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I understand this isn't the point of the article, but it seems like a roundabout way of saying "don't overspend". This part in particular bothers me : > More i

I understand this isn't the point of the article, but it seems like a roundabout way of saying "don't overspend". This part in particular bothers me : > More importantly though, the best way to climb the wealth ladder is to spend money according to your level. As far as I (a non-economist) can personally tell, any notion of climbing up some abstract wealth ladder is synonym with a salary increase for the vast majority of people. Other methods, whether they involve quantity of free time or already-available money, are intrinsically tied to the quality of your job or, failing that, the quality of your parents' or partner's jobs. Personal net worth, while definitely an important factor in this equation, is far less so than income in my opinion. A fiscally irresponsibly professional worker living from paycheck to paycheck has "grocery freedom" while a person with 10,000$ of accumulated wealth and no income whatsoever (let's say they are between jobs) is far more likely to buy the store brand margarine. Similarly, the former will most likely not achieve "travel freedom" without decades of hard work, of careful spending, of saving, investing, etc. Simply put, no amount of "not carelessly booking flights" will turn you into Jay-Z, let alone into that small business owner across the street with the McMansion and the gaudy Christmas decorations. The undisputed "best way" to climb the wealth ladder is to receive large amounts of cash from some external source.

baking 7y ago
This obviously depends on your age and the reliability of your income.
hirako2000 7y ago
I would concur. However, spending wisely needs coupled with higher income. That's what most people don't apply. Save 10% or more of your income at all times, see your revenue continously increasing, even if not tremendously, and in matter of a few years you can start investing (housing, business, whatever) See yourself spending near all you get, even getting significant income increases and you get stuck into a loop of ever spending more. Its also very risky, as if that incomes downfalls, it can easily cost you all the small stupidly useless property you already have. I think the idea is to control your spending and find ways to increase income. I bet jayz continuously did that or he would have ended up like many other stars who lost it all. Or maybe just luck/talent..
- disintegore 7y ago
  Saving 10% on a median income adds up to roughly three thousand dollars saved, a year. Depending on the amount of risk you're willing to accept, you may find yourself making between ~2 to 10 grand over a 10 year period from interests alone. I think those numbers are reasonable (and that saving in general is absolutely worth it), but I don't think they're significant enough to grant you upwards mobility. Even furnishing a savings account is a privilege many people cannot afford, and no amount of frugality will help them. Only access to higher quality jobs. If you ask me, Jay-Z gambled on the entertainment industry and won. His gambling chips were talent and hard work.
  - anewguy9000 7y ago
    2-10 grand over 10 years wont even cover inflation. so you're actually poorer.
    - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      You would expect equities to outstrip inflation in most environments.
    - disintegore 7y ago
      I suppose you're that much less poorer. In any case, you have something like 30 grands on hand, which you wouldn't have otherwise. That's cash down on a house.
      - anewguy9000 7y ago
        not in 10 years its not (maybe somewhere on earth it is?)
  - mcguire 7y ago
    According to my handy amortization calculator, $3000/year = 250/mo starting from 0, 10 years = 120 months, 3%/year (S&P500, after taxes and inflation), gives $34,935.36. 20 years gives $82,075.50.
CPLX 7y ago
Yup. I see this kind of logic in personal finance discussions all the time but it's bullshit. There simply aren't any spending decisions you can make that will change you from not wealthy to really wealthy. Those things can just move you from poor to middle class at best, or to a better level of middle class. Outside of real outlier status where you're paid really, really large amounts of money for your services (like notable entertainer or cardiac surgeon) the way to wealth is to own the means of production. Period. Same as it ever was.
- jlawson 7y ago
  Saving money, even from a salary job, gives you the breathing room you need to take economic opportunities. For example, if you save a year of expenses you can start a software business without external capital or connections. Most of the paths from middle-class to wealth involve avoiding frivolous spending.
  - CPLX 7y ago
    Yes but if you borrow like a maniac from credit cards and default on everything and live in a van but still start a successful software business you still get wealthy. My point being that actually owning that successful business is the mechanism for wealth. Avoiding frivolous spending can be very, very helpful to achieving that status, as you point out correctly, but it isn't actually the status itself. This article and many others seem to be unable to make that key distinction.
    - hultner 7y ago
      If you default on everything assets such as that successful business will be reclaimed by the creditors/government, of course this depends a bit on where you live but for instance in Sweden if you default you're required to live on minimum living expenses for five years, any assets you amass over this minimum living value will be claimed by the government.
