Good for the OP. Sounds like he's in a pretty good place to me.
I turned 40 today
- Thread starter John Galt2
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Basically, continue what I am doing - eating well, staying fit, actively managing my investments/companies. And start living more overseas.
Research can be pretty lucrative if you can leverage that into a decent hedge fund. I was an investment banker, your typical coverage guy doing equity raises, m&a, etc. That business is so tough right now with all the deferred comp...no thanks.
Without getting too detailed in a public forum, the startup was a consumer driven web based business. I found it randomly through old contacts, I never expected my career to take that turn but I was eager to take on more risk to see what I could do ("bet on yourself"). PM me for more details.
Basically, continue what I am doing - eating well, staying fit, actively managing my investments/companies. And start living more overseas.
Research can be pretty lucrative if you can leverage that into a decent hedge fund. I was an investment banker, your typical coverage guy doing equity raises, m&a, etc. That business is so tough right now with all the deferred comp...no thanks.
Without getting too detailed in a public forum, the startup was a consumer driven web based business. I found it randomly through old contacts, I never expected my career to take that turn but I was eager to take on more risk to see what I could do ("bet on yourself"). PM me for more details.
I've also turned 40 pretty recently, and have an LTR on the go.
Thing is though, now that I've discovered game, I have more options than I ever had as a 20 or 30something man.
I also dress better, and am in pretty good shape, aside from being a bit on the skinny side (but am working on that).
Am not exactly financially stable, but again am slowly getting that side of things into order.
I know now, that had a I learned game a few years ago, I probably would not have entered the LTR I'm in now, as cool as this girl is.
Reason why is of course, cos now, almost every time I go out, I see opportunities, I have developed a level of confidence with women I never had before.
My approach anxiety is lessening with every day, I regularly night game now, with my regular wing and occasionally I day game too.
When you live in a city, with a plentiful and ever replenishing supply of tourists, students, and other assorted HBs, it seems to me that only a fool, a tied down beta provider or a eunuch would not avail of the opportunities that walk in front of him daily.
Thing is though, now that I've discovered game, I have more options than I ever had as a 20 or 30something man.
I also dress better, and am in pretty good shape, aside from being a bit on the skinny side (but am working on that).
Am not exactly financially stable, but again am slowly getting that side of things into order.
I know now, that had a I learned game a few years ago, I probably would not have entered the LTR I'm in now, as cool as this girl is.
Reason why is of course, cos now, almost every time I go out, I see opportunities, I have developed a level of confidence with women I never had before.
My approach anxiety is lessening with every day, I regularly night game now, with my regular wing and occasionally I day game too.
When you live in a city, with a plentiful and ever replenishing supply of tourists, students, and other assorted HBs, it seems to me that only a fool, a tied down beta provider or a eunuch would not avail of the opportunities that walk in front of him daily.
That sounds great but at the same time, travel during your 20's is also a good bet IMO, makes you aware of the opportunities and situations abroad. If you can travel the world and live on nothing, you can make it in any country, anywhere without any money. You can spend your time stacking paper but give up a life of adventure when you still have that optimistic outlook in the 20's. You also give up a lot of life's lessons and wisdom that travelling to foreign countries brings... and when I say travelling I mean not with a backpack, that's more tourism. People are generally friendlier and more open to meeting young travellers than they are with older men, especially young 20 y/o women. As a young man in Mexico, I found people were very willing to bring me into their homes, let me stay with them and try to introduce their hot daughters to me (more than one occasion). I got free food, brought to family parties, block parties, weddings. I had loads of adventures that I would never have gotten access to if I were not a young man. I also took HUGE risks with my life that I would NEVER take today, you only have that kind of blind ignorance in your 20s. In a way I wish I had done more stupid things like base jumping and shark diving in my 20s... then again, I might be dead.... anyway.
I spent my 20's having marathon sex sessions in cheap, rented apartments with my young foreign girlfriends while my friends spent their time at home in the grind. I remember sitting atop the pyramid of the sun just outside Mexico city at 25 yearsold and thinking about my friend Cody who was working as a production manager in a hot, muggy factory 12 hours a day or of my friend Michael who worked 60 hours a week behind a computer monitor. Later that day I sat down to a 3 course meal (mostly cheap tacos and steaks) just outside the pyramid for less than 5 bucks and recalled how I used to eat lunch meat sandwhiches out of a paper bag. Some of us aren't located near Wallstreets or major centers, some of us aren't interested in retiring with loads of cash. My cousin retired with loads of cash in her 30's, with a house, car and tons of cool stuff... yeah she retired right into the ground from a sudden bout of brain cancer.
If you did it during your 20's you won't really have the desire to do it in your 30's. I went to night clubs 4 days a week in my 20's, now I go maybe once a year. I was out partying in the 3rd world quite a bit, Asia and several parts of Central and South America but now I just want to have a family and a relaxing 9 to 5 job. At 20, I didn't care about having money, it wasn't taking me where I wanted to go and funny enough, to me $3000 USD in the bank was enough to live on for at least 6 months. That meant video games whenever I wanted, touring all the wonders of the world, no one to be accountable for, no stress, ESL work (basically talking for money) and little to no HR. I have been to over 20 countries and lived in about 6 or 7 and I did it all in my 20's when I had the energy to see it. Honestly, now at 34, I have neither the desire, nor the motivation to bounce around. I also had WAY more sexual stamina and interest in my 20's that seems to have dropped off quite a bit as I enter my 30's. Finally, money may attract women but so does 'experience' and I still managed to bag hot, rich girls who would drive me places and fvck my brains out while living out of dumpy little apartments.
