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Ask HN: If you're so smart how come you're not rich?

• tirrellp 6y ago
  Depending on your financial situation, you could Buy an old line company and digitize it. In the US, If you can get 500k from friends and family, you can buy a $5m company with a strong balance sheet and strong cash flow. It will give you a live Petri dish to test your ideas on how to do things better.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • raarts 6y ago
    > get 500k from friends and family You do realize this does not apply to 99.9% of the population right?
  • anm89 6y ago
    How would you go about finding that and financing it?
    • tirrellp 6y ago
      There are business brokers who play that role, as well as microcap sell-side investment banks. The SBA will loan up to $5m if you can come up with 10% down payment.
  • quickthrower2 6y ago
    So no business or leadership experience just buy a company, will all go well?
    • askafriend 6y ago
      It's so easy a caveman can do it!
      • quickthrower2 6y ago
        Hold on.... only if they buy my eBook is it easy!
• elliekelly 6y ago
  It’s almost as if there isn’t any correlation at all between wealth and intelligence...
• SMAAART 6y ago
  This is what I found by Googling around: If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance. The most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest, a new computer model of wealth creation confirms. Taking that into account can maximize return on many kinds of investment. https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/03/01/144958/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/03/01/144958/if-youre-...
  • biolurker1 6y ago
    But none of the self made billionaires is low in IQ. So this is a given and you need luck too. People dismissing success with luck are wrong.
• burntoutfire 6y ago
  Assuming "smart" means 90th percentile of intelligence, there are 700 million smart people, way more that rich people. It shows that obviously wealth creation requires much more than intelligence.
• giantg2 6y ago
  Because I'm really not THAT smart, nor are most people (IQ standard distribution). I think there have been studies and books done about successful people (can't remember the authors). The book basically said that luck is the main influence. There are plenty of smart people who aren't rich and certainly some average people who are. I want to say the experts consider luck to be less than 10% of the success formula.
• lmiller1990 6y ago
  A lot of people will say “it is just luck” but I think this is just one factor. The real question is what moves have you made to get rich? Have you started making a product? You cannot ride (perceived) intelligent to riches.
• leff_f 6y ago
  I can feel your pain, feeling of not getting what you deserve is a tough feeling to keep inside. By identifying ourselves as being smart we are getting into the trap of being hostages of this label. Lot of scenarios in our life require us to make mistakes. Mistake is something a smart person cannot afford and deliberately avoids. We are awarding ourselves with an achievement award of being smart without actually doing the work (doesn't it feel great to be smart?). Being smart is a capacity to think logically, not something we achieved in life. It is given, but to feel fulfilled we need to do something with it. By declaring myself smart I set the scale of measurement for myself, and then I suffer when somebody smarter than me is around. Understanding that even my intellect is not something that defines me is a crucial piece of this puzzle. Intellect is one of the MANY tools available to each one of us. Exploring those tools requires some .... testing and learning, and intellect is a very lousy helper here. And if you really want to focus on the money in your life - look at the people around you. Money come from the relationship with the people around us not from the ideas, thoughts, reasoning. Knowing you strength and focusing on helping people - producing much better outcome long term than focusing on a great idea. So as you said - time to kick your own ass! ;) Hope this was useful.
  • AndyBK 6y ago
    Ticks all of the right boxes!!
• billconan 6y ago
  what I learned is that successful people know how to leverage resources to achieve their goals. smart people focus only on polishing their own skills, but that doesn't scale.
  • tluyben2 6y ago
    Yep, it is what I still have to fight against; ‘this is going too slow, let me do it!’. If you cannot do it yourself, you won’t even attempt, which seems much more relaxed in many ways.