    - isoskeles 7y ago
      > you still get wealthy Do you think the bad habits go away just because you succeeded? That’s not how life works, and the evidence is people who win the lottery.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
duxup 7y ago
I'm reminded of when Radiohead sold their album for whatever folks wanted to pay on the internet and someone wrote an article about how all bands could do that too: Step 1: Be Radiohead... The idea being that the hard part is getting to where you can even use the advice, and after that you're all but done.
- _Microft 7y ago
  Same category: Musk's "The Boring Company" merchandise. You need millions of followers in first place to be able to sell out 50000 basecaps for a million dollar in total or even 20000 not-a-flamethrowers for $500 each in a few days.
hultner 7y ago
I wouldn't fully agree with this, I'd say income that non-linear to amount time spent it the highest driving factor. Let's take an example. I'm going to use Swedish living conditions and salaries as an example as that's where I live but they are close to most European/western countries. We have a frugal grocery store cashier who makes $2000 USD/month after taxes. We have a high level executive in a medium-sized company who makes $5000 USD/month after taxes. The grocery worked lives like a student (student loan/benefits in Sweden is about $1000 USD/mo) and saves the rest on the stock market (assuming average yearly yield with reinvested dividends at 8.5%), efficiently saving $1000USD/month for future non linear income. The cashier plans to stop working early at 55, at a net worth of about $2 900 000 USD. This allows for a safe withdrawal rate at about $10 000 USD/month. At this level travling/vacation expenses isn't a problem for the cashier. Housing probably does but they can most likely live comfortably even if they decide to rent. They can also easily increase monthly spending allowance by 10% if they decide to continue working half time. At the same time our executive have been burning through every pay-check, and have effectively no net worth at the same age, sure there's plenty enough to lease a nice car, don't care about restaurants bills but more expensive traveling will still be a setback and vacation time per year is certainly limited as income is still linear to time spent. So in this example we have a cashier ending up as a multi millionear set for life at 55 with no need to work a day more and a high level executive who'd be back at 0 without the job and a strictly linear income. Sure salary increase does matter, but in the long run underspending matters more. With a longterm plan it's possible to become a multi millionaire with an entry level job, for instance there's a famous Swedish railroad worker who recently passed away who ended up with somewhere around $17 000 000 USD net worth at the time of his death, and achieved this by living under his expenses with a low salary and investing the rest, he initially turned to the stock market because he couldn't afford a house in his youth. Not Jay-Z levels for sure but well beyond what most people would consider very wealthy.
- bronco21016 7y ago
  I think you’re both right. The combination of multiplying income while also saving more and more of that income is the key to jumping wealth levels. It’s certainly possible to live a comfortable life on the cashiers plan but if the executive spent just half of their career living like the cashier then he would quickly pass up the cashier on the wealth ladder.
icedchai 7y ago
Most people have it wrong. While salary increases are necessary, they are not sufficient. You need to save and invest aggressively. I'm not talking saving 10%. I'm talking 30%, 40%, maybe even more, if you want to achieve financial independence in under 15 to 20 years. The first few years, maybe the first decade, are tough. After that, it becomes self sustaining: you eventually make more in gains (unrealized, ideally) than you do working.
r0fl 7y ago
Your example of a person with $10,000 accumulated wealth and no job makes perfect sense. However this does not hold true higher up the scale. People with mid 8 figure liquid net worth, ex: $50-70,000,000 do not need to have any income for extremely long periods of time without having any large negative effect on their spending ability.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  these people get income from capital gains or take loans against their assets. even very rich people try hard not to spend their principal.
grey-area 7y ago
Capital is more powerful than income. It is harder to accumulate capital but still worthwhile even if you can only do it slowly.
plughs 7y ago
> Other methods, whether they involve quantity of free time or already-available money, are intrinsically tied to the quality of your job or, failing that, the quality of your parents' or partner's jobs. For a lot of educated types, the best chance of really climbing the wealth ladder is early involvement in a startup. The startup founders I know have a single unifying factor, they come from the sort of wealth that allows them to go completely bankrupt and still live comfortably. We have good incomes and live pretty frugally, and for us that translates to a decent amount saved for retirement and college funds. I would never knock that, that we are incredibly lucky and a lot of people work very hard for less. But it doesn't move us up a class such that we have a house overlooking the beach and kids in 20k/year private schools. I know people who have those, and they didn't work their way up a ladder. Their ladder started on the 10th floor.
giggitytex 7y ago
