5-6 years now, and I've seen this creeping into craft brewing quite a bit lately. Especially after the explosion in the last 1-2 years of mainstream popularity, there's now a very weak relationship between the quality of beer you get and whether you pay $3 or $30 for a 22-oz bottle. Tons of good stuff and crap across the spectrum, and increasingly manufacturers are pricing as a way of status-signaling rather than based on either cost or quality. There have even been cases of brewers rebadging the same recipe from a middle-range beer as high-end premium stuff with a fancy label, and it sells and gets good reviews! (But it doesn't do any better in blind taste tests.)
• _delirium 16y ago
  I buy the general principle that living a high-income/high-expense lifestyle isn't the path to accumulating wealth, but you can rephrase the stats to get different results as well. For example, 86% of all luxury vehicles are driven by people who are not millionaires can be rephrased in a way that makes it seem like driving luxury vehicles is a trait of rich: millionaires are 3x as likely to drive a luxury vehicle as non-millionaires I wonder if this is also skewed by the "millionaire" cutoff not being as high as popular culture thinks of it being; the millionaires of 1970s films correspond to $5m+ today, and the millionaires of the roaring 20s correspond to $12m+ today. A huge proportion of people with net worths in the low single digits of millions have almost all their money in their retirement plan plus house, and not a particularly large disposable income. Sure, in theory they could get money out of the 401(k) and blow it, but the fact that it's semi-locked-up and a hassle to get out makes it easier to preserve it. It's possible it generalizes to higher tiers of the rich, but I'm not that sure. Do people with net worths of $10m+ have similarly frugal lifestyles? Or is this mainly a feature of people with net worths in the $1m-3m range?
  • katovatzschyn 16y ago
    Do people with net worths of $10m+ have similarly frugal lifestyles? Or is this mainly a feature of people with net worths in the $1m-3m range? My parents are with combined income of 7 figures now, 8 figure net worth and they live very frugally. My father drives 1997 Toyota. The wealth is mostly tied in investment and assorted properties. My mother mends socks instead of buying new ones.
  • sosuke 16y ago
    I just realized after reading your comment that my family were millionaires when I was in high school. We had about $25k a year income, no new cars, no college fund but we owned two properties that put us over the millionaire mark. I qualified for and ate the 25 cent lunches at school and had hand me down everything. Have a million dollar net worth isn't necessarily fun or comfortable, my parents divorced, cashed out the houses and nothing is left, good times.
    • groaner 16y ago
• jamiequint 16y ago
  "86% of all luxury vehicles are driven by people who are not millionaires." This is a good example of one of those stats designed to fool people who don't understand statistics. According to wikipedia there are ~9.3 million millionaire households in the US representing ~7% of US households. [1] Meaning that millionaire households purchase luxury cars at a far higher rate than non-millionaire households which is the opposite of what this article implies. [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire
  • groaner 16y ago
    I don't think I got the same message from the article as you did. The unstated assumption that the article is trying to challenge is that luxury vehicles are the exclusive domain of the rich. Even if the statistic were that 43% of luxury vehicles were purchased by non-millionaires instead of 86%, it would still say a lot about how these purchases are actually distributed.
    • jamiequint 16y ago
      I think the fact that luxury goods have become attainable by non-millionaires says a lot more about the decrease in cost in luxury goods than the irresponsibility of non-millionaires. The classification of these goods is also confusing. For example, I drive a Lexus IS250 AWD which would be considered a luxury vehicle but actually comes in at the same price point as Toyota 4Runner. Additionally, the variance in prices between luxury and non-luxury goods is decreasing. A low-end Lexus now costs less than $10k more than a similarly equipped Subaru Outback or Honda Accord, making the difference when it comes to actual affordability pretty small.
      • byoung2 16y ago
        The difference in cost between a luxury item and a regular item is also masked by the availability of credit. You can lease a high end Mercedes for the same monthly payment as buying a Honda Accord. It could be that a large portion of that 86% of luxury cars driven by non millionaires are leased.
