10 OBSERVATIONS FROM AN OLD GUY

Comment from A Money Guy that deserved to be a post

1. Think for yourself. This is critical. There is truth out there, but you must wade through and discard all the adolescent internally inconsistent garbage put forth by today’s culture as guidance and then you must ignore your neighbors and friends who have all the answers and know what’s best. About everything. Well, they don’t. Most individuals in this culture are arrogantly ignorant, everybody having all the answers for everyone else. Think for yourself and trust your own conclusions. Just ignore the nonsense.

2. Work for yourself, and keep trying until you can get as close to that ideal as possible. If you go along to get along, you will always be under someone else’s thumb and they will keep you down and keep you poor.

3. Be born at the right time. I was born at the tail end of The Silent Generation, meaning when the culture still taught sound and fairly consistent moral values.

4. Love truth.

5. Realize that historical trends move in great cycles, not endlessly repeating but definitely rhyming, all driven by human nature. Try to determine where you are in the current cycle and what makes the cycle what it is. One example is that we are at the end of Failed Enlightenment whereby Materialism has led to empty prosperity, starving the soul while feeding the body. As cheap energy becomes dear, that cycle ends.

6. Know that this life is anything but all there is. Understand that we are each one small point of divine light that is underpinned by a vast substrate of energy, not substance, and that that substrate is driven by divine emotion, feeling tone.

7. Realize that we are in school, here to learn and experience, and are only at an intermediate level, if that. After we pass, those lessons are integrated into our greater soul. Not an end, a transition to greater awareness and understanding. Realize also that it is possible to understand this before we pass.

8. Realize that human nature has flaws and weaknesses and pay attention to them as they act upon the culture.

9. Be lucky, win the lottery or inherit money (yeah I know, sarcastic, see Point 10), but always press whatever advantages fortune passes along and eschew debt except for the best of reasons, which certainly do not include the newest Chinese shiny bauble. Fortune does always give us a few tips of its hat, often small, sometimes large. Recognize them for what they are, take advantage of them and be grateful.

10. Retain your sense of humor and thus your sanity. People are funny.

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hardscrabble farmer

Most excellent list. Will forward to the Kofi family in Prince George county.

Bostonbob

HF,
Very funny. Is it as cold up there as it is down here,11 degrees and very windy, too cold to run.
Bob.

hardscrabble farmer

The anemometer says gusts up to 50mph, temp was -2 last I checked.

Cold enough.

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

11F isn’t too cold to run, Bob. The worst running conditions are in the springtime: Snow melts during the day and re-freezes in the evenings making some nice black ice. So the only time to run is in the middle of the work day. Yak Trax Pro are a handy tool when conditions are right (packed snow on top of ice).

Hagar
Hagar

#11. remember that history is written by the victors and is just likely to be bullshit…truth is in the mind of the thinker…are there any left?

Let me be clear
Let me be clear

T4C says: For all that belittle, dismiss, piss-on, ridicule, and disrespect Boomers…..
Blow us. Ya’ll have a long way to go before reaching the Stage of Wisdom presented above.

Do you mean that by the time they are done blowing all the old geezers they will have wisdom?

Old Mike had a relic of his former conversion tattooed on his arm, a cross with the caption: as you are, I was; as I am, you will be.

SSS

This article is a crock of bloviating bullshit. Here’s the complete list of life’s observations from TBP’s Wise Old Man. Uhhh, that would be me.

—-Seek the truth.

—-Never lose your sense of humor.

Let me know if I’m going too fast for you.

Zarathustra

SSS’s advice for a successful life:

1) Join the military, get a pension
2) After the military, work for the government, get another pension
3) Play golf

Nick A
Nick A

The best (and most important) TWO observations to “Getting and Remaining Rich (relatively) Quickly” will ALWAYS be “get born to the right Parents (plural, notice), at the Right Time”.

Failing one of these means the going will be tough. Fail BOTH of these and you’ve almost lost the race even before you get to the starting blocks, ’cause the majority will have a very significant advantage over you.

This is why the really, REALLY Wealthy really DON’T work too hard. CONNECTIONS – CONNECTIONS with the RIGHT people, from the very start.

Makes for an unassailable advantage in life, whether we like it or not .. . . . .

Llpoh
Llpoh

Nick – you do not know what you are talking about.

You obviously do not know very many rich men. (Rich women on the other hand oft do not work at all – they inherit and let others handle the money).

Every rich man I know works his ass off, no matter how they came by the money. And I know some megarich.

Re the right time – it is always the right time for some. Very hard times can afford huge opportunities.

But, hey, keep those excuses for failure flowing. I am sure it will work out for you and yours.

Chicago999444
Chicago999444

Ilpoh, as one who has met a number of self-made rich women, I’ll respectfully differ with you.

While rich women who got their money as gifts still slightly outnumber the self-made, there’s an increasing number of self made, and many of them “made it” at things that most people don’t think of as surefire paths to wealth.

Meeting and speaking with men and women who managed to accumulate moderate to large amounts of wealth makes me humble, especially when they are people who are not plugged into the crony capitalist network.