I agree with you, and this flies in the face of Kiyosaki-isms.
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
I'm not totally convinced. It seems to me the further you get up the greasy poll the greasier it gets. Sure if you are on minimum wage then there are probably some easy gains to be made but for someone in the middle of their career they are far more likely to improve their situation by saving rather than getting promoted. That's not to say they shouldn't try but you have to realise the odds are against you getting to the top. If you are looking at it from the perspective of starting a business then having some savings is going to make it far more likely. You aren't even going to have the mental energy for it if you are spending all your time thinking about how much to pay on the credit cards each month. This is the reality for many people, possibly even the majority.
- enraged_camel 7y ago
  >> It seems to me the further you get up the greasy poll the greasier it gets. Quite the opposite: the pole is greasy at the bottom, but becomes easier to climb the more you manage to climb. The reason it's greasy at the bottom is because there are fundamental systemic factors at play that make it very difficult for poor people from making their way up. For example, here in the USA you cannot open a bank account if you don't have a permanent address, and you're likely to work multiple jobs with constant changes in schedule, and lack of easy transportation options to travel from one to the other. Once you reach middle class though, the relative stability it provides can allow you to make decisions to climb the ladder further, if you choose to do so.
taneq 7y ago
> The undisputed "best way" to climb the wealth ladder is to receive large amounts of cash from some external source. I agree with most of what you say here but I'm not so sure of this bit. Of course, if you get handed huge amount of cash by a rich relative, that's the easiest way to live comfortably for some time, but it won't come with the financial skills to make the cash an asset instead of just a possession. Assuming you don't win that lottery (or indeed win the actual lottery, $100 million powerball style), I think the best way to climb the ladder is to own a business (as per your 'small business owner across the street with the McMansion and the gaudy Christmas decorations'). Receiving cash is like getting a push on your billy cart, it's nice but it doesn't, in itself, give you a way to get more. A business is like an engine for the billy cart, maybe it won't be going as fast right away but it'll keep on going and generating money. Either way, as you say, scrimping on groceries will never make the difference between wealthy and not. Wisely investing your salary in real estate or stocks won't help either, except over timescales too long to have any fun with it or unless you're at the very top tier of a FAANG-type company. A business is a machine to make money and unless you own one, you're highly unlikely to end up in the same financial class.
frogpelt 7y ago
I think you can get from level 1 to level 4 just by being careful and wise. You might even get to level 5 by the time you die. But level 6 will require taking risk and that risk paying off big-time. Usually it requires taking several risks. Jay-Z got from level 1 to level 6 by taking the risk of going public with his craft. He decided he would put in the work, make the connections, and not fear the rejections. The reason entrepreneurs get rich is they take the risk. There is some luck involved but most people (me included) aren't willing to risk their current level to level up.
- mcguire 7y ago
  I think you misspelled "a very great deal of luck". How many rappers aren't Jay-Z?
bboygravity 7y ago
Summarized: nobody in the history of humanity ever got wealthy from having a job. If you want to get rich you have to learn how to invest other people's money and make it work for you. This is also my main take away from "rich dad, poor dad" (the book). It is so simple, yet I was so blind to this for a long time.
- umeshunni 7y ago
  > Nobody in the history of humanity ever got wealthy from having a job I think thousands of people in the valley who made their money from stock options / RSUs will disagree with this
- mcguire 7y ago
  Depends what you mean by "wealthy". In these comments, it's a motorized goalpost on wheels.
yawboakye 7y ago
Totally agree. But here's a thought: could wealth accumulation be a feedback loop? What I mean is, can the earning part benefit from a "reckless" spending side? Speaking from experience, I've been in the business of making more money because (1) I don't believe in saving (I've bought a few insurances here and there, because of course, health isn't guaranteed) (2) I love nice things and will get them at all cost. I don't know what feeds into the other. Is my taste for recklessness a result of my implicit knowledge that I can generate a good sum of money when I need. Or am I waking up everyday and putting in the work in order to satisfy my reckless side? What I know for sure is that one can deliberately climb the ladder. And the undisputed "best way" to climb the wealth ladder is to generate (not receive) income. There are many ways to do that. Usually employment isn't one.
mcguire 7y ago
"I understand this isn't the point of the article, but it seems like a roundabout way of saying "don't overspend"." Well yes, but...that's completely useless advice and the article is considerably more concrete and useful. (On the other hand, I'll dispute his 1-basis-point: I think it should be closer to .1 basis point.) You are right about the difference between income and net worth. To a point, anyway.