• nostromo 16y ago
  In a recent TED Talk, Tim Jackson talked about conspicuous consumption. I really liked this quote: "This is a story about us, people, being persuaded to spend money we don't have, on things we don't need, to create impressions that won't last, on people we don't care about."
  • limedaring 16y ago
    Since I'm creating a wedding startup, the insane amount of money people throw at one event has been in my mind lately... It's a brutal cycle — the weddings featured in magazines and online are almost always out of the average couples budget, and what those stories do is create the idea of "this is what you should have". Couples then concern themselves with having the best card boxes, the perfect playlist, hand making favors that will be thrown out the next day by the majority of their guests, because this is what they're told is the right way of throwing a wedding. A one day event that people spend way too much money on because they're persuaded to by this industry.
    • rdtsc 16y ago
      This calls for another startup -- the funeral startup. Weddings and funerals are businesses with huge markups. There is a lot of emotional attachment involved in both, and people will be willing to shell out enormous amounts of money on such events.
      • limedaring 16y ago
        Oh my goodness, I totally agree. Did you know they sell decorative boxes to be cremated in? Nevermind you're never going to see the box, nor will the deceased care which box they're in, all it's going to do is _burn_ but the funeral people are all, "what, you'd burn your father in a cardboard box? How horrible."
        • deleted 16y ago
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        • 16y ago
• sosuke 16y ago
  There is a large gap between being a millionaire, net worth of 1 million dollars or more, a being a billionaire but there is a point in between when you make enough money to be rich and act like it too. Is there a word for that point that everyone can agree on. The millionaire people want to be is the one that makes enough money to be able to spend it without worry, not the millionaire that is still making a $50k yearly salary with a nice house.
• deleted 16y ago
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• groaner 16y ago
  BREAKING: People don't actually want to be rich, they want to live like they are "rich" people. Film at 11.
  • theoneill 16y ago
    Your comment would be more effective without the parts on either end.
  • megablast 16y ago
    No, people want to live how they actually believe the rich live, from watching too much tv, rather the truth.
• thibaut_barrere 16y ago
  If like me, you consider that "wealth = how long you could sustain your current lifestyle (same expenses) if your income stopped, today.", then it becomes clear that learning not to show off is really a key to becoming wealthier.
  • jkahn 16y ago
    I think that is a real key. That's what we (my wife and I) try to do. It can be difficult at times, when we see others flaunting their awesome new stuff. We just remind each other that the default behaviour in society these days is to live beyond your means. Not that we don't have nice stuff. But we limit it and pay cash.
• jacquesm 16y ago
  What a world we live in, where 86% of the non-millionaires are apparently able to afford a luxury vehicle. That's fantastic news, that means that money is no longer as important as it used to be for simple stuff like that. Either luxury vehicles have gotten cheaper (what's a luxury vehicle anyway) or banks are stupid enough to give lots of money to people that can't afford to pay the interest (forget about the principal) when it's due. Any statistic like that can be bent to make it say whatever it is that you want to say. Before Henry Ford made the first production automobile even the millionaires couldn't drive them and now such luxury items are within reach of most of the gainfully employed people in large parts of the world. That doesn't mean they should stop doing it, what point is there in having money if you can't enjoy it, whatever floats your boat I'm fine with you having it, but there is a catch. Here in the EU there used to be a save first, spend later mentality. The only thing people would think of borrowing money for were houses, and if you couldn't afford to buy a house then you would be renting one (or if you didn't want to own a house). Over the years that has changed, with people spending first their own money, and then their banks money on 'conspicuous consumption'. Cars, boats, furniture, package holidays and so on. Little by little the save-first, spend later mentality has been replaced by spend as much as the bank will let you borrow, worry about the consequences later. Those people that are buying those automobiles they can not afford are being allowed to do so by lending institutions that are pushing cheap credit, no make that ramming, down peoples throats. That's where the real problem lies, given the opportunity to borrow money at initial rates that are designed to lure people in with the nasty consequences written in very small print in gray on slightly-less-gray backgrounds people will fall for it every time. Banks are the problem, not the people that think they in fact can afford this stuff.
