Complex Numbers

The One True Rule

Another "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+] entry, #4 of 8:

Grifters Come in All Demographics

Is This Millionaire a Cult Leader? is the title of the video on YouTube.

I'm not going to cover the same ground as the video. I'm going to go off on some tangents.

On Being Rich

"Rich," of course, is a relative thing. I recall some studies once that found that for most people, it's unnecessary to be wealthy in absolute terms, but only in relative terms. Like, you have a peer group you compare yourself to, and you want to be the target of that peer group's envy, not have a target of envy yourself.

Nor is it necessary, psychologically, to actually be rich; you just have to project the image.

I remember one of my employees, back when I had employees, commenting on a client's Porsche. "He must be rich," she said, or something like that. "He has a Porsche." It's that mentality he was catering to with his sports car (I think it worked, in that case, as I once saw them together downtown - which was, and is, none of my business, but it's relevant to the point I'm trying to make.)

That point is that the outward trappings of wealth work, if by "work" you mean convincing people that you're successful and thus gaining some intangible social credit (or boning people in their 20s).

Now, I don't know this particular guy's actual financial situation, other than that his company could afford to hire mine. But sometimes they didn't pay. Whether this was because they couldn't, or because they just thought they could get away with it (they couldn't; I had a policy of stopping work immediately upon a bill becoming 30 days overdue) I don't know. But, in general, if you're running around in a Porsche and flashing a Rolex, you're deep in debt and trying not to show how broke you actually are.

Meanwhile, my own car from that era (a beat-up pickup truck) was paid off, and my house was, at the time, well on its way to being so.

Who do you think is richer: a guy in a $1000 suit, or a guy in $40 worth of jeans and a t-shirt? Monkey brain says "suit." Rational mind says "t-shirt." Because the latter has, by definition, $960 more than the former.

Of course some people are wealthier than others. But just by looking at the stuff someone has, you can't know if they paid for it out of pocket cash, or if they're drowning in debt.

On Getting Rich

There are a few ways to get rich. The easiest, but most unlikely, is winning a lottery. It does happen, but counting on it is counterproductive.

There's also inheritance, running a successful business, landing a book or movie deal, or having a talent that's in demand (such as acting or computer science or whatever) and getting paid to use it.

But regardless of the method, I'm going to tell you the actual, true secret of getting rich. Right here, right now, for free, no strings attached.

You're not going to like it, but here it is.

Don't spend money.

That's it. That's the One True Rule for Getting Wealthy. There are no shortcuts, no workarounds. Even someone who wins the lottery can quickly find themselves broke again if they don't abide by this One True Rule. You can lose your inheritance, run your company into the ground, or find yourself kicked out of Hollywood if you don't remember the Rule.

"But, Waltz... what's the point of having money if you can't spend it?"

Well, obviously, you're going to spend some money. You have to, generally, in order to satisfy basic needs like food, shelter, clothing, and beer. And yes, I don't think life's worth living if you can't also budget a few luxuries, and you'll obviously spend money on them.

So the nuanced rule is: Don't spend more than you take in.

And the addendum to the nuanced rule is: Put the excess in a place where it can earn you more money. But that, and other tips, are beyond the scope of this entry. For just $15,000, I can give you the rest of the secrets...

On Avoiding Scams

Don't do that. I mean, okay, sure, you can give me $15K and I'll actually tell you more, if you really want to, but there's nothing I can tell you that's not freely available out there.

In general, though, people who are asking enormous sums of money for their "secrets" have a simple secret: selling their books (or conferences or seminars or videos or whatever). It works, or people wouldn't give them money. Now, I'm not going to sneer at anyone shelling out $20 for a self-help book (unless it's The Secret; fuck that noise). But if you think that the value of information scales by price -- that is, that a $2000 book is more useful than a $200 book which is more useful than a $20 book -- you'd be wrong.

There's a lot of people out there competing for your money. Some of their products are even worth it -- depending on your own needs and desires, which are different from everyone else's. And I know it can be frustrating to feel like you're lacking something that seemingly everyone else has, and in our consumer culture it seems like the best way to remedy this lack is by spending money. Sometimes that's the case -- for me, what I lack is beer, and I fill that need by buying it -- but often it's a psychological trick, like the book in the embedded video above that has something like "$1500" crossed out and a "marked down" price of $995 or whatever (it went by too fast for me to read the numbers, but the actual price is irrelevant).

It's like my friend's ex-wife, who came home once with $1000 worth of clothing. "It was on sale, 50% off! I saved $500!"

No, you spent $500.

Sales aren't always scams, of course, but they are designed to trick you out of your money.

Anyway, I've droned on long enough. Point is: don't fall for scams. This requires the ability to realize when something is a scam, though, and that's the hard part.

Edit: I forgot to post mini-contest results! I blame beer.

Had a lot of great comments -- some I knew about, and some I didn't. The Tycho Brahe one was one of the former; as you know, I love astronomy, and the story of Tycho Brahe and his fake nose (his original schnoz was lost in a duel) is legendary.

But for today, I'm going to have to go with the first response, from 🌖 HuntersMoon -- I'd never heard of Clement Vallandigham, but he counts as "moderately" famous, and his death is part of the long-standing American tradition of doing stupid things with guns, in the subset of doing stupid things with guns that were supposedly unloaded but weren't (one of the first things you learn as an American is that there's no such thing as an unloaded gun). A bit of research (if you can call a quick scan of Wikipedia "research") also told me that his client, who, as noted, was acquitted, died four years later... from a gunshot wound. Anyway, the MB goes to 🌖 HuntersMoon this time, but there will be other opportunities soon.