There's solid data on this in athletics generally for late teens, who'd have to correlate with top performers. For example:

Maybe NHL is different, no idea.

It extends strongly to academia too:



All in all the age effects seems quite profound.

Even without talent, extra height and weight can still take you places.

Google is your friend, it's easy to find what Gladwell wrote on the topic.

The fact you found one 10 man team in 2019 that is different doesn't "easily disprove" anything about data compiled from thousands of athletes. (If if you had looked at the Pacific you would have also seen that team also doesn't seem to fit.)


Check out some sources quoted and the graphs from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_age_effect

There seems to be some discussion on if and why the upper echelon of the NHL is an exception to the rule. Google for more info on this point.




twoblack9s- who ever said that these people get by based on self-perception AND NOT SKILL? It is true that an unskilled 5 year old will probably beat a skilled 4 year old at most things. But as TS alluded to, throughout childhood a 1 yr age gap all but guarantees the skilled older child will CRUSH the skilled younger child in every human activity. This means one set of skilled children is randomly predisposed to believe in himself, get leadership experience, be given unique training available to "top" individuals, etc. The other is predisposed to the converse. Why? Well because someone once said, "Let's make the cut off Jan 1." Check out the research - sometimes self-perception and circumstances CREATE skill.

My whole point is that identifying things like this can allow thinking people to take advantage. I didn't mean, "try having kids in January." I meant that parents of younger kids can go out of their way to make up for these natural inefficiencies, i.e. find ways to expose a kid to leadership, find ways to make a kid think he's good enough to actually WANT to practice more.
Mario Lemieux becoming an NHL great doesn't disprove anything, although as someone born in Pittsburgh I'm happy he didn't get discouraged when he was getting crushed by 7 year olds in 1st grade.

Sometimes having an over confident view of oneself can hold you back in life (give you a false sense of value). In school I had a summer birthday so I was generally the same age or a year older than everyone in my grade. Being better at stuff than other people made me quite confident. However, when I graduated I was in for a rude awakening that life would not be as easy as I anticipated.

Being a year younger than everyone else might have been better for me, because you graduate 1 year earlier and have an extra year to build wealth/become successful.

My roughest point so far in life would not have been my teen years but probably my early 20s. Lots of disappointment in those years.


Interesting stats about height being important in teen years compared to your peers and meaningless in older years. Perhaps this suggests that the height equaling more pay is more of a psychological factor instead of a physical one.

Based on most of the wealthy people I'm aware of--be donald trump. Screw everyone, don't pay bills, agree to pay X then come back with Y or so sue me so they take Y to avoid the hassle, etc.

If you're not willing to be a total piece of **** or are a trust fund kid or get extremely lucky (ie genetics, lottery) you'll probably have to work hard and be smart and get a well paying job out of that.

You really think that's how he amassed billions of dollars across diverse industries and a great brand that he licenses? That's not a very rational take.

Like Donald Trump? By the way, how are Trump's siblings doing? (they got a similar amount of money. Billionaires?)

I love all these *******s who think money just falls out of the sky if you start off well and once you're rich you just magically get richer by screwing people. Zero clue how the world works. Screwing people helps, especially early on, but won't get you very rich and is just as likely to backfire unless you're very smart. In reality it's way easier to go from nothing -> $1 million in 30 years than it is to go from $10M -> $200M.

It's like it's a massive survivor bias (soaked in envy). They see the handful of people who built on their inheritances rather than all those who squandered it, or blew it up in a family squabble.

On 3 I'd say pay off debt if it is bad debt. In many/most cases paying off a mortgage or other low rate loan is a bad idea unless you don't think you can beat that return investing money elsewhere.

4 & 5: I don't think marrying someone you aren't happy with is worth the extra money and neither is having a roommate. If the person you are thinking of marrying or rooming with is someone you want to do that with then go for it, but otherwise I probably wouldn't do it.

6. In some situations a ROTH may be more or as beneficial to some as a IRA or 401k is.

7. Research on your own if you prefer passive vs active management. Ignore all advice that takes 10 years or less. Then think critically if you think someone who has studied the market for 40+ years is better than throwing darts at a board.

This is an interesting thing to think about. After doing the math it makes sense.

However, I'd imagine going from nothing to 10 million would be harder than going from 10 million to 2 billion. With financial security you can take on much more risk without as bad of consequences.

No, not even close imo. It's way way harder to 200x $10 million than it is to 200x an average yearly salary.

Look at what's open to a poor person can do to get to $10 million:

- Starting a business and turning it into something decent just being basically competent
- The entire stock market including penny stocks and options which are inaccessible or run into scale problems in the 10K-$1M range for very large returns (Buffett for example believes he could make 50% a year on average if he was starting out again from nothing, but he can't do anywhere near that now).
- Becoming skilled in your field and getting to the top 10% - a top 10% wage is 150K a year and a top 5% wage is 300K/year. In other words, you only need to work harder/be better than 9 other people to pull in $6 million lifetime in wages alone - if you put a mere 1/4 of that into stocks you'll have $20 million from the market alone putting in $40K/year.