  • thibaut_barrere 16y ago
    At least around me, there is a real shift of mentality toward "save-first" again (maybe a generation thing, I'm 33). People start to see that they become enslaved to their jobs if they don't do that.
  • ScottBurson 16y ago
    Banks are the problem, not the people that think they in fact can afford this stuff. Can't agree. Banks may be taking advantage of the situation, but speaking as one who used to have a bad habit of living beyond my means, people who do that are the problem. I understand the temptation too well, having succumbed to it. When one first starts to have some money after not having had much, all the things one has wanted to buy for so long seem much more important than saving for the future. I don't know that there's any way around that; people just have to go through it (many of us do, anyway). If you want to put some further restrictions on the banks, I'm not necessarily opposed to that, but blaming it all on them is not right.
• ziadbc 16y ago
  Money is a commodity like anything else. Talking about wealth in the context of consumption means you've already lost. Better to think about how to produce the most than how to consume the least.
• harshaw 16y ago
  My parents are fiscally conservative "millionaires". They are 70 and 71 and may never need to tap their investments for operating cash (they can live off of pension + social security + misc income). My pet peeve is that I hope they spend a bit of money on themselves before it is too late. I used to think their "conservative" consumption habits were a generational thing. However, they recently had a college friend who sold their paid off house, bought a very expensive townhouse in DC with their equity plus a giant mortgage (why does a bank give a 30 year mortgage to someone who is 70?), and then proceeded to loose the new house plus all of their equity because they had unexpected medical bills for one of their adult children.
  • avar 16y ago
    > Why does a bank give a 30 year mortgage to someone who is 70? Presumably they're counting on the mortgage being paid off by the estate of your fiscally conservative parents once they die. Even if that isn't the case they can claim the townhouse from the estate and try to sell it to someone else.
• nezumi 16y ago
  What's the point of having it if you don't enjoy it? This article doesn't seem to do justice to those who: - have enough savings on hand to cover a few months' living expenses - have a sensibly invested pension plan - spend their surplus cash on things they enjoy I'm sure the book is simply using the popular, but arbitrary and out-dated 'millionaire' tag as a hook for sound financial advice. But if your goal in life is just to be a 'millionaire', you're missing the point.
  • jacquesm 16y ago
    That's very true, those people are living within their means, not outside of it, and there are plenty of them.
• dkarl 16y ago
  Few people just want to have money for no reason. Most people want to have money because of what they want to spend it on; their outrageous expenses are their passion in life and their reason for wanting money. It isn't helpful advice to say, "Don't spend money on Manolo Blahniks, and then you'll have plenty of money," if your whole reason for wanting money is so you can wear Monolo Blahniks. In other words, it sounds like a sermon on loving money for itself instead of loving it for what it can buy you. Or, if you read it charitably, it's a sermon on loving security more and short-term pleasures less. As much as I sneer at expensive fashion and gravitate toward the <$10 wine bin at the grocery store, this article strikes me as nothing but unhelpful moralizing. Yeah. I get it. If I don't spend money, I'll have more. Yeah, I really, really get that looking good and living it up is a vacuous pastime -- I'm totally with you on this one -- but it's the most common passion on the planet, and it's a cop out to tell people to stop enjoying the one aspect of life that gives them the most pleasure and call it financial advice.
  • groaner 16y ago
    You might call it unhelpful moralizing, but I would consider it helpful if it alerted people to the pretentious nature of their social signaling and got them back on track financially. Deferred gratification is an important lesson to learn.
