Tell me about becoming wealthy

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me about becoming wealthy

Imaduck: Apr 16, 2007; the magnetorotational instability turns me on

30 Goddamned Dicks' advice is very good.

If you want to be really rich, as in worth many millions of dollars or more, there's no real straight path to that. It's some combination of luck, hard work, and creativity.

If you want to be upper middle class, there are definitely pathways to that, but not everyone is going to be happy doing them. Tech is a great field to be in that pays well and typically doesn't require "consuming your life." However, a lot of people don't enjoy or aren't particularly good at that type of work. Nursing has good job availability, pays pretty well, and is probably more accessible to most people, but is really hard work and requires a special type of person not to burn out doing it.

List out every job you can think of that you might be interested in. Then, do some research on the pay, lifestyle, job availability, and barrier to entry for each of them. Figure out which ones rise to the top, and consider going in that direction. Make sure you talk to people that are actually working in those fields as you do the research; there's a lot of misleading information out there about all sorts of careers.

If you don't come up with any good answers, then don't rush into anything. Getting some random graduate degree just because you think you should is a really bad idea. Grad school is often very expensive, and even if it's paid for, often comes with a huge opportunity cost (i.e. years of your early life), and lots of people make the wrong choice and end up worse off as a result.

The Unholy Ghost posted:

Is investing in the stock market worth it?

Don't fall for the hype; the stock market is not a way to get rich quick. Study after study have found that no trader does better than average in the long term. If you have money to invest and want to make a long term investment in something diversified to save for retirement, it's great. If you want to turn a little money into a lot of money quickly, it's basically no better than playing roulette.

quote:

Is there a general strategy to attaining better and better jobs?

1. Work in a high-demand field.
2. Work hard.
3. Network well.
4. Always look for and push for better opportunities.

The Unholy Ghost posted:

So as long as I read some books on the MCAT and passed I could enter medical school even with the most random-rear end undergrad degree? Interesting.

Not exactly. While you can get into med school with pretty much any degree, they expect you to have a strong undergraduate background in a variety of sciences. If you haven't taken courses in physics, chemistry, organic chemistry, and biology, you're going to have a very, very hard time getting into med school.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 21:50

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 17:59

Imaduck: Apr 16, 2007; the magnetorotational instability turns me on

The title of the thread is misleading. If you read the OP's post, their bar seems a lot lower: how do you turn a degree into a good job that doesn't consume your life? Also, something about doing better than your parents, which I guess, really depends on how well your parents have done.

And loving LOL if you think having $95k of fun money after taxes and posh rent is paid is a "modest" living. You're talking about the top 3% of Americans there.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2016 20:07

Imaduck: Apr 16, 2007; the magnetorotational instability turns me on

Shbobdb posted:

Being the captain of your high school X team is not a promise of future wealth, but all people of great wealth were the leaders of prominent social activity from a young age.

[citation needed]

# ¿ Dec 16, 2016 08:28

Imaduck: Apr 16, 2007; the magnetorotational instability turns me on

Ytlaya posted:

Does the label "software engineer" actually cover all programmers? I feel like that only represents a specific type of programming job.

I work in academia (though as an employee) and develop both the back-end and front-end for a web application biologists use to do stuff like gene mapping, correlations, etc and make just $35k (though I'm in a pretty cheap city, but it's still probably at the super low end in terms of programmer salaries). To be fair I could probably make more, but I'm aware of the fact that I'm a pretty lovely programmer (at least compared with the other programmers I know*) and would feel bad asking for a raise.

*Granted, all the other programmers I know work at Google or start-ups in NYC/Silicon Valley making way over six figures, so my sample isn't exactly representative of the average programmer. But I definitely know that I'm not good.

Don't work in academia. They will underpay you. I don't care where you live or how crappy a programmer you are, $35k is absurdly low.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2017 09:14

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me about becoming wealthy