The path to riches is really goddamn easy for the poor:

1. Become competent at something that's worth more than average to other people
2. Do it diligently
3. Save a mere 1/4 of your salary. Much of which you can avoid tax on (i.e Roth).
4. Within 40 years, you'll have amassed $20 million.

There's just no path at all with similar probability to go from $10 million to $2 billion. You need to be truly extraordinary to do that imo whereas you only need to be top 10% to do $0 to $10 million.

Why would you even want 2billions networth anyway? That's why it's so rare, unless you have a dream that is extremely expensive, there is no point.

It's all relative. The life of a billionaire is way more fun than the life of a millionaire. There's a reason Miranda Kerr has dated billionaires - and it's not love.

Advantages to being a billionaire:

- You can afford your own jet and crew
- You can afford a decent yacht
- You have meaningful political and social power via donations.
- Multiple high end properties can be yours, and there are some truly superb places that the millionaire club can't enjoy.
- You can start charities that are meaningful
- You get to hang around the very top social classes
- You can build a large empire and become a king of your own little world
- You can invest in things that actually change the world

It's rare not because it isn't wanted but because free money is very hard to come by above the S&P 500 return (which is about the same as the long run return on capital for a business), and you have to be quite exceptional at creating value for many other people to exceed that rate of return. There are so many mistakes that can take wealth down rather than up and you have to be an exceptional and disciplined individual - or luck into something low-cost-scalable like software - to take it up a lot at the high end.

Or just bend a piece of wire. Like they* say, every new idea is merely a combination of two old ones, e.g., paper + clip.

*https://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Ideas...dp/1576754308/

advice from a guy who spends a lot of his free time trolling forums read by like 100 people

You typed out this response about four years ago to a post that I did not think to make. Still, I took to heart. In that time, I have just about doubled my income. I went from routinely spending more in a month than I made, to never ever having a negative cash flow month, amassing a decently comfortable nest egg, and buying a house.

I can honestly say that this thread, and the above quoted response specifically, was one of the triggers that made me realize that I had to make a better effort toward making more money and getting more financially secure. It certainly wasn't the only thing that pushed me, but we can call it the match in a room full of gasoline, so to speak.

Since this thread was made several years ago, there has been a lot of dismissal of this sub-forum. I cannot say for sure whether I will still be in the same place I was four years ago today if it wasn't for the quoted response above, but I can say that it was a wake-up call for me that certainly made the transition I made a lot faster than it otherwise would have been. So, for all the regulars that post their insights here, which sure seems like a much lower number than it was just a year ago, let me thank you on behalf of all the lurkers that only really read the content without having much to contribute. Some of you help people out in ways that you likely would never know.

I too, remember that post and think about it occasionally. It wasn't a direct motivator as it was too you, but still a memorable post that I hold as an anchor point to a certain time in my life

A friend of mine does about a few hundred thousand a year in net commissions.

He spent a few years saving everything he could and even then only amassed about $300K.

Still, he took $250K and he bought into a real estate deal I was doing. That deal will pay him $25K-$30K a year in profit 2 years in today.



If he had saved everything he could making $75K a year, he's never saving enough to make it matter.

Real Estate is the most common way to build wealth.


400T of it in residential real estate globally. The largest asset class in the world globally.

BoredSocial is a good dude. Glad to read your story and I'll let him know that he played a part.

I'm glad I managed to turn some people away from the frugality trap. I grew up poor so I still know quite a few poor people even though I've been at least moderately well off for a long time now.... and they are all doing a *much* better job of not spending money than I am.

That being said I can take my wife to Disney World and still have *netted* more money that week than those much less fortunate people will make in a month. Which is kind of my whole point. It's definitely possible to have Nicholas Cage disease and be totally incapable of retaining earnings, but that's not me or most other people.

I stand by my advice from 2019... if you're having a hard time financially the solution is to earn more money not to spend less of it. The spending less is actually a trap in many many cases. Having the ability to live on absolutely no money is worth *maybe* 20-30k a year to you tops... and I'm trying to make a million bucks a year by the time I'm 40 (long way to go yet).

In terms of new thoughts I will mention something else though... there is such a thing as enough for most people. Not for me because I'm ****ed up and a hungry goddamn demon with an absolutely bottomless appetite for cash... but that's not a good thing and is probably contributing to my not being happy with what should be a pretty great situation. If you have a pretty good/safe situation I think having a point where you can really just say '**** you I'm good' about additional earnings is probably really healthy, and if I could achieve that for myself I'd do it tomorrow.

Maybe wait until the prices make sense for the interest rates on this one lol.

No idea why people think about investing in assets before investing in themselves. Learn a niche skill, build valuable relationships will get you further than staying stagnant in a generic career and putting X% in ETFS per month.

That is a pretty big strategic error

The absolute biggest lol. I had to be so goddamn good *and* lucky to get where I am now it's actually crazy. And people wonder why I'm a socialist despite my tax bracket lol. Watching things rapidly decrease in difficulty as I supposedly moved further up the 'meritocracy' will do that to a person. It's whatever, my goal in life is basically just to protect my wife and I from what's coming, absolutely none of which looks good honestly.

Good luck everyone I hope you run as well as I have lol.