    • bbuffone 16y ago
      I don't know about this. You really aren't enlightening people by saying stop spending money and you will have more money. People aren't stupid. This is the same kind of story as people are fat because they don't know what kind of foods to eat. It's just not true. Everyone know what kind of food to eat, they just don't. I once went to a nutrionist and she ask what I eat for breakfast; I told her and she said "you know how many calories were in that bagel?" and I told her. She looked puzzled, then I told her "I wasn't fat because I was stupid" Behaviors with food and even money are learned early on and until people choose to unlearn them; they will be fat and poor.
      • loewenskind 16y ago
• Enlightenment 16y ago
  I laugh at all the idiots with 20inch chrome rims on a piece of crap vehicle, parked in front of a sh*t hole house. Chrome == Idiot!
• psawaya 16y ago
  What do we often tell a child who expresses an interest in teaching? "You won't get rich as a teacher." Yet, there are more than 350,000 millionaire educators, working or retired teachers or professors, according to Stanley's research. I think it's a little misleading to include college professors in the same group as public school teachers here.
  • tjr 16y ago
    True, but it's also a little misleading to make the unqualified claim that "you won't get rich as a teacher".
  • ciupicri 16y ago
    I would also bet that those teachers/professors are working on some lucrative (research) projects or are members of a board of directors, e.g. John L. Hennessy at Google[1]. [1] http://www.google.com/corporate/execs.html#johnhennessy http://www.google.com/corporate/execs.html#johnhennessy
    • samg 16y ago
      Hennessy actually got rich founding MIPS Computer Systems Inc, years before Google. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_Computer_Systems_Inc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_Computer_Systems_Inc.
    • drbaskin 16y ago
      It's also not really fair to include Hennessy on this list -- he is the president of Stanford, after all. That is a very different job from professor, and pays quite well. According to his wikipedia page, "As Stanford's president, Hennessy earns an annual salary of $566,581."
  • sethg 16y ago
    I also wondered how many of those millionaire educators are widows of men who had more lucrative professions.
    • 16y ago
• sliverstorm 16y ago
  > $16: what most millionaires pay for a haircut (including tip) I wish I knew where to find a decent haircut for $16, including tip. Or are they just so rich and powerful they don't have a use for a decent haircut, and elect for the bargain-sub-basement chop? - EDIT: I should characterize this statement a bit. My hair is very thick, and has a mind of it's own. It has been my experience, over many many years, that stylists at low-end shops repeatedly 1) fail to blend my hair well, making it look so ragged it looks like a 5yo cut it with craft safety scissors. 2) fail to understand my hair. It won't go the way you want it to go without GLUE, so the stylist has to work WITH my hair. Mid-range shops usually have barbers who are up to snuff. Costs me $20-25 usually.
  • thibaut_barrere 16y ago
    What about relocating to a place where 16$ is a decent price for a haircut ? That's what I did roughly, and the haircut seems to be welcomed by my wife, too :)
    • patrickaljord 16y ago
      Haircut is $2.5 here :D
      • thibaut_barrere 16y ago
        Excellent! You're in Peru, right ?
        • patrickaljord 16y ago
          Right.
      • dagw 16y ago
        Haircut (that doesn't look like shit) is at least $50-60 here.
        • 16y ago
• petercooper 16y ago
  The gist of this article is a paradox. Rich people don't act like rich people? Surely, then, you should act like rich people if rich people are spending less, etc.
• deleted 16y ago
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  • barrkel 16y ago
    Indeed. But then I recall the time - a few months ago - when I saw a Bugatti Veyron in Bond Street here in London. Those guys - and it's usually guys - are millionaires for sure. (Bond Street is famous for its jewellers, Sotheby's, etc.)
• spaghetti 16y ago
  I realized something this morning: when I spend almost all of my life doing something I don't want to do (working a full-time job... Leave the house at 7 am and get home around 6:30 pm) recreational consumption is almost completely full-filling. When I have as much time as I want to work on stuff I like and am passionate about recreational consumption does almost nothing for me.
  • alister 16y ago
    I kept reading that you were "passionate about recreational consumption", but then the rest of the sentence didn't make any sense. A single comma makes a big difference to understanding what you meant: "When I have as much time as I want to work on stuff I like and am passionate about, recreational consumption does almost nothing for me."