baking 7y ago

This obviously depends on your age and the reliability of your income.

hirako2000 7y ago

I would concur. However, spending wisely needs coupled with higher income. That's what most people don't apply. Save 10% or more of your income at all times, see your revenue continously increasing, even if not tremendously, and in matter of a few years you can start investing (housing, business, whatever) See yourself spending near all you get, even getting significant income increases and you get stuck into a loop of ever spending more. Its also very risky, as if that incomes downfalls, it can easily cost you all the small stupidly useless property you already have. I think the idea is to control your spending and find ways to increase income. I bet jayz continuously did that or he would have ended up like many other stars who lost it all. Or maybe just luck/talent..

disintegore 7y ago
Saving 10% on a median income adds up to roughly three thousand dollars saved, a year. Depending on the amount of risk you're willing to accept, you may find yourself making between ~2 to 10 grand over a 10 year period from interests alone. I think those numbers are reasonable (and that saving in general is absolutely worth it), but I don't think they're significant enough to grant you upwards mobility. Even furnishing a savings account is a privilege many people cannot afford, and no amount of frugality will help them. Only access to higher quality jobs. If you ask me, Jay-Z gambled on the entertainment industry and won. His gambling chips were talent and hard work.
- anewguy9000 7y ago
  2-10 grand over 10 years wont even cover inflation. so you're actually poorer.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    You would expect equities to outstrip inflation in most environments.
  - disintegore 7y ago
    I suppose you're that much less poorer. In any case, you have something like 30 grands on hand, which you wouldn't have otherwise. That's cash down on a house.
    - anewguy9000 7y ago
      not in 10 years its not (maybe somewhere on earth it is?)
- mcguire 7y ago
  According to my handy amortization calculator, $3000/year = 250/mo starting from 0, 10 years = 120 months, 3%/year (S&P500, after taxes and inflation), gives $34,935.36. 20 years gives $82,075.50.

CPLX 7y ago

Yup. I see this kind of logic in personal finance discussions all the time but it's bullshit. There simply aren't any spending decisions you can make that will change you from not wealthy to really wealthy. Those things can just move you from poor to middle class at best, or to a better level of middle class. Outside of real outlier status where you're paid really, really large amounts of money for your services (like notable entertainer or cardiac surgeon) the way to wealth is to own the means of production. Period. Same as it ever was.

jlawson 7y ago
Saving money, even from a salary job, gives you the breathing room you need to take economic opportunities. For example, if you save a year of expenses you can start a software business without external capital or connections. Most of the paths from middle-class to wealth involve avoiding frivolous spending.
- CPLX 7y ago
  Yes but if you borrow like a maniac from credit cards and default on everything and live in a van but still start a successful software business you still get wealthy. My point being that actually owning that successful business is the mechanism for wealth. Avoiding frivolous spending can be very, very helpful to achieving that status, as you point out correctly, but it isn't actually the status itself. This article and many others seem to be unable to make that key distinction.
  - hultner 7y ago
    If you default on everything assets such as that successful business will be reclaimed by the creditors/government, of course this depends a bit on where you live but for instance in Sweden if you default you're required to live on minimum living expenses for five years, any assets you amass over this minimum living value will be claimed by the government.
  - isoskeles 7y ago
    > you still get wealthy Do you think the bad habits go away just because you succeeded? That’s not how life works, and the evidence is people who win the lottery.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

duxup 7y ago

I'm reminded of when Radiohead sold their album for whatever folks wanted to pay on the internet and someone wrote an article about how all bands could do that too: Step 1: Be Radiohead... The idea being that the hard part is getting to where you can even use the advice, and after that you're all but done.

