Why does OP want to know the answer to this question? It seems like his goal is clearly "to achieve financial freedom" and he thinks finding these traits and then trying to develop them in himself is a good plan, but this is really backwards thinking. The fact is there's lots of different types of rich people and just as many different ways they got rich. You are not going to find five traits that all of them share with each other.

I feel the same way.

I think you and the rest of us have very different ideas of what financially set for life is. Lets generously say a trucker makes $120k and because he is ok with being a loser mooch pays for nothing at home and has no social life of any kind so he keeps everything except his income taxes. Even under this "ideal situation" the guy has $500-600k at the end five years. This just brings us back to the can you live off $1M debate only now you even have less resources. Eating those noddle college kids eat and KD while living in some **** house in a city no one in their right mind wants to live in is not set for life.

My family is first generation so my dad and everyone he knew worked construction. Yes you make good money -- when he retired he was making $110-120k/year which for someone with no education, no / weak language skills, and starting from absolute zero is amazing. That being said there is no way you can have a life of luxury after ten years -- well there is no way someone with an accurate definition of luxury can. I know from previous threads that buying the name brand KD is luxury in your world but we need to use more commonly accepted definitions when talking to others.

Living a middle class lifestyle requires low six figures yearly. Shoe has this idea that poverty is rampant in society or that his miserliness exists in other people.

this is why i noted it may make sense to break down attractiveness to its components (i.e. measures of symmetry, bmi, body fat % etc.).

Barron

As I work in the trucking industry let me just say that making 120k a year as a trucker requires soul-crushing levels of work. We're talking 60-70 hours of driving a week (breaking all regulations) plus another 15-25 hours of incidentals like loading/fueling. I'm not sure that anyone could do it for 5 years. And if they could, they'd be better off applying that kind of dedication elsewhere.

And this is before taxes. If you pay for your own food and live out of your truck with no social life at all you could realistically put away 45-55k a year after tax for 5 years straight. Still a lot of work though.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean WRT debt? A healthy approach to debt is extremely +ev in attaining wealth. Buying a house with cash would tie up way too much capital that could be working for you. It would impede your progress towards financial freedom.

Rather than spread around the 'lolz' at some of the arguments here, let's take a step back to the original question phrased differently.

Let's suppose you walked into a class of 15 year olds and were allowed to interview them - family history, parents' careers, health and general life goals. Now you were asked to place a wager on who is the most likely to have the highest networth 30 years from now. What would you look for?

I would argue you're looking for leaders with capacity to achieve. You probably have two types of kids you're looking to bet on. Either the good looking, charismatic, intelligent tall male kid coming from a very wealthy family, or the risk taking, outside the box thinking off beat kid with ambitions to the moon (a Richard Branson type).

Either are probably a reasonable bet, but I imagine you get a lot of variance when you go with the risk taker.

You really have to define "financial freedom".

For example - If financial freedom is being able to retire at 65 with a modest lifestyle, then luck plays almost no role. If financial freedom is being Gordon Gekko liquid then luck would play a much larger factor.

The former is a massive massive fave over the latter. Its not close.

The 'very wealthy family' bit skews it incredibly in his favor. That means he has the capital to fund ideas (one of the most difficult parts of attaining wealth is finding capital) and he has close connections to those that know how to acquire wealth. Really, what else do you need?

Like Thremp said, huge favorite... as long as his ambition hasn't been sucked away by being around wealth his whole life.

So take that characteristic out for a better debate.

One person has to accomplish something difficult while the other basically just has to avoid ****ing up. Thremp is right it isn't even close if we are measuring in terms of future income.

But that's just it, I don't think you actually can take that out. You've hit on a truism of the rat race - people from wealthy families tend to be wealthy / successful, which in some sense ends this debate. This kid is a good bet to make it far, and it's the reason why we feel comfortable suggesting he'll be successful without relying too much on luck. He has the traits of winner. He doesn't need to start his own company, as he'll probably do extremely well as a doctor, lawyer, banker etc.

The 'outside the box' thinking kid is probably more likely to start his own company, along with the trials and tribulations that come with doing so. His ability to achieve success is intrinsically tied to the same traits that define any other successful entrepreneur.