  • mkramlich 16y ago
    I've had a similar experience. When I've had work lifestyles where I had to get up early in the morning, long commute, bureaucrapritude job, long commute back, get back late, but every 2 weeks get a huge paycheck, I'd end up spending way too much on discretionary consumption & toys to make me "happy". When I've had more happiness-oriented work lifestyle phases, with no commute, no bureaucrapritude, but smaller or more irregular paychecks and less "security" I've ended up spending way less money on unimportant stuff, saved way more, and was way more happy in a substantive sense.
• retroafroman 16y ago
  I'm surprised that no one has cited that there was already a book just like this called "The Millionaire Next Door" which was all about pointing out how the millionaires don't act like we expect "rich" people to. It originally came out in 1998. This seems like a rehash.
• jbr 16y ago
  There's a lot of causal ambiguity in this article, particularly due to the fact that no small percent of millionaires likely come into wealth by way of inheritance or marriage. For example, the author cites the presence of 350k millionaire teachers as contradicting the statement "you won't get rich as a teacher." "get rich" implies causality, but "are rich" (the cited fact) does not. But yeah, conspicuous consumption is tacky.
  • scottkrager 16y ago
    Having read a few of the books discussed in the article, the author makes a point of showing how actually a small % of millionaires came into their wealth from an inheritance. He states that 80% are first-generation affluant. http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.html http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.htm...
• sdizdar 16y ago
  I wonder what people will do with their money when they die? Spend all that money in after life? As my father says: money is irrelevant - think about what you are going to think about your life on dead bed. And the other important saying is: don't think too much about how you spend your money think about how to create wealth.
• dbrannan 16y ago
  Life passes by us faster than I care to acknowledge, and while saving your money is important you also need to live. The key, I feel, is finding a happy balance.
• brainproxy 16y ago
  Being rich is an enticing prospect. When I consider it, I often imagine it as "the freedom to do/buy/go what/where you want, without delay". But then the following warning comes to mind and I'm reminded to carefully scope the bounds and purposes of my worldly ambitions: "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied ... But woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you that are full now, for you shall hunger." (cf. Luke 6:20,21,24,25)
• ruang 16y ago
  It's not about spending less, it's about spending your money on the correct things. People need to spend less on status/signaling goods, and more on creating real value. Spend less on investing/speculating on things you have no control over. To paraphrase Tim Ferriss: Wealth is what is left over when all of your money and material goods are taken away from you.
• thewordpainter 16y ago
  reminds me of one of my favorite messages from guy kawasaki: if you make meaning, you'll often make money. the ones who end up the wealthiest often don't consider money as their driving factor...so are they that likely to drastically change their habits that got them there?
• hasenj 16y ago
  The whole point of accumulating money is to spend it. Sure, you can accumulate more if you don't spend (I actually sorta doubt it, but let's assume it for argument's sake). Then, if you live by "the less you spend, the more money you'll have" you'll basically end up having a "big number" on your bank account, but nothing of what you really want. I'd rather have a super fast laptop and a nice clean apartment, and only $8000 in my account[1], than a crappy laptop and a crappy apartment and $50,000 in my bank account. [1] assuming I have a steady income, and/or can generate enough revenue so that I can keep getting nice things without draining my bank account. I said that I doubt the correctness of the logic behind "the less you spend the more you'll have". I think that to generate wealth, you need to spend some amount of investment upfront, and if you're afraid to "pay" for things, (because it reduces the "number" in your account) then it follows that you don't have the courage to invest in anything, and therefore you are not likely to become rich.
