That thing rich people do where they make money into more money
- Thread starter Phoenix Down
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Fundamentally what you're seeking to do is utilize interest and return on investment, which is another word for interest.
There are many avenues to do this, but being successful in any of these can be difficult. You can use an investment manager (mutual fund, hedge fund, ect.), but will he do a good job? Can you trust him? It then comes back to you to do due diligence upon your investment manager regularly, which requires an understanding of the job he is doing at least on a novice level.
If you take the reigns of managing your own investments, whether into stocks, commodities, a business, or so on; then you have even more work and responsibilities to execute in order to succeed. A lucky investment is just that, luck. Good investors remove luck from the equation and rely on risk/reward analysis, as well as a multitude of other strategies depending on the investment type.
When you take the reigns yourself, you only improve your odds if you can count on yourself to execute the necessary steps in order to succeed. This requires a great deal of real-world experience in order to ensure any chance of reliable success. Failure is more likely in the beginning, until you have the necessary knowledge and skills. With stocks, you can try investopedia which allows you to play with a stock simulator. Read several books on investing in stocks, and play with that for more than 3 years, and you might begin to grasp what it takes to reliably succeed, if you're dedicated and serious. It also requires the right sort of personality.
INFJ's are inherently not inclined to be investment managers. I have dabbled in this quite a bit, and while I could possibly do it, what it requires to succeed is equivalent to a full time job. Without sufficient starting capital, it would be impossible for me to make a living at. Further complicating this would be that some years might be excellent while others terrible. The final aggregate over my lifetime could be nice, but choppy income is not ideal for living a normal life.
There are many avenues to do this, but being successful in any of these can be difficult. You can use an investment manager (mutual fund, hedge fund, ect.), but will he do a good job? Can you trust him? It then comes back to you to do due diligence upon your investment manager regularly, which requires an understanding of the job he is doing at least on a novice level.
If you take the reigns of managing your own investments, whether into stocks, commodities, a business, or so on; then you have even more work and responsibilities to execute in order to succeed. A lucky investment is just that, luck. Good investors remove luck from the equation and rely on risk/reward analysis, as well as a multitude of other strategies depending on the investment type.
When you take the reigns yourself, you only improve your odds if you can count on yourself to execute the necessary steps in order to succeed. This requires a great deal of real-world experience in order to ensure any chance of reliable success. Failure is more likely in the beginning, until you have the necessary knowledge and skills. With stocks, you can try investopedia which allows you to play with a stock simulator. Read several books on investing in stocks, and play with that for more than 3 years, and you might begin to grasp what it takes to reliably succeed, if you're dedicated and serious. It also requires the right sort of personality.
INFJ's are inherently not inclined to be investment managers. I have dabbled in this quite a bit, and while I could possibly do it, what it requires to succeed is equivalent to a full time job. Without sufficient starting capital, it would be impossible for me to make a living at. Further complicating this would be that some years might be excellent while others terrible. The final aggregate over my lifetime could be nice, but choppy income is not ideal for living a normal life.
Oh and as a side-note, I once did an option trade that netted 90% gain in a day. It was a good trade, but then I blew the money away on dumb trades, thinking I was good at option trading after one good trade.
If you don't have a lot of money and want to quickly make a ton of money, options of one of the few ways to do it. It's highly risky, and expect to lose all of your money if you attempt it. It is not; however, based on luck since predicting future movements of stocks is possible. If you're able to read a major move before it happens, and that move has not be priced into the option, you can have the ability to double your money or better. Gains in the 500% range are plausible. While predicting future movement of stocks is definitely possible, a professional may only be 55% correct in doing so. This makes naked option trading a poor way of making money because they're just as likely to lose everything than to gain anything.
Even if you predict the movement correctly, it may not be great enough to garner a sizable enough return to bother with.
If you don't have a lot of money and want to quickly make a ton of money, options of one of the few ways to do it. It's highly risky, and expect to lose all of your money if you attempt it. It is not; however, based on luck since predicting future movements of stocks is possible. If you're able to read a major move before it happens, and that move has not be priced into the option, you can have the ability to double your money or better. Gains in the 500% range are plausible. While predicting future movement of stocks is definitely possible, a professional may only be 55% correct in doing so. This makes naked option trading a poor way of making money because they're just as likely to lose everything than to gain anything.
Even if you predict the movement correctly, it may not be great enough to garner a sizable enough return to bother with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_equity
If you ask just about anyone who has made a lot of money in finance they will tell you that the best asset class is by far private equity. You need to have a decent amount of time, energy, and money to reap gains from private equity financing. Fortunately, this particular asset class does not require much technical knowledge in finance or economics. If you are a smart and outgoing guy you could easily make up for any technical knowledge that you might lack.
If you ask just about anyone who has made a lot of money in finance they will tell you that the best asset class is by far private equity. You need to have a decent amount of time, energy, and money to reap gains from private equity financing. Fortunately, this particular asset class does not require much technical knowledge in finance or economics. If you are a smart and outgoing guy you could easily make up for any technical knowledge that you might lack.
"Love of money" =/= "Money itself"
I find poor people tend to commit a lot more violent and predatory crimes than rich people do, How many rich people rob connivence stores at gun point or steal identities?
No no; money is a measurement tool only. It's what people do to GET it that trends so frequently and viscerally toward evil. Abuse is extreme, and GINI indexes are skewing in the wrong (and fundamentally violent) direction as a result.
I agree. It's also the very attitude that prevents many people from achieving wealth or at least financial independence. Some people like to believe that the poor are saintly and the rich are evil. Not true. They have entirely different ways of thinking about money and just that alone contributes to one gaining wealth and the other not being able to hold on to it.
