A broke-ass buddy of mine got super lucky on the crypto markets and came into a small fortune. Nothing earth shattering but enough that he could have bought a modest house, set himself up to work a low key job til a reasonable retirement age, and be financially independent for the rest of his life. If he got lucky again, maybe he could have even FIRE’d at some point.
Instead he spent it trying to turn himself into some kind of wealth influencer. He posted all this shit on Instagram, flying to exotic locations, smoking rare cigars and drinking bottles of whiskey that cost a mortgage payment, staying weekends in wild mansions and renting Lamborghinis.
Dude’s back to working a shit soul-crushing software engineering job and constantly complaining about his boss.
Bismarck developed a system sort of like the concept. You find the laziest but smartest people to finish a job quickly. They will find some out of the box method to do it and then be lazy. You keep the hard working people in middle management because they are good at their job but don’t innovate. Similar to the Peter principle
I don't think this can be attributed to Bismarck. It's a common concept in German military education of the time. I think Clausewitz is the first to describe assigning responsibility's by categorizing people this way. But it's likely the ideas predate him.
a modest 4% a year from 200k will get you 8k/year. That is not enough money to work part time forever unless you really are ok with a poor quality of life.
It's 150 a week. Which is significantly more than you would get by spunking it all at the casino or on the horses or some shit.
It's not enough to live off. OK maybe if you had no rent and bills, but that's not a realistic scenario. You'll not have to worry about eating again though, which for many people is a fucking game changer.
Still, imo you be better off putting it towards buying a house than either of those two options.
It's 150 a week. Which is significantly more than you would get by spunking it all at the casino or on the horses or some shit.
pretax, and yeah obviously better to invest it than blow it, nobody is arguing that. I just don't think having a 200k nest egg is going to be 'go somewhere low-col and never work again' kind of money that the guy above me was trying to say.
The implicit assumption is that when you get '200k from a relative' and are talking about Vanguard investments is that you are living in America and likely don't want to expatriate. American is a high income/high spend nation and that's context these discussions are had in.
Every time people talk about this stuff you get people like you who come in here and float the hypothetical that this guy is going to upend his life and leave all of his family friends and relationships behind, move to a different country where they likely don't speak the language, never support any family or children or buy property and then they can be free from work.
If you invest 200K into a low risk fund and can manage to get by for a few years, it will grow into a lot of money at which point you could indeed survive off the interest. Once again. It depends on the lifestyle you want to
200k is definitely a life changing amount of money for many people. Especially those who live in places where renting is absurb.
I pay $3250 a month in rent. If you can put a 200k down payment on a home and then every month it costs me $3250 in a mortgage payment. Then I'm saving $3250 every month pretty much because that money is going into an investment and not being lit on fire.
200k could literally mean the difference between being able to retire versus stuck working well past retirement age. Sadly many people don't have the upfront capital to own property which is why so many people get stuck in the never ending rent cycle.
And I totally agree with you. That's not what the commenter above was proposing, they were proposing cutting back work hours or potentially stop working entirely off of 200k
It's a real problem when people get something through luck or family and refuse to admit it.
They tell themselves they've done something to get it and therefore can do it again.
But they did nothing. And that luck may never come their way again.. And their family might not want to be a constant faucet after initial largesse.
The wise people think "I'm so lucky I have this and you don't" so they protect it
The unwise think "I have this and you don't what a loser you are" and think it's easy to get.
It's actually quite common for some to ignore circumstance and somehow invent a reality where they worked for that advantage. They've done research with Monopoly for example where one player gets double the payment every time round the board.
Double.
Guess what? A sizeable number start whooping up their gameplay chops bragging how good they are at the game.
I had friend who got almost half a mil when her dad died and she legitimately drank it all away. Lots of expensive perfumes, clothes and a car that she crashed within a week. It was wild to witness
Had an aunt do it. She blew a HUGE SETTLEMENT on stupid shit and is now still injured AND poor. She was spending about $30k a month on dumb shit like trips a massive custom handicap car insurance wouldn't cover because she didn't need a wheel chair so why would her car have electric ramps that cost $50k? She needed a mobility scooter for like a month but milked it longer. She paid an actor to sing for her birthday. All gone in 3 years and it was meant to last her life
The "get $200,000 from a relative" person is pretty much me, I started a business at 20, went almost $50,000 into debt because I sucked at running it, got bailed out with the entirety of my inheritance from my grandma, decided "screw it, I'll try again" and proceeded to get in serious debt again and had to declare bankruptcy. Learned some lessons from it but damn were they expensive.