• robocat 6y ago
  My tip: partner up with someone who wants money, and that you know has the skills to make it, and has the ethics to share profits with you. Steve Wozniak might be an example of someone who did that. The smart people I know that are not rich because of one of two prime reasons: 1. They are not wealthy because they are not driven to make money. The scientist, the stereotypicial engineer, the altruist. The majority of self-made wealth I have seen is due to a real desire to make money, and work hard at it with little regard to other concerns like how enjoyable or prestigious the work is. 2. They are smart in particular areas, but really let themselves down in others. Maybe they can’t work well with others, maybe they intellectually can’t do sales, maybe they don’t keep motivation to work on a winning thing, maybe they gamble or drink, maybe they have psych issues. Note that there are plenty of exceptions to the above (gain wealth despite the above, or lose it even with the above). Finally plenty of smart people just don’t value money that highly - they are smart enough to have different goals in life. My guess is you want money for the social status but that you don’t actually care much about money - if so maybe accept that and choose your own path.
• ptmcc 6y ago
  Define rich? By most metrics I am rich, just not private jet 0.1% rich. I work at a big tech company and make >200k/yr. I have few financial worries. At this point I’m not primarily motivated by more money. Sure I’ll take it, but at this point I’d sooner spend my time and energy on other more important things. Family, friends, hobbies, etc. The financial security to focus on those things makes me feel pretty rich. Am I not smart for being satisfied working for someone else and rarely working more than 40hrs/wk?
  • federicosan 6y ago
    For me, rich is someone who does not need to work. Someone who can retire at any given moment.
    • ptmcc 6y ago
      The irony being many people get to that position by being workaholics that can’t stop. I could conceivably retire if I moved to a low cost area, but I enjoy my lifestyle so will keep at it a bit longer.
      • rumanator 6y ago
        > I could conceivably retire if I moved to a low cost area, but I enjoy my lifestyle so will keep at it a bit longer. I am in a similar position but what keeps me from thinking about early retirement is not knowing what will be my financial needs in the future, and I'm concerned that I might not be fully aware of the role that luck played in getting a cushy life.
      • tluyben2 6y ago
        I guess key here is ‘can retire’. Personally I like working and cannot see myself retiring, ever, but I could’ve for quite a while already. I just have 100 ideas a day I want to build and have had that for well over 30 years now; why would I stop? Not to mention that almost everyone who I know who retired (rich or not) is bored and depressed...
• _qulr 6y ago
  The reason you're not rich is probably because you didn't single-mindedly pursue riches. Which is smart, because riches are not intellectually interesting. Some money is necessary for living, but the pursuit of wealth above all else is, frankly, dumb. Don't envy people who are addicted to money; it's a sickness.
• comeondude 6y ago
  Start loving yourself. Have you ever fell in love to the point where you’d do anything for that person and that person can do no wrong in your eyes? Make that person yourself. Takes practice!
  • QuixoticQuibit 6y ago
    This provided some much needed perspective. Thank you.
• UK-Al05 6y ago
  Smarts gets you to be upper middle class. Taking on a lot of risk, pushing yourself to the limit gets you to be rich.
  • rramadass 6y ago
    Well said! Also add in a whole lot of luck.
  • brmgb 6y ago
    Realistically being born rich get you to be rich. But I agree that the main thing separating an employee from a founder is that one actually started a business. I disagree about the whole pushing yourself to the limit thing however. If you found a business or try to build a career, you are in it for the long haul. Sustained effort is what you need. Generally when I see people complain about things they haven't achieved, I see two problems: posture and outlook. Posture is simple: if you want things to happen, you have to stop waiting for them to happen and actually take step to make them happen. In my opinion, outlook is generally the main problem however. Just stop casting a bad light on what you have already done and put forward the good the part instead. Enjoy what you have achieved and start working on what you want to do next. What's done is done anyway. Also it's easier to convince people to do things with you when you have a positive outlook. Anyway, if you are pondering why something didn't happen to you, unless you are looking for the reasons you failed in order to improve, you are most likely asking the wrong question. Start looking forward rather than backward.
    • gadders 6y ago
      >>Realistically being born rich get you to be rich. I think this is true, but not in the obvious "Your parents will give you money" or "Your social network will help you" but for (having grown up poor and now doing OK) it's the implicit safety net that allows you to take risks that allow you win (or lose!) big.
