How to Get Rich or Die Trying

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How to Get Rich or Die Trying
I am pretty sure that is a 50 Cent album name.

Look, there are millions of people in the United States and the vast majority have either limited or no net worth and another part that has some amount of a safety net. The top layer of the population is very well off and it seems most Americans spend a huge amount of time dreaming up ways to pole vault into that party. If it was easy then we would all be that top layer so how best to go about it?

I could serve up a bunch of platitudes, cliches, and other nonsense using terms like "hard work", "vision", "taking a risk", and assorted others. I wanted to cut through the crap. Here are the different ways to get rich, though mostly you will just die trying.

-Inherit the Money
-Already Have Big Money (Takes money to make money)
-Steal the Money (classical sense)
-Steal, I mean Earn the Money via High Finance and Big Banking
-Work in Government related to High Finance
-Win the Lottery
-Win Lottery with company Stock Options
-Win the Business Lottery by your grand idea catching fire; rubber vomit did not fly, but a site that allows users to post pictures and write to people is bigger than Exxon Mobil.
-Posses one in a million physical skills and win the Professional Sport Contract Lotto
-Make a sex tape that somehow wins the Sextape Lotto (can be parlayed into Reality TV Lotto)
-Win the Struggling Actor Lotto

The common thread here is that if you don't have the big ticket, getting one is basically a lotto. I now that runs counter to what we as a people want to believe. Too bad, it's true.

If you get up and go to work day in and day out, perform at the top level of your profession, invest smart, save money, dodge any major illness or injury, dodge a divorce or two, and avoid having your identity stolen you will end up ok. Maybe comfortable, maybe a little less or more so. That's it and that's all. Now that story will not get you running out of bed in the morning all fired up, but it is the truth of it for almost everyone.

Of course there is nothing wrong with this. Still, our culture seems obsessed with the big score. For every Steve Jobs personal computer game changer there are thousands of early era computer ideas that went bust. For every Zuckerburg Facebook there are thousands of similar sites that fade away. For every Lebron James there are tons of kids with knees that gave out in high school. For every Kim Kardashian there is every video on amateur porn sites (billions?).

I bring this up tonight because I am starting to see and hear some talk in my circles about getting in on the stock market. The rally has now caught the attention of the everyday person. They want to take their $1000 and play Netflix or Apple and make big money. They will not listen that it cannot be done (see above's Already Have Big Money..) in the short term and I have seen faces of people down 20% after getting in on "the sure thing" and it is always crushing.

I did ask the same folks about Gold and Silver and they were not interested in buying "jewelry" so that pleases me.

Have a good night.