The richest IT person on this street

    Three tailors lived on one street in Berdichev. The first had a sign: “The best tailor in the city”, the second - “The best tailor in the world”, and the third wrote: “The best tailor on this street”.

    The merely strangely increased number of articles about recipes for wealthy IT people did not encourage me to write another episode in this habra series, if the recipes remained in an innocently neutral version of the form “it’s better to be rich than sick”. Any slogan, any idea, even the most vague, can really inspire someone to think, to act, and there, you look, and another millionaire will appear. But looking at more and more “practical” advice, I will venture to object publicly. It has already reached the point of saving on shopping at the supermarket and following popular books. It's time to intervene: suddenly someone will be able to avoid unnecessary and even stupid gestures.

    You will never, NEVER become rich from saving on purchases at the supermarket!
    Hundreds of millions of people in the world save both on purchases and on the supermarkets themselves, not to mention the millions of hungry, “saving” on food in general. It can be assumed that a fairly large part of saving people fall for the bait of relatively large numbers obtained by multiplying pennies by 20-30-40 years ... without any positive financial effect. The reason is elementary: the economic plan for decades is an oxymoron. Such a plan does not take into account many factors, the influence of which is very significant for a shorter time, so it can be called a dream, fantasy, anything else, but not a financial plan. Crises, stock surges, inflation, changes in life, in work, in income level, political situation ... yes, only a short-term fluctuation in the exchange rate can instantly destroy the acquired back-breaking labor (as well as vice versa, by the way). Youyou will not get rich in 20 years, denying yourself chocolates, or not spending money on cigarettes, or “collecting bottles”. More truly, not so. Your chance to get rich in NN years is completely independent of your actions today and even less depends on trifles. And all because

    The method of obtaining wealth is not algorithmized
    It would seem a shame to write such trivial things, but the mention of banality like “Rich dad, poor dad” excuses me. With banalism it is necessary to fight with its own weapons. All the suggested tips and methods make no sense, because there is no publicly known sequence of actions that potentially leads to wealth. There is a well-known parable about a banker who successfully avoided the crisis of the Great Depression thanks to a shoe-polisher who, during his work — cleaning the banker's shoes — began to speculate on which securities and how much money to invest. This gave the banker a reason to think about the overheating of the exchange and the need to withdraw capital from there. The parable, of course, also simplifies, but the main message is absolutely true: even there is an “algorithm” that somehow significantly increases the potential for getting rich, the more he would lose his effectiveness, the more people found out about him. Wealth (no matter what everyone means by this word) is a very limited resource. One can imagine access to a limited resource with the help of limited information (for example, insider information), but it is impossible to imagine an obviously working access to a limited resource according to the recipe, multiplied in millions of copies.

    The above is true for well-known slogans. The call “Do at least something!” absolutely no different from the call "Do nothing!". For all the examples about Vasya, who did, tried and achieved, one can find counter-examples about Peta, who didn’t do a damn half a life, and then suddenly came up with some sort of contraption and got into the stream, or counter-examples about Kolya, who he did, tried, did, tried, ruined his health, didn’t really enjoy his life and ... didn’t achieve anything, or about Fed, who calmly did his favorite thing and was always at peace with his life and his income. Any example, any story is strictly individual.. It describes (exactly describes!) The specific circumstances of a particular successful person or group of people, which cannot be repeated. You can not generalize “Invest in assets!”, Because no one knows what will happen to these assets in a few years. If humanity knew about any super-asset that always and under any circumstances brings income (well, just a philosopher's stone, not an asset), it paradoxically immediately ceased to be an asset. Life constantly shows us the ups and downs of corporations, financial empires, real estate kings, industrial magnates. And again there will be stories about Vasya, who did not eat ice cream and did not go out with girls, but by the 40th birthday he lived on income from 2 rented apartments, and about Petya, who ate and walked even less,

    I am extremely indignant when the stories of successful people are interpreted as a textbook, as a guide to action. Of course, they are good for satisfying curiosity. From them you can draw smart thoughts, individual examples of behavior or decision-making, but by no means a general recipe! The instructions “get out / leave / make / buy, write / create / sell / repeat, and you will be rich like me” are just as useful as last year’s winning combination of balls in the lotto for the next draw. The chances of its repetition are not one iota higher than the chances of another combination, because the balls have long been different, and the machines that select them, and the stars are located differently.

    Biographies and memoirs clearly demonstrate the incomprehensibility of the path to wealth. One studied for a doctorate, and the other left the first year of college, one plowed like an ox, and the other smoked weed, one developed a business until retirement, and the other caught the Bird of Fortune by the tail at age 18, one created complex systems, and the other dabbled simple scripts, one sold-apple-bought-two, and the grandmother left another inheritance.

    What should I do?
    Continue to do what you like, what you express yourself in, what feeds you, what brings satisfaction. Grow in any chosen direction, whether technically, emotionally, financially. Do anything, but only for yourself, and not with the goal of getting rich. Always remember that wealth is orthogonal to your activity. You cannot bring it closer, you have no way to plan it, so think about yourself. Think of wealth as one of the possible (and unfortunately unlikely) side effects of your activity. And then your chances of getting rich will be 50%: you will either become rich or not.
    Oh yes, still refer to any books, manuals and articles from the series “How to Get Rich” with a healthy share of skepticism, including this article.

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