    • noxer 6y ago
      >Realistically being born rich get you to be rich. I rather think being born rich gives you a different risk tolerance and that raises your chance of becoming rich(er).
• meiraleal 6y ago
  I started too poor to be too rich, but from a very poor family and no support and background I currently belong to the 5% people making more money in my country, so although I'm not rich as private jet rich, I bootstrapped myself from poverty to a high quality standard of life.
• nunez 6y ago
  Because I'm not feeling risky enough to try for it...yet. I'm not feeling risky enough because our life is pretty good as it is. Our life is pretty good as is because we don't have to worry about finances, as my job pays incredibly well.
• kleer001 6y ago
  Intelligence isn't the limiting factor to economic success. One can be smart and lazy. Conscientiousness is the limiting factor to economic success. One doesn't need to be very smart, just lucky enough to get the opportunities, smart enough to recognize them, and hard enough working to follow through.
• m463 6y ago
  The world average median income seems to be about $10,000.
  • biolurker1 6y ago
    Doesn't matter if you live in HCOL
  • imhoguy 6y ago
    You mean yearly or lifetime?
• rapjr9 6y ago
  Fear of patents and lawsuits has often prevented me from pursuing an idea. It's difficult to find related work in patents, and anybody can start a lawsuit. Many patents are vague and way too general and can be used against you even if you think they're about something totally unrelated to what you're doing. I've made several attempts to start a business and it's scary exposing yourself to the public in that way. Marketing is also really difficult, you are literally competing with millions of other voices trying to get yours heard. Getting rich also often seems to require a willingness to climb on the backs of other people, to use them to their disadvantage to advantage yourself which I found I didn't want to do. Part of being a climber is pulling other people down, and that seems like a bad way to live. There are exceptions to all these, but many of them are typically encountered when starting a business. To get really rich it seems to me that you either have to inherit, be lucky, or be really mean and dirty.
• gassiss 6y ago
  I used to feel this way as well. Until I realized that my way of living would be no different being multi millionaire vs how much I make now, except with bigger numbers in the screen of my bank account(s). Making millions takes a lot of hard work. I'd rather work on my hobbies.
• theonemind 6y ago
  Smart doesn't really get you that much. I compare it to height for a basketball player. Realistically, you're not gonna make NBA if you're not over 6' tall, but that's just the buy in. After that, it's just grueling hard work, and everyone else is 6'+ as well. So, as a first step, count intelligence as nothing more than a (very) rough constraint on what you might possibly accomplish, but nothing more. It covers the ante, but not the hand.
  • murm 6y ago
    This is a good comparison. Just because you were born with genes that make you 6' tall does not mean that the world should somehow automatically lay itself out in front of you. You can try to make it in the NBA, but you're still going to work like hell because you're competing against all the other people who also happened to be born with those tall genes. Ditto for intelligence.
• muzani 6y ago
  I say it's luck. Marc Andreessen wrote a nice blog on this: https://pmarchive.com/luck_and_the_entrepreneur.html https://pmarchive.com/luck_and_the_entrepreneur.html People think a lot about the luck they can't control but there are plenty of ways to harvest luck. Smart will let you do harder things with less effort. Smart lets you question yourself and what you're doing wrong. Motion gives you luck. Meet new people, try new things. Don't just optimize for most income, but use your smartness to move faster and further than everyone else. Build 10,000 prototypes. Try new hobbies. Read bigger and thicker books. Reread the same books you have. Being prepared gives you more luck. Some of the best discoveries were organized messes. Edison discovered the light bulb experimenting with everything - animal hair, 6000 vegetable growths, and finally got it with tungsten. Smart people tend to give up earlier and be neater. And the last type of luck just happens to you. A friend just offers you a great job. Your first freelancing contract. Getting a hot date to ask you out first. A friend of mine made music as a full time job and worked on 3D game engines as a hobby, and got a dream job doing music for the game industry. This all seems like luck, because it's an unplanned result, but it's the overflow of hard work. Smart people are a little obsessed with trying to link results directly to an action. To really succeed, you have to keep putting energy and focus into something, even when progress plateaus.