_Microft 7y ago
Same category: Musk's "The Boring Company" merchandise. You need millions of followers in first place to be able to sell out 50000 basecaps for a million dollar in total or even 20000 not-a-flamethrowers for $500 each in a few days.

hultner 7y ago

I wouldn't fully agree with this, I'd say income that non-linear to amount time spent it the highest driving factor. Let's take an example. I'm going to use Swedish living conditions and salaries as an example as that's where I live but they are close to most European/western countries. We have a frugal grocery store cashier who makes $2000 USD/month after taxes. We have a high level executive in a medium-sized company who makes $5000 USD/month after taxes. The grocery worked lives like a student (student loan/benefits in Sweden is about $1000 USD/mo) and saves the rest on the stock market (assuming average yearly yield with reinvested dividends at 8.5%), efficiently saving $1000USD/month for future non linear income. The cashier plans to stop working early at 55, at a net worth of about $2 900 000 USD. This allows for a safe withdrawal rate at about $10 000 USD/month. At this level travling/vacation expenses isn't a problem for the cashier. Housing probably does but they can most likely live comfortably even if they decide to rent. They can also easily increase monthly spending allowance by 10% if they decide to continue working half time. At the same time our executive have been burning through every pay-check, and have effectively no net worth at the same age, sure there's plenty enough to lease a nice car, don't care about restaurants bills but more expensive traveling will still be a setback and vacation time per year is certainly limited as income is still linear to time spent. So in this example we have a cashier ending up as a multi millionear set for life at 55 with no need to work a day more and a high level executive who'd be back at 0 without the job and a strictly linear income. Sure salary increase does matter, but in the long run underspending matters more. With a longterm plan it's possible to become a multi millionaire with an entry level job, for instance there's a famous Swedish railroad worker who recently passed away who ended up with somewhere around $17 000 000 USD net worth at the time of his death, and achieved this by living under his expenses with a low salary and investing the rest, he initially turned to the stock market because he couldn't afford a house in his youth. Not Jay-Z levels for sure but well beyond what most people would consider very wealthy.

bronco21016 7y ago
I think you’re both right. The combination of multiplying income while also saving more and more of that income is the key to jumping wealth levels. It’s certainly possible to live a comfortable life on the cashiers plan but if the executive spent just half of their career living like the cashier then he would quickly pass up the cashier on the wealth ladder.

icedchai 7y ago

Most people have it wrong. While salary increases are necessary, they are not sufficient. You need to save and invest aggressively. I'm not talking saving 10%. I'm talking 30%, 40%, maybe even more, if you want to achieve financial independence in under 15 to 20 years. The first few years, maybe the first decade, are tough. After that, it becomes self sustaining: you eventually make more in gains (unrealized, ideally) than you do working.

r0fl 7y ago

Your example of a person with $10,000 accumulated wealth and no job makes perfect sense. However this does not hold true higher up the scale. People with mid 8 figure liquid net worth, ex: $50-70,000,000 do not need to have any income for extremely long periods of time without having any large negative effect on their spending ability.

leetcrew 7y ago
these people get income from capital gains or take loans against their assets. even very rich people try hard not to spend their principal.

grey-area 7y ago

Capital is more powerful than income. It is harder to accumulate capital but still worthwhile even if you can only do it slowly.

plughs 7y ago

> Other methods, whether they involve quantity of free time or already-available money, are intrinsically tied to the quality of your job or, failing that, the quality of your parents' or partner's jobs. For a lot of educated types, the best chance of really climbing the wealth ladder is early involvement in a startup. The startup founders I know have a single unifying factor, they come from the sort of wealth that allows them to go completely bankrupt and still live comfortably. We have good incomes and live pretty frugally, and for us that translates to a decent amount saved for retirement and college funds. I would never knock that, that we are incredibly lucky and a lot of people work very hard for less. But it doesn't move us up a class such that we have a house overlooking the beach and kids in 20k/year private schools. I know people who have those, and they didn't work their way up a ladder. Their ladder started on the 10th floor.

giggitytex 7y ago

I agree with you, and this flies in the face of Kiyosaki-isms.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago

