But Nery, your grandpa still had cash money $1 million 20+ years ago. He could have bought any risk asset - stocks or whatever - and achieved something comparable to 10% returns. How much of that did he retain and how much did he spend?
never happened
they started a lot of businesses. i think at the time my grandparents were already retired, and they were in their 50s. grandpa was the head city dr. and grandma was a pharmacist. some that i remember was a barbershop/hair salon, a trucking co, a water filter co and a taxi service. i think the taxi service was the most expensive money loser as we had over 10 taxis. anyways long story short, they all failed. we also owned a lot of of mc mansions lol.
for our 1m. my dad was in cosntruction business where there was plenty of corruption. we literally built some of the schools in our city. anyhow i think my dad was cheated by a partner. his name is almost comical, santander. no idea how much $$ was lost there. by the time we came to the us in 2000, my parents had maybe 100k at the time and of our buildings just burned down. by 2009, our fam net worth was prolly 0. enter 2019, where we are all earning and our fam core net worth prolly 1.8m.
anyways my family didnt believe in the stock market or bond market for that matter. they lost a lot of money in some fucking energy company. too many swindlers back in the day as well. also to date, if you buy a stock, your commission is 1 %. crazy expensive i know. also they wanted something tangible like real estate or a business. but unfortunately they were not businessmen. even in 2009, my mom’s 50k in her 401k was mostly in cash, underused and used as a piggy bank. i cahnged all that though, and now she sits on about 500k.
Never happe…
Er, I mean. Wow, Nery. What a truly uplifting story. Hard working and motivated people with all backgrounds like you are what make America such a great country. From your example, I am inspired to do my best to help those around me and society in general.
Normally I would feel jealous of these people being so rich, but by chance, I just got an email from the prince of Nigeria offering me several billion dollars!
Seriously though, I find it interesting how people always manage to see themselves as poor, even if they are rich compared to everyone else. Even many Westerners on the poorer side are still far, far richer than most of the people in the world today.
true…
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- An income of $32,400 per year would allow someone to be among the top 1% of income earners in the world.
- To reach the top 1 percent worldwide in terms of wealth—not just income but all you own—you’d have to possess $770,000 in net worth.
- The bar to enter the top 1 percent wouldn’t be this low were it not for the extreme poverty that so much of the globe endures.
i guess this is one of those things that work in theory but not in practice. 50% of people are ”above average” and many of those try to earn significant figures, yet very few families are worth 50million, no matter how many generations of hard work and high intellectual prowess.
Actually my great grandfather was apparently a business man in the logging industry. He used it to buy a shit ton of land. My grandparents inherited that land but had nothing to do with business. Grandfather was a doctor for instance. Business eventually died by the time my dad was alive and they started selling of land little by little. When they got that big pay day. My dad and grandma tried to get into other businesses but failed or got cheated by people and has shifted focus to just enjoying life and squandering my inheritance. Dad is well aware of my disappointments. It’s kind of funny, like a reversal of roles. Annyways it went to 0 by the time I was in high school. And now my job is to rebuild and bring honor to my family.
I know I will easily exceed 50m. I was bred for it.
Yeah sure go for it. But I was talking statistics and over-generational wealth accumulation and your comment didn’t really have anything to do with that.
Ohai, I think you’re great, but you said once you came from a family that already had ~($10-$20M) squirreled away from an upper crust legacy. Even if you were unaware of this at a young age, you were being groomed to go to Standfordish type places. You obviously have a ton of insights into things like success, but the area of being self made and what it takes to climb from a starting point anywhere near average will never be part of that repertoire.
It sounds like you’re 1/8th good at business, bred for it the way Elizabeth Warren is Native American!
Who said anything about being “self made”? This sort of definition loses meaning after a while anyway. Is Bill Gates self made? He came from a rich family who trained him to go to Harvard. Zuckerberg too. The measure of someone’s productivity is what they accomplish relative to their starting point. For people who are born in privilege, that standard is merely higher.
It should be clear from my above reasoning that I consider family accomplishment to be a team effort spanning across generations, provided that each generation has the knowledge and disposition of perpetuating wealth. My parents will probably leave behind a larger inheritance than their parents did/will, since they never drew from their parents’ assets. I will probably leave behind a larger inheritance than my parents will leave for me, as I do not need to draw from their assets either.
Of course, this might terminate at some point - for instance, if my children do not adopt the same values as their predecessors. My earlier comment just points out the possibility of wealth accumulation across generations and what I consider to be a reasonable achievement for an “above average” but not necessarily brilliant line of people.
^ some good points. gates and zuckerberg still get kudos from going from upper class to the modern day kings of the world but not as much kudos as say ford or rockefeller who came from a literal crap heap to become similar figures in their time.
you can debate trump’s potential tens of millions and financial guarantees turned into what, a couple billion?, as being not so great over a few decades but it’s hard to say gates and zuckerberg who weren’t given much capital from family and created a fortune of nearly $100 billion as not being self-made.
more importantly is acheivement. is buffett on the same level as gates and zuckerberg? in my mind no. they’re worth about the same but their influence on the world and the luck involved in their achievements is much different.
you don’t like buffett?
Aren’t you supposed to be off work today?
lol classic
I didn’t imply you were self made, but your insights into it are lacking. The flaw in your earlier line of reasoning is it really all comes down to Person Zero, in the chain, the self made root case. That is by a mile, the hardest step in the chain of events for anybody who has experience with the standing of what it takes to dig out from median status. Its not necessarily about intelligence either, it could be luck too, so pointing out that a root person became wealthy while not being genius doesn’t really disprove my point about difficulty.
To highlight my point, you start with this assumption:
This is where you have a logical fallacy because you start with “people who are merely talented to a slightly above average level” saving $10M. Which sort of shows your complete lack of understanding of that situation I pointed out earlier. The average American’s lifetime earnings are $1.4M. Slightly above average, maybe gets you to $3M, so they save $10M from $3M, seems legit. Of course they could save a lot early on while earning $48k a year, but I think that’s somewhat mathematically unreasonable and regardless would be a topic outside your realm of direct experience.
It’s a classic proof by induction from a faulty base case, as they say ex falso quodlibet.
Flowing from that into this:
Again, huge props from what you have accomplished, its arguably as difficult in its own very different way going from the top 2% to the top 1% or however you would characterize your career (being serious), but its kind of a “let them eat cake” moment listening to you opine on the topic of the root case (the self made person that begins the family transition).
imagine being born to poor parents LOL
If you don’t like my numbers, then just change it to generation one leaving $1 million, ending in $5 million to $10 million in three generations, or whatever you want. There are many books about variations of “millionaires next door”. Make it five generations, not 3 generations if you want. This is attainable by let’s say a third of American families. The point is that wealth can accumulate over generations, but this attitude is simply the opposite of American mentality. People here would rather buy Ford F-150s than leave an inheritance.
Anyway, if you do not appreciate my perspective, that is fine. However, my perspective also suggests that you could benefit from being a bit less narrow minded and think about possibilities for your life rather than being negative and focusing on discrediting others who are merely sharing what they have learned. You can be inspired or put up more intellectual walls. That’s your choice.