• anm89 6y ago
  I mean are you aggressively focused on pointing your intelligence in the direction of accumulating wealth? If you are and it's not working then you probably aren't as smart as you think you are. If that's not what you are optimizing for, be that lifestyle, or pursuit of interests, then there is no reason to expect the two to be correlated.
  • biolurker1 6y ago
    That's quite simplistic view on a super complex network
• alexmingoia 6y ago
  First decide what you want and then commit to achieving it. If you don’t want to work for a boss, then you have to start your own business or work for yourself. If you want to make more money then you have to decide how much and change your job to accommodate that.
• nullgeo 6y ago
  I think I am smart but I am lazy, and I have this unquenchable thirst for knowledge. I rabbit-hole into things and never completely finish a project that I start. I have so many abandoned GitHub repos that might have panned out if I had put focus and effort into them. So I think my lack of motivation and interest could be a factor in me not getting rich. But I am happy with my 9-5 job that provides enough to take care of the people I love.
• ineedausername 6y ago
  Cause I'm risk-averse and lazy.
• Raed667 6y ago
  Luck, connections and social environment and opportunities. Most of the above average people that I know and that have it really-well had a lot of bootstrap family money and safety nets that allowed them to be "courageous".
• brookshalladay 6y ago
  First, being smart has little relation to riches. It can be a liability. Why? Because there are dozens of other factors that are way more important. Other people have listed many of them. By framing this the way you did, says a lot. I have been there too though so don't feel bad. Getting rich is a bit of a mystery and an art. Here's some qualities or skills that can be key based on my experience: emotional intelligence, team building, strategy, understanding people, networking, solving real human problems, marketing, desire and determination, risk taking, timing, luck, commitment, likability, confidence, purpose, leadership, finance, understanding markets and trends, design, branding, execution (endless work and crazy hours), speed, connections to people with money... it goes on and on. You can't really have all of these so in the end, you have to work with people that do and figure out which you need to develop. We all have ego. Ego tells us how smart and great we are to ourselves. It discounts other people, their qualities, blinds us to where we really need to improve, etc. It is the enemy of progress 80% of the time. We all really know a lot less than we think. The world is complex, changes, and moves fast. Starting out with average intelligence, but a commitment to learning aggressively and meeting people and treating them well is 1000X better place to start. Doors open for that person. There are multiple ways to get rich. But most revolve around business. Businesses are almost never run or created by smart engineers or super technical people. It just so happens that most of us are in technology so it seems like it. But in reality, there's millions of businesses out there that make unbelievable money that have nothing to do with tech. Even tech companies need a lot of people with different qualities other than engineering or simply smart people. Other ways to at least do well while working a regular job: investing, real estate, side hustles, saving money, etc. In the past 20 years, if I put more aside into stocks and real estate I would easily have $1.5M to $2M. Hitting base hits consistently is often the way to go. I always have wanted to get rich to solve the money problem. It won't happen until I focus on adding real value to other people. It can't be about me. Which also means it can't really be about getting rich. That can only be one underlying motivating factor but primarily it has to shift into focusing on others.
• askafriend 6y ago
  You don't make money by being smart. You make money by taking on risk, being smart, executing well, and getting lucky among 100 other things. If you think intelligence alone can get you there, you're about to be in a world of pain down the road.
• imhoguy 6y ago
  > I am smart. I know I'm smart, I am told that I am smart, I do smart things... and I guess you are risk-averse and try to behave predictable the entire life to not loose that smartness badge in some crazy venture. Following the safest path won't let you step on the edge to reach something unknown.
  • SMAAART 6y ago
    > and I guess you are risk-averse and try to behave predictable the entire life to not loose that smartness badge in some crazy venture. Following the safest path won't let you step on the edge to reach something unknown. You nailed it!
• formerchamp 6y ago
  I'm a minority so the only clear answer here is systemic racism.
  • newswasboring 6y ago
    Are you sure its the only clear answer? There is nothing else that can explain this?
    • formerchamp 6y ago
      I graduated college despite historical oppression and system racism. My access to capital is due to the color of my skin.