Most of the women I’ve met do it by sheer determination, accumulating little businesses and/or rental real estate, and being extremely careful about small expenses to a point that seems slightly demented to ordinary schleps. Does it surprise you that most of these women are Asian? One I know has a portfolio of small restaurants scattered throughout the area even though she is only in her early thirties and is now venturing into businesses because she is tired of the hassles particular to restaurants, like the fire that wiped out one of her places. She has no husband as she has no time to date. She, like all the Chinese people I know, is very hard-working, and very mindful of every dime she spends. Needless to say, she lives very modestly, . She is always looking for new opportunities, and she is very quick to pull the plug on anything that is losing her money- she does not keep shoveling money into a bad investment- like a restaurant that is not bringing in the traffic it takes to cover the bills. Two other women I know, in my old city, are both native born Anglos. One lived with her parents and taught school while saving every last dime beyond what she needed to spend for clothes and for running her old “beater” car (while I was out living in grand vintage apts and spending up to every dime I earned), and the other went out and hunted for, bought, and managed rental apts while her husband worked an ordinary job. What drives these women is an overriding obsession with financial security, a fixation I totally understand and sympathize with. That, and a great hatred of being dependent on other people, which I share.

Most of these people, men and women alike, are not engaged in “hot” businesses that get written about in magazines, and many never even went to college. They are very unassuming, and they tend to want to hide their wealth.

Nick A
Nick A

In my “Trade” (Medicine) – this seems to be an “unwritten rule”, and it has been the case for a VERY long time. That’s why the progeny of Consultants become Consultants, and the progeny of Small-Town GPs tend to become Small Town GPs, no matter HOW hard they work, or how many hours they put in.

This may not be the reality in your Profession, but let me assure you it most certainly IS the case in Medicine.

(Incidentally I’m a Consultant, in a significant Teaching Hospital so hardly a failure by any measure. Funnily enough I came from one of your hated “Single Parent Families” too, so please don’t lecture me on the “benefits” of hard work. Been there, seen it and obviously done it.)

starfcker
starfcker

Nick, when I was very young, I haay. It was the best finishing school possible. I quickly noticed every guy I worked for was in the office after everyone else left. I learned that getting paid was never a problem if they were satisfied. I learned to never make excuses, ever. I learned to be direct in my negotiations, simply because time was what mattered most to these people.

starfcker
starfcker

Don’t know what went wrong, first sentence above. I had a business that put me in direct contact with very wealthy people. I learned to listen, and I learned not to waste their time. Llpoh is trying to clue you in. Pay attention. A thick skin is always in style. Don’t worry for a second about any advantage a second generation may have. So what. You still have to do, what you have to do. Every successful person in every situation I’ve ever known was basically wired the same. Driven. Brutally honest. Able to read people and situations quickly. Adaptive. Cautious. Aware of costs. And aware of their primary responsibility at all times, and able to shake off distractions.

starfcker
starfcker

In my opinion, the big skill, the one that trumps all others, is the ability to make good decisions, under pressure, with limited information. I have to make dozens of little decisions every day. If I took ten minutes to make each one, my day would be shot. So I take ten seconds, and I’m confident that if I’m wrong, we’ll figure it out quickly and course correct.

Billy
Billy

#12: Any time you are afforded the opportunity to control your own destiny, grab it with both hands and run!

Good list.

Homer
Homer

Much of the destiny in our lives, today, is consequences of our decisions and actions in this life and other previous lives. So don’t blame someone else for your own bad luck. You reap what you sow, so, sow good. Does that qualify as an alliteration?

Luck is knowledge plus opportunity.

Homer
Homer

Ever notice that in America, everyone want to be rich, but nobody want to work. So, it seems,

If wishes were reality, we would all be rich. It’s not the wishing, but the doing that counts and that’s not someone Else’s doing, either.

How many in America live as a result of others doing? How long will this injustice endure?

ragman
ragman

I wonder how many of these “rich” people would be “rich” without the subsidies and assistance of FEDGOV, Fed, and crooked banksters? Dimon, Pigfein and the rest of the worthless fuckers on Wall St would be dumpster diving if not for the trillions given to them by the FED.

Llpoh
Llpoh

Chicago – I have trouble seeing where you disagree with me.

I said women “oft” inherit their wealth. The certainly do, and it is very much more prevalent than women earning it themselves.

But there are women who earn their wealth, and they will show the same characteristics that do men.

Re Asians, I am not surprised in the least.

Asians, and Jews, value education, are hard-working, are frugal with money, and very often have a ethnic support group. Asians will come to be as hated as Jews soon enough. It is already happening – I hear complaints all the time that little Johnny and Little Jane cannot get int medical/dental/ etc. schools because the Asians are taking all the spots.

The parents of Johnny and Jane tend to sit n malevolent silence when I suggest maybe little Johnny and Jane should have worked harder. The Asians can and do often work non- stop. That is not something Americans will tend to do. Yet they expect the same rewards that the Asians get.

Check out the stats of the most educated ethnic/racial/religious groups. The best educated, and by country miles, are Asians and Jews. And guess what – income correlates directly to education. Imagine that.

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