Has anyone attempted to become rich?

As boring as it sounds, it really is about what you want in life. For some it's the big house with a nice car, for others it's early retirement, for many it's just being happy.

For me it's definitely the latter, and the older I get the more I realise that an Audi vs a Ford, or a 4 bedroom house vs a flat, or retiring at 40 vs retiring at 60 isn't want motivates or concerns me. Just getting up in the morning with a desire to do something that makes a difference, with enough money not to worry about money is all I need.

'Rich' used to mean something - a real difference between living in poverty vs comfort, today it doesn't mean that, it means getting a nicer car. / bigger house / shopping at waitrose.. and I'm not sure that's something that is worth the effort.
 
ultralaser said:
As boring as it sounds, it really is about what you want in life. For some it's the big house with a nice car, for others it's early retirement, for many it's just being happy.

For me it's definitely the latter, and the older I get the more I realise that an Audi vs a Ford, or a 4 bedroom house vs a flat, or retiring at 40 vs retiring at 60 isn't want motivates or concerns me. Just getting up in the morning with a desire to do something that makes a difference, with enough money not to worry about money is all I need.

'Rich' used to mean something - a real difference between living in poverty vs comfort, today it doesn't mean that, it means getting a nicer car. / bigger house / shopping at waitrose.. and I'm not sure that's something that is worth the effort.
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I think that post belies your middle-class status.

For a significant amount of people, having any of those things is borderline impossible. Because when you earn minimum wage and your landlord takes 60% of your net income, you actually struggle just to eat.

The rich/poor divide in this country is worse than any other barring the US (the country we always aspire to emulate..)
 
No can't say I have OP.

In fact I find needless wealth vulgar, disgusting and pathetic, it signals to me a person doesn't really understand the point of being alive if their only persuit in life is to gain excessive money.....what's the point, you can't take it with you when you die.

However I have to balance my life view of happiness coming from how you spend your time vs having zero choice about living in a monotary society ..... So yes I work full time for myself but I really enjoy my work and I work on the quality of what I'm doing as best I can. I charge however standard industry fees for what I do, the average going rate, which is dictated by the market anyway.

So yeah I'm a fully fledged member of society paying my taxes but I do my work because I love it, the money's just what I get to feed myself, living costs, maintain my equipment for my work and about my only other expense is my joy for my hobbies, which now iv acquired what I need to do them I don't really spend my money on much else - I otherwise don't enjoy being part of capitalism, I'd rather a more 'human' orientated society but there we go.
 
NVP said:
Your accommodation takes 60% of your income, not simply your landlord.
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You've lost me there.

NVP said:
Is this legit? I would have thought China/HK would have been up there. Have you been to China, man? Its serious over there.
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No idea. But it was on the news. So either Sky News or BBC News since those are the two news channels I watch.

So either I heard it wrong or it's legit or they reported it wrong. /shrug. It's late and Google is beyond my sleep deprived brain's capability right now.
 
I tried years ago and pulling £5k plus a month in profit but it got me down working 18 hours a day as I had my own business.

In the end I said screw this is killing me. I should have employed people but I took the whole thing on myself. I wanted to be rich at the time but screw that if you on your own.
 
I've never actually attempted - maybe I should some day.

I've been fortunate enough I've never really wanted for money, within reason, so I've never really had much motivation to get rich. My life has been kind of weird in that way in that whenever I've needed serious money some kind of opportunity to make it has arisen.

If I did I'd probably go down the video game route - I have all the programming, level, model and sound design, etc. skills but I prefer just dabbling for fun.

toshj said:
My first boss out of university was unashamed in his pursuit of wealth. His last firm had sold up with the senior staff getting filthy rich, but he'd missed the cut.

I was the 7th person he hired when building the company out, and they were around 600 globally when he sold it. He walked away with £50m.

I hadn't seen him in years but we met up for a coffee a few months ago, mainly for me to get some business advice. I found out a few interesting things: he cleaned the company bank accounts out every year, left nothing in there, and he never forgot who had failed him/let him down in the past and overlooked them for the top jobs even if they'd turned themselves around. He also hated every minute of it, despite being incredible at the job and genuinely inspiring.