      • dang 6y ago
        We've banned this account for trolling. Could you please not create HN accounts to do that with? It doesn't help anything.
• docflabby 6y ago
  The simple answer is you are not as smart as you think you are. If you were you would already have worked out the answer to this question. Most people overestimate their own intelligence. The majority of people think they are smarter than average.
• WheelsAtLarge 6y ago
  Getting rich when you have nothing often takes patience and long term planning. Look around you all the self-made titans have built their wealth over decades. They decided where they could best make an impact and they made a plan and followed through relentlessly. We see the result but we don't see the sleepless days, the never-ending meetings, the ability to stay focused and on and on, not just for days or weeks but for years. Also, you need to lead many people to the same goal. Do you that successfully and you'll be rewarded with lots of money. Most people burn out early, even if they are motivated, or can't get others to follow. Smarts is only a small part of the solution. Example: Let's say you come up with the greatest solution to a problem but if you are the only one that knows it then it has no value to anyone. You have to let people know through the creation of an organization. And you have to convince them that it really is a great solution that they need to use.
• klambda 6y ago
  PG commented recently "if you do creative work, try to avoid situations where people with less ability than you can tell you what to do, or edit your work". It expands to getting rich.
• 5ociety 6y ago
  Well the game is rigged. If you're so smart why are you in prison. You have to get crazy because yeah they're dumber but they are playing a different game. You forget you are smarter than idk 70, 80, 90, 95% of people. Once I started thinking that way things started making more sense and I stopped caring what people think while I'm on my path. Take some risks. Who cares what they think. You won't get there playing by their rules. The purpose of their rules is to turn you into a tool.
• thedevindevops 6y ago
  There is no gene for fate - Gattaca (1997)
• JohnClark1337 6y ago
  This is how you get The Riddler
• runjake 6y ago
  No, because smart does not equate to rich[1]. I could be rich. I know what is required, but I actively choose not to put in that work and make those sacrifices. Why not? Because I'm choosing other things like family and peace of mind. I reckon if I could keep those, I'd move forward. Regarding your fear and insecurity: you're going to die sooner rather than later. You have virtually nothing to lose and a lot to regret. 1. In reality I make low six figures and am privileged to be "richer" than I ever thought I'd be.
• austincheney 6y ago
  > Does anyone else feel this way? No. Once you have spent time in a third works country you can see crisp divides in reality and expectations. There are some amazingly smart people in the world living without running water, food security, or basic sanitation. Intelligence alone will not transform that poverty into excess wealth. Once you have worked for a major government or committed yourself to science/academics you will understand that there is amazing genius intelligence that is not earning stupendous wealth. Peter Thiel has commented before about his complete inability to understand that which says more about Peter than anything else. Honestly, according to numerous data sources most wealth comes from only two places: inheritance and narcissism. There are company founders/athletes/entertainers who are incredibly successful that are not primarily self-serving whether by favorable market conditions or their own ingenuity but they are a minority data sample after accounting for distribution of wealth by headcount quantity. That said, a better question is: Why are you still wealthy?
  • hejja 6y ago
    "numerous data sources", yeah sounds credible
• hejja 6y ago
  to answer this question we have to ask what smart even means. if it means you can "figure stuff out at work" congrats, you can follow instructions in a structured, specialist environment. to become legitimately "rich", however, in most cases you have to own part of a business. and in the world of entrepreneurship, you have to be much more of a generalist, as there are 10 different factors (sales, product, timing, pricing) you must all get right. I can virtually guarantee you the best person at math in the world is not rich, because they have gone full specialist to get to that point, and therefore cannot succeed outside of an extremely structured environment. "Range, Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by David Epstein is a great book on this topic.
• fullStackOasis 6y ago
  How much money do you want to make? Sometimes, I do wonder why I'm not rich, even though I'm smart in many ways. But I really know the answer. I haven't actually tried to get rich, because I don't value that very much. I try to maximize my time for things that make me happy. So it's not really a mystery that I'm not "rich" (a relative term).