I would argue that in some cases though just because you end up with a great job and money you are not necessarily successful. I'm know a girl who couldn't get into anything resembling a good school -- she did end up at a school which has comical standards. Her dad is very well off and owns a very large company so she is some kind of consultant at one of the subsidiary companies. She has a good title, makes good money, and has all the signs of wealth but I wouldn't call her successful.

The distributions of eccentric boom/bust types is way skewed. The average/median incomes will be vastly divergent. For every Bill Gates there is a room full of guys still living in their mother's basement playing ADD.

So even if the averages were the same (I don't even think this is likely) the rich kid would be a much better bet purely based on the distribution of his outcomes (higher median).

I grew up in a middle class family with 50-60k household income. After inflation translates to 60-70k now.

My brother makes low 6 figures, and lives what I would consider a partial upper-middle class lifestyle. ( i.e. in some ways its upper-middle, long expensive vacations, in some ways middle class, i.e. Coupons still used, etc. )

So you are saying less than 6% of the population is able to live a middle class lifestyle?

I'm interested in what you consider middle class. If you think some guy working in a factory making 40k is middle class, awesome.

I'm also interested in why you use population instead of households. Considering that children are immaterial, as are the elderly, and we can basically remove young adults as well.

Seems like a good way to shill a specious line of thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Househo..._United_States

It seems my definition of middle class is actually "upper middle class". "Middle class" would be the 50k-100k a year folks. Below that is the working proles and impoverished.


ETA: Those seem to be 05 numbers. Scale up for modern numbers mebbe 10-15%? Dunno. Probably more as it seems the spread between have and have nots is increasing in the US. So perhaps 1.5x inflation would be a better estimate.

I thought the percentage of households in the U.S. with income over 100K was in the high teens/low twenties.

Edit: According to page 29, 20.5% Census Report (2008)

15.73% is actually higher than I expected. I think in major cities it is likely in the high teens / low twenties but then you have the entire middle of the United States.

It probably is now. You peel off the very top as the "rich" or whatever typically. Maybe 1-2%. The charts on the wiki page list ~15-17% (cursory look) in 2005. Its probably higher.

Shoe is citing people because he wants to be ****ing ridiculous and make normal people seem like greedy consumerist ****s by wanting their children to afford professional school and/or nice things.

His views are patently absurd and supported by nothing. Even the most ****ing ******ed ridiculous math he spews doesn't support his conclusions. He basically has created a fictional framework that he spews at every moment (IE Renting is bad, home ownership is good, mortgage is bad. Even though in almost all his mathematical examples renting in perpetuity is the easy choice, he falls back on utility as the reason you spew 10%+ of you income each year to buy a home.)

I find it amazingly asinine and super miser projection.


ETA: Amazing how some random conjecture based on pretty reasonable estimates can match reality. A+.

I'm curious if he had these views before his attempt at investing money from a credit card kiting scheme blew up in his face or if this supper bare necessities lifestyle is the result of that.

I think it is somewhat funny as the facts bear out what I said. Now the range for middle class is probably... 57k-110k with upper middle class/rich being 110k+.

I'm sure he'd argue that someone making 100k a year is indescribably wealthy and could buy all the cheapest items of every sort imaginable. Think of all the second hand clothing you could own.

100k is a lot, you end up making tradeoffs about what luxury items you can afford though. For instance living in a super nice house in a great neighborhood costs more money, which means you end up watching the grocery bill closer, or taking less lavish vacations.


Id shoot the range of middle class down somewhat. Cost of living in rural America is far far far less than the cities remember. A 200k house in most of the country is firmly middle class, and your talking mortgage payments of about 12k a year on that.


Lets take a look at the suburbs of Philly where I grew up. Looking at the school districts where I grew up, the housing prices dictated where the upper-middle class lived. I grew up in the middle class school district, and everything at the school including the kids who went, was of lower quality than the upper-middle class district 5 miles away. Housing prices showed who lived where, same house was 50% more expensive in the upper-middle class area.


Median household income in the area skewing upper-middle class was 73,000. The middle class area median household income was 59,000.