I'm not totally convinced. It seems to me the further you get up the greasy poll the greasier it gets. Sure if you are on minimum wage then there are probably some easy gains to be made but for someone in the middle of their career they are far more likely to improve their situation by saving rather than getting promoted. That's not to say they shouldn't try but you have to realise the odds are against you getting to the top. If you are looking at it from the perspective of starting a business then having some savings is going to make it far more likely. You aren't even going to have the mental energy for it if you are spending all your time thinking about how much to pay on the credit cards each month. This is the reality for many people, possibly even the majority.

enraged_camel 7y ago
>> It seems to me the further you get up the greasy poll the greasier it gets. Quite the opposite: the pole is greasy at the bottom, but becomes easier to climb the more you manage to climb. The reason it's greasy at the bottom is because there are fundamental systemic factors at play that make it very difficult for poor people from making their way up. For example, here in the USA you cannot open a bank account if you don't have a permanent address, and you're likely to work multiple jobs with constant changes in schedule, and lack of easy transportation options to travel from one to the other. Once you reach middle class though, the relative stability it provides can allow you to make decisions to climb the ladder further, if you choose to do so.

taneq 7y ago

> The undisputed "best way" to climb the wealth ladder is to receive large amounts of cash from some external source. I agree with most of what you say here but I'm not so sure of this bit. Of course, if you get handed huge amount of cash by a rich relative, that's the easiest way to live comfortably for some time, but it won't come with the financial skills to make the cash an asset instead of just a possession. Assuming you don't win that lottery (or indeed win the actual lottery, $100 million powerball style), I think the best way to climb the ladder is to own a business (as per your 'small business owner across the street with the McMansion and the gaudy Christmas decorations'). Receiving cash is like getting a push on your billy cart, it's nice but it doesn't, in itself, give you a way to get more. A business is like an engine for the billy cart, maybe it won't be going as fast right away but it'll keep on going and generating money. Either way, as you say, scrimping on groceries will never make the difference between wealthy and not. Wisely investing your salary in real estate or stocks won't help either, except over timescales too long to have any fun with it or unless you're at the very top tier of a FAANG-type company. A business is a machine to make money and unless you own one, you're highly unlikely to end up in the same financial class.

frogpelt 7y ago

I think you can get from level 1 to level 4 just by being careful and wise. You might even get to level 5 by the time you die. But level 6 will require taking risk and that risk paying off big-time. Usually it requires taking several risks. Jay-Z got from level 1 to level 6 by taking the risk of going public with his craft. He decided he would put in the work, make the connections, and not fear the rejections. The reason entrepreneurs get rich is they take the risk. There is some luck involved but most people (me included) aren't willing to risk their current level to level up.

mcguire 7y ago
I think you misspelled "a very great deal of luck". How many rappers aren't Jay-Z?

bboygravity 7y ago

Summarized: nobody in the history of humanity ever got wealthy from having a job. If you want to get rich you have to learn how to invest other people's money and make it work for you. This is also my main take away from "rich dad, poor dad" (the book). It is so simple, yet I was so blind to this for a long time.

umeshunni 7y ago
> Nobody in the history of humanity ever got wealthy from having a job I think thousands of people in the valley who made their money from stock options / RSUs will disagree with this
mcguire 7y ago
Depends what you mean by "wealthy". In these comments, it's a motorized goalpost on wheels.

yawboakye 7y ago

Totally agree. But here's a thought: could wealth accumulation be a feedback loop? What I mean is, can the earning part benefit from a "reckless" spending side? Speaking from experience, I've been in the business of making more money because (1) I don't believe in saving (I've bought a few insurances here and there, because of course, health isn't guaranteed) (2) I love nice things and will get them at all cost. I don't know what feeds into the other. Is my taste for recklessness a result of my implicit knowledge that I can generate a good sum of money when I need. Or am I waking up everyday and putting in the work in order to satisfy my reckless side? What I know for sure is that one can deliberately climb the ladder. And the undisputed "best way" to climb the wealth ladder is to generate (not receive) income. There are many ways to do that. Usually employment isn't one.

mcguire 7y ago

"I understand this isn't the point of the article, but it seems like a roundabout way of saying "don't overspend"." Well yes, but...that's completely useless advice and the article is considerably more concrete and useful. (On the other hand, I'll dispute his 1-basis-point: I think it should be closer to .1 basis point.) You are right about the difference between income and net worth. To a point, anyway.