I live in a relatively small society, in which I have a unique perspective. I have family members who come from the lower, middle and upper class. We have a common ancestry and no one inherited anything because our ancestors were poor but in the space of a century our wealth has differentiated.
The first issue I notice with the poor members is a tendency to be afraid of money and treat it as magical. They depend on the money they earn from their labour wholly and set aside very little for investment or emergencies so their finances lack resilience to stress. If they get a windfall they spend it all. If someone from the family suggests a business venture and even offers to finance it they come up with all sorts of reasons why it won't work.
The middle class family members have figured out that education, holding down a steady job and even owning their own business can give them greater financial security. The upper class members take it to a whole new level. They never stop looking for new opportunities to invest and are always putting their money to work. They also figured out that an earlier investment will usually bear more fruit than a later one. They plan their expenses carefully. When they purchase something they truly can afford it. They aren't paying interest on anything. They understand that timing a purchase well can mean the difference between the growth or destruction of wealth.
Basically, these are the rules. Invest your money. Protect your principal. If you lose your principal you must start from scratch. Limit your expenses. Invest your investment earnings in ways that take advantage of exponential growth. Protect your wealth legally and never gamble with your money. Keep your ear to the ground because by the time the majority have figured out the new good investment, it has all ready crested. You also need a little luck but this part tends to be overstated.
Not at all; however, the odds do skew a bit. Largely, the odds increase of a wealthy person being evil simply because it is so much easier for an evil person to accrue wealth (prey upon thy neighbor, after all.) A good person CAN do it, but that suggests they'll be playing by acceptable 'goodly' rules, and that dramatically limits their opportunities to take wealth away from others (which, in a world where resources are no longer ubiquitous and are instead stretched incredibly thin, is the primary mechanism for finding wealth.)
Good wealth typically comes via improving the lot of others and LONG term investment; those who tend to see HONESTLY only to their own needs tend to remain relatively unwealthy (comfortable perhaps, but not wealthy)... but easiest overall is bad wealth which is gathered via theft, deceit, exploitation, and violence.
Look around today and you'll find the majority of the wealthiest out there fall into that latter classification. Healthcare CEOs, hedge fund managers, Dictators, Free-market think-tank chairs, and so many others. They all essentially scheme and juggle, rather than invent or innovation or invest.
Absolutely!
A poor person robbing a store may cause harm to the store keeper, but a person who can control the flows of money can affect the economy, people's jobs, culture itself, people's wants, healthcare etc
The people who do most harm are those with the most wealth. The people who commit the biggest most harmful crimes are those with the greatest wealth
As Balzac wrote: 'behind every great fortune is a great crime'
- Sep 28, 2008
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"The upper class commits far more crime than the lower class. Street criminals stole $15.3 billion in 1993, but white collar-criminals embezzled $200 billion. Street criminals murdered 23,271 people that year, but the decisions of profit-driven corporations murdered at least 318,368 (through pollution, consumer and worker safety violations, etc.) Corporations deserve blame for these deaths because they lobby for and enact policies which drive up these death rates. Virtually all other rich countries have higher safeguards and lower death rates. "
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-poorcrime.htm
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-poorcrime.htm
I don't think so. The poor are as every bit as capable as the wealthy to be evil and do evil things just as often. The difference is that people feel guilty about the poor while they love to hate the rich. As to looking around at evil fund managers etc. Like I said I have a unique perspective I see how both sides behave and one isn't better than the other. They only have different resources.
Money = power. The more money, the more power. Power is neutral. How it's used is not. If an evil person is poor he or she can inflict only limited harm. If an evil person is wealthy or controls wealth, he or she can inflict substantial harm. Bernie Madoff is an example of power used to harm. Warren Buffett and the Gates's foundation are examples of money used for good.
Ok. I see where you are going. Firstly money does not equal power. Sometimes it does. Money can actually make you weak and vulnerable to opportunists. Greater power does increase the opportunity to inflict harm or good but it doesn't make you more evil or good it just extends your reach. It simply isn't true that there is a direct relationship between wealth and evil. Further it's a false assumption that prevents the real problem from being identified and solved. If it is as simple as the wealthy are evil then why not get rid of the wealthy and get rid of the evil? Would that really work?
I'm sorry, but you misread my post. Money always equals power because it is the currency of power. If you have money but you are weak and vulnerable (i.e., it was probably inherited, not made by the individual), then you may well choose to give up or misuse the power that money confers on you. But, you still had the power, particularly in the sense that you had the ability to do things and get things done, but you chose otherwise.
As I wrote, money is neutral. That is, it is neither good nor bad. How you use it and what you do with it can be good or bad.
Where do you get the idea, from what I wrote, that I think or assume that there "is a direct relationship between wealth and evil?" I am all in favor of having money and using it wisely.
Where do you get the idea from what I wrote that I think the wealthy are evil? Some are and some are not, but this is usually coincidental to their wealth. I personally have a vested interest in wealth.
I'll be sixty in a week and a bit. People do become more balanced as they age. Being an INTP and having all kinds of interesting ideas and intellectual interests is all well and good, but sometimes you just need to implement those ideas and reduce those inventions to practice. My experience with INTJ's (I've known several and my older son is one) is that they are some of the most effective people in getting things done effectively and efficiently. My INFJ wife is a physician and medical scientist who slips into her INTJ mode quite easily. INFJ's with a well developed "T" can sometimes appear to be INTJish. I guess I would say that nobody is limited to just four letters.