Interesting guy. Now he spends all day baking and taking his kids to classes. Bought a load of properties and conservatively invests in other stuff which brings in £1m a year. Seems genuinely happy for the first time since I known him
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I've worked with people like this and generally they've not been nice people and usually can't understand people not having the same motivations as them.
 
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NVP said:
Your accommodation takes 60% of your income, not simply your landlord.


Also while we're at it...

Is this legit? I would have thought China/HK would have been up there. Have you been to China, man? Its serious over there.
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Agreed, the point was laughable. We've had s growing middle class for yonks. Most people have their needs met and then some. I do a type of economic analysis that causes us to income qualify those who can't afford to spend any money on leisure and entertainment. In the UK this is a negligible amount and a step we do not need to do, in China it is 35 to 60 percent depending on the region. Few countries have so many people who are comfortable and so few in poverty as we do.

To the OP, I work hard, have my own business and have a nice lifestyle but no desire to amass a pile of money for its own sake. One of my best mates is extremely wealthy and self made and perhaps the most troubled of all of us.
 
daz said:
Talking about retirement, I did think a while back that I wanted to retire significantly early (say, 40s), but now after having some time out in the last couple of years I couldn't think of anything worse. Whilst it's really nice to have flexibility in your lifestyle to have time out and spend time with family and to be there for your kids and so on, the issue is it can be very difficult to find 'purpose' in your day to day life. Being challenged and learning new things, having your ideas tested - without that I think it would be very easy to end up drinking or taking drugs. I think retiring can really be a shock to the system from a mental health point of view and you do hear of people that work for 40 years, fit as a fiddle and then suffer a rapid decline in their health and wellbeing not long after giving up work. After doing odd jobs around the house, pottering around and playing some golf then it's nice to do something meaningful.

I think long term, we're inevitably going to see more people staying in the work force for longer, whether that's part time or flexible working simply because most people aren't going to have pensions that can afford to pay for their lifestyle.

Back to the thread, being rich is entirely relative but I think the main thing is being comfortable and being able to provide for your family. More "stuff" doesn't make you happier, but just knowing that your mortgage is paid off for instance can really take a weight off your shoulders.
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Very balanced and on the nose, I think having a family is certainly a must for anyone looking at taking a prolonged break from the working life, it grounds you and gives you purpose still.

Echo your comments, can think of nothing worse than having nothing to do on a daily basis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qs3GlNZMhY
 
Skidder said:
Agreed, the point was laughable.
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I didn't make it up. It was in the news recently. If I wasn't going out now I'd spend some time finding the source.

Will do later.

It was some kind of league table for inequality and we ranked 2nd below the US.

It may have been the rate of increase of inequality or inequality itself. Sadly I don't record everything I see on TV so can't immediately recall where it was seen.

But 100% I remember seeing it.
 
Rroff said:
I've worked with people like this and generally they've not been nice people and usually can't understand people not having the same motivations as them.
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He was actually a very nice guy, and someone I've got an awful lot of time for. He speaks a mile a minute and it's difficult to follow his train of thought, but he was very open and transparent when people joined the company in the early days - his attitude for why people would want to work for him was that a) the liked him or b) (much more likely) that they believed he'd be successful and wanted to ride on his coattails. He's made a few senior staff multi-millionaires along the way. The only real downside I witnessed whilst working for him was that he devoted so much time to the company that he didn't seem to have many friends outside of work - he had acquaintances, but they all seemed to be the money hungry types and he took those friendships with a pinch of salt.

The next two individuals I worked for following this - we three started our careers working for the guy above - are nasty pieces of work and the sort of people that match your description above. I had the chance to properly go all-in with them around 2010 and decided to step back as I couldn't trust them as far as I could throw them. They've built a business with a few hundred staff, but it seems to be all smoke and mirrors as opposed to a credible operation.
 
The one thing that would really make me feel rich is being able to afford to turn neglected areas into excellent affordable low impact homes with funding for new businesses to grow in the area.

In reality though, you create one nice area and then the one next to it becomes a hole.
 
toshj said:
...they believed he'd be successful and wanted to ride on his coattails.
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I'm not sure why business owners have a tendency to believe that all the success is down to them alone.

So you make sure you "hire good people", yet they're just along for the ride... A tad contradictory.
 
Plenty of times but either failed or never took off. I would be super happy even if I just won £500K on the thunder ball, I would then go part time and hopefully retire at 55 or earlier.
 
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