Quote:
Originally Posted by Vegas69
Greg, I know a little about how you became wealthy but I'd really like to hear your story from ground zero. It's one thing to strike it rich, it's another to keep it.
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That would take a book.... but I can tell you that really hitting pay dirt for us was more luck than smarts. I was a made a partner in a multi million dollar business in New York City in my mid 20's... Sold out in 1983 and moved back to the west coast... had enough money to live decently and start a new business as a wholesale distributor in the patio furniture industry and at the same time Gwen went to work @ Microsoft in 1984... when they had a whopping 600 employees and PRE IPO... My business went gangbusters and at the same time MSFT went nuts too. BUT and here's the big BUTT.... many of our friends that had MORE stock options than we had by 5 times... they've gone broke and many are back working! We stayed in our same house - and invested our windfall. One of those investments that was made more recently (7 or 8 years ago now) just rang the bell in an all cash transaction (it's public info) for 2.25 Billion.... and we owned 1% of all the outstanding shares... so once again it was luck. For us - this was icing on the cake and came late stage in the scheme of things. We went from a very comfortable early retirement to being able to do almost anything we want. Not private jet rich but set up pretty nicely and luckily at a stage of life that let's us do a few things we'd like to do.
Here's the real take away from what I've learned over the years.... and I'm talking about handling money and watching others mishandle it.
All of us - regardless of where we are in life - have the ability to spend more than we earn.
To this day I marvel at what others have... I look around and think "geezus - how do they do that?! They must be really rich!"
I've stated earlier that all our friends have second homes... we don't. They're all still working, we're not. They have "stuff" and expenses... we have cash that earns income.
Wealth is a variable statement that depends more on the desires of the person than the amount available in the bank.
My Mother in law lives in a great little house... 1/3rd the size of the family home which was sold after an early death of my Father in law. She's been retired since then (1983) and has about 350K invested + Social Security. She lives great and has traveled etc. Buys a new Honda Accord every 4 or 5 years and pays cash. There's the key -- owns the house - no payments - saves money even to this day (in other words she spends less than her income). She doesn't have that much income but doesn't need much either! She is wealthy compared to my parents that never had anything but had a Cadillac in the driveway and couldn't live unless I helped them every month AND I owned the home they lived in. (they're both deceased now)
INVESTING EARLY in life is the key to real success LATER in life.
If you want to live well for a long time - you need to either be really lucky (me) or be really diligent EARLY in your careers... and invest rather than piss away money. Whether that's buying a rental house... and every time you get more dough you buy another... and then parlay that into a fourplex... or you invest in a business of your own.... or you just work and pound every extra dime into the stock market...... ALL OF THESE STRATEGIES REQUIRE TIME TO PAY OFF.
You need to put yourself into a position in order to be "lucky" later. Even if this means you drive your old car for 4 years AFTER you finished paying it off... BUT you have to put that same payment in the bank every month so when the next car purchase is made -- you buy a late model USED car and pay cash and keep pounding the payment you would have been making in the bank.
Wealth - or being "comfortable" doesn't require great wealth.
It requires great management of what is available and that might mean that there is some tradeoff in the "appearance" of wealth now for the real "wealth" that will come later.... when all those azzholes are still working as greeters at Wal-Mart when they're 73.... and you're sitting in your lawn chair at a car show in Santa Barbara.
I will tell you something else that I don't think can be understood but I'm going to try to put it into perspective and this is just purely a personal "how a guy lives" kind of statement.
The entire time I was in Italy -- in very world class hotels -- eating at the worlds best restaurants -- being driven around in a MBZ.... I said a 100 times to Gwen "I'd just as soon be in Willows eating Mexican food with my friends" -- and I MEANT IT.
So wealth - to me - is really more about getting to some level of life's little pleasures that you enjoy and that doesn't mean they have to be expensive or the best or the biggest - or the baddest in the universe. I'd live in a shoebox house in Wenatchee and have a used Yugo before I'd go back to work to keep what I have now. Because to me - the only thing I have of real value is my time and no amount of money can get me more of that.