  • Bostwick 16y ago
    <i>The whole point of accumulating money is to spend it. Sure, you can accumulate more if you don't spend (I actually sorta doubt it, but let's assume it for argument's sake).</i> I disagree. Once you've learned the basics of investing or stock trading, accumulating capital becomes about increasing your income. Let's look at your laptop & apartment example. Case 1: Super fast laptop & nice clean apartment. I can max out a Macbook Pro for about three grand, and a nice 2br apartment in Boston will cost about $3k per month in rent. With your $8,000 bank account, you'll need to earn at least $3,000 per month from your job just to pay for your apartment. More to save up and purchase that laptop, and even more still if you want to afford to eat. Case 2: Crappy laptop and crappy apartment with $50k. A crappy laptop is about $500 for a really nice netbook, and a cheap apartment in Boston is about $600 per month (for those in Boston, think JP and Forest Hills). Let's invest that $50k in an ETF called "PFF", which currently costs $40 per share and pays a monthly dividend of, on average, .20c per share. That gives you 1250 shares of PFF, for an average monthly income of $250. With $50k, you can buy a $1000 laptop in four months, or pay for almost half your monthly rent. On a forum where people are constantly trying to generate passive income through webapps and side businesses, I'm surprised people continuously overlook the passive income power of large amounts of capital. $50k can buy you $250 a month for life.
• rbxbx 16y ago
  I find it interesting there's no mention of luxuries such as freedom and travel. IE: Paying more to rent things than own them, touring various cities, flying out to see friends for a week. Things that aren't easily placed into rampant consumerism, yet still require something of a luxury budget, and can enrich our lives to no end. (Also food, for that matter) Hm.
• nradov 16y ago
  What is a "luxury" vehicle? A certified used Mercedes-Benz C-class can be had for $20K. A new Chevrolet Tahoe lists at $37K.
• awongh 16y ago
  idk, I think this article just makes me realize how little a million dollars buys now-a-days. I think the author is setting the bar way too low; There's certainly a psychological appeal to having a specific amount of money with 6 zeros at the end, but let's face it, to live out our collective cultural conception of what it means to be wealthy takes a lot more than just 1 million dollars- I can't really say how much it is today. Probably even more than tens of millions, more like reaching towards 9 figures, if not mid 8 figures. I think that really invalidates the author's point about supposedly wealthy people being frugal, buying habits of non-millionaires aside....
• bradshaw1965 16y ago
  The whole "Millionaire Next Door" franchise is a massive example of selection bias. Frugality is not causality for millionaire status. There are plenty of valid reasons to be anti-consumer and frugal, but it might be a less then ideal path to riches.
• arsh 16y ago
  I don't believe that "Nearly four in 10 millionaires buy wine that costs about $10". That does not look how our world works...
• laut 16y ago
  It doesn't have to be very expensive to drive a luxury car. Buy a used one for under $10k. You don't have to be a millionaire to do that. Here's a BMW 5 series for less than $6k. http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/ctd/1997867593.html http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/ctd/1997867593.html Or an S class Mercedes for under $10k. http://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/cto/1994579346.html http://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/cto/1994579346.html
• coliveira 16y ago
  I think the biggest trouble with this kind of idea is to think that you can get rich just by saving. It is true that you need to save in order to have lots of money, but producing value is what makes you rich. If you save money during your whole life you will be millionaire when you're 60. By then, 1 million will be more like 100k, and you be still unsure about your future. It is far better to think about creating value using equity on your own business or real estate, for example.
• jlgbecom 16y ago
  It's articles like these and the responses they engender that I'm very glad I grew up working class, and lived my 20's punk rock. I can appreciate the finer things in life, but I've also got the skills to survive a near-apocalypse. Getting rich has never been my motivator for being involved in technology, and to be honest, I'd probably be happier if the industry were de-funded (hopefully in favor of something like biotech or alternative energies, instead of url shorteners like bit.ly), and it cut the fat out, of all the people who prefer schmoozing to hacking.
• known 16y ago
  Real millionaires prefer to invest rather than spend their money.
• known 16y ago
  I believe millionaires constantly think in terms of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost while spending a dollar.
• known 16y ago
  This attitude is prevalent among white collar workers. And almost nil among farming community.