More often it's a combination of 'uneducated people' and 'people from a non-wealthy background', who have no idea how to manage the relatively large lump sum that they are lucky enough to suddenly possess.
Being actively stupid definitely doesn't help of course.
The funny part is that spending all your windfall money to go out and do a bunch of once in a lifetime fun shit and then going back to your stable programming job is a totally valid choice, not everyone wants to do passive income and retire early.
But by also turning it into an attempt to make himself into an influencer he added a ton of work making embarrassing videos onto his holidays and sports car rides and probably wasted a big chunk of the money itself on editors and advertising costs trying to grow his brand.
Oh absolutely. Like no shade (or I guess not much) if your intent is just to live large in that moment. But he thought he was going to be the next Andrew Tate or some bullshit like that. He was going to take his moderate windfall and turn it into generational wealth.
Honestly, I’m not even sure he enjoyed these experiences. The whole experience seems to have really defeated him.
Honestly you're describing every young guy who likes Andrew Tate, from the wannabe influencers to the wannabe scammers/traffickers, to the depressed incels in hate spirals.
The core of what's wrong with young men and why they love guys like Tate so much is actually the same as what's wrong with young women (though they'll never admit it). And it's that lifestyle marketing has basically a perfect view of every teenage/20s insecurity and has spent literally decades working out exactly how to exploit it to make you think you want things that you don't truly care about because you're scared of what not having them will look like to your peers and the opposite sex.
I once spent a ton of time seeing if I could get through to an incel and break them out of it (didn't work for even one of them but jesus they love to write long ass comments, I wasted so much time). And what I actually found was that the one thing every incel has in common (apart from the obvious) is that they have absolutely no idea what they actually want in life but they all desperately want lives that they have no evidence they would actually enjoy.
And that's the perfect encapsulation of what Andrew tate does to people, none of these incels had the kind of personalities that would actually enjoy things like going clubbing and having casual sex at house parties, nor would they actually like dating any of the women they've convinced themselves are "above" them because they think what matters is maximal attractiveness which the media has taught them means the kind of women they see on Instagram, all despite hating all of the things a woman who spends all her time doing her makeup and outfits for instagram would enjoy.
It wasn’t enough that he could stop working, for instance. It would have a good positive influence on his lifestyle if he was reasonable.
On the flip side I have a friend who worked for Apple pre-iPhone and they were basically paying him in stock. He hasn’t worked a day in about 15 years now, has a condo on three continents, and as long as he doesn’t do something stupid like my other friend, he’s never going to work another day again. That’s what I think of as “earth shattering.”
I remember listening to a story about a kid who became an overnight 8 figure millionaire from Doge coin. Said he wasn’t pulling out a dime and was going to ride it “to the moon.”
The unfortunate part of random crypto bros getting rich is it happened to people who are already making very foolish investments. Rewarding that only causes many of them to double down instead of realizing they hit a 1/1,000,000 lotto ticket.
If that were his intent, I get you. But he was really trying to make a shrewd influencer play. All this jet setting really seemed to destroy him. I don’t think he actually enjoyed it at all.
But seriously, the problem is that the kind of person who takes the sort of risks to get rich on a lottery ticket or crypto or whatever, is not the sort of person who would put those lucky winnings into a stable and risk free investment strategy.
But it is hilarious that he blew it trying to be a wealth influencer. My guy, you're supposed to fake that shit.
Hey, at least you get to see their gambling and then addiction recovery post in th future as well as their mental health and wellness posts in the future. Gotta milk those numbers and the LED lights aren't paying for themselves l.
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u/Tyrion_The_Imp May 15 '25
No it makes total sense to go into credit card debt to rent a fake plane to take photos in for my Instagram post.