While you have your million dollar life, and I'm not ripping on you for that, respect that Wayout and several other of us made it around the world with what you probably spend on toilet paper in a month. I had my lifestyle at $10 a day and it was also the best time in my life. I might not be a bigshot but I'm happily married with a wife that thinks that we've got it made living in a cheap 2 bedroom apartment that oftens gets visits from cockroaches and mold. For me, I have my free time, a decent job that is semi-satisfying and a good person that I couldn't be more content to spend my life with. Hopefully in the next 5 years we'll have a couple of kids to start the cycle over.
I just wanted to post my experience to balance out the thread a bit. Everything in life is a sacrifice, you either stick your nose to the grind and come out with loads of money or you sit back and enjoy life and later work hard (or not).
Millions are not necessary for a happy life. If someone offered me a job working on flying saucers and travelling to different planets, I would happily sign over the next 40 years of my life and do it all for free.
InternationalPlayboy
Sparrow
I am in my mid 20's and luckily for me, my internet income is doing pretty solid. What it allows me to do is arbitrage. Live in 3rd world like a king with my money, and still slowly save up. I have no debt thanks to the parents paying for college.
But one good thing about your 20's you can still hit up the college freshman, aka the 18 year olds. Nothing better then a innocent looking girl getting the D with her fresh tight pussy. 30 year old women who've hit the wall don't interest me. So best to be in the game while you are in your prime.
Sometimes I do worry though my income will dry up. But already the partying is wearing down. Hangovers keep getting worse. I definitely would not do the stuff I've done if I was in my 40's.
Side Note: I highly suggest anyone who doesn't get into the top elite private schools to save the money and go to your state school. The money saved is quite a lot. My parents had to foot less then one year ivy league education for my entire college tuition (thanks to scholarships).
But one good thing about your 20's you can still hit up the college freshman, aka the 18 year olds. Nothing better then a innocent looking girl getting the D with her fresh tight pussy. 30 year old women who've hit the wall don't interest me. So best to be in the game while you are in your prime.
Sometimes I do worry though my income will dry up. But already the partying is wearing down. Hangovers keep getting worse. I definitely would not do the stuff I've done if I was in my 40's.
Side Note: I highly suggest anyone who doesn't get into the top elite private schools to save the money and go to your state school. The money saved is quite a lot. My parents had to foot less then one year ivy league education for my entire college tuition (thanks to scholarships).
I have an interesting twist on this. I have made it twice already and both times threw it away just so I could start over and do it again. I found that once I "made it" life got boring. Once you have enough money to buy whatever you want and don't need to worry about a paycheck it sort of takes the fun out of life. I have found that what I really enjoyed about life was not the security of having made it but the journey of getting there. Now, I am on that journey for one more time and this time will probably be the last. A lot depends on your personality. Some people get all stressed out under pressure and others thrive. Life is like walking on a rope in the air. You can do it with with a safety net or you can do without one. I have done it both ways and I have learned that I preferred living without the safety net. I already know I am not going to take anything wherever I am going when I die anyway and even if I have kids, why should I deprive them of the fun of doing this all from zero just like I did.
PS Some quick stats... at 16 I started selling electronic equipment and by the time I was 21 I was a regional sales manager living in a house in Europe, with a company car and expense account and a very beautiful girlfriend. By any measure I had it made and then I became depressed because I thought to myself, is this it? What was I going to do with the rest of my life? I dumped everything, job, girl, house, everything. And went to college just for the heck of it. I got a degree in International Business and Marketing. After college I started a computer consulting company with two of my college buddies. By the time I was 28, we were a multi-million dollar company. By 36 I was living in Brazil, Europe, and Miami. I had a nice apartment on the water in Miami and nice car below that I rarely used. Again, I became depressed thinking if this was it, so once again I dumped everything and actually ran up a huge debt just for fun. (Actually, I've basically zeroed out my net worth. I have burned my ship at the shore. Either I will succeed once again or I will die broke.) I wanted it to be really challenging this time. Now I am having fun, doing it all over again. I have to admit though, it's lot harder now simply because I don't have the same energy I did when I was 28. But it's what I love to do, dig myself out of deep holes. To me, that's what makes life fun and interesting. Whenever I had "made it" I was bored and miserable. As an underdog, I feel alive. My next money making attempt will be some kind of software/website/app business. Anyone want to join me?
PS That was my apartment building below. When I sold that apartment I made a cool $250,000 and I wasn't even here - I was in Brazil. There is also no sure path to wealth or pussy. For every path that can lead to success there are thousands of paths to failure.
PS Some quick stats... at 16 I started selling electronic equipment and by the time I was 21 I was a regional sales manager living in a house in Europe, with a company car and expense account and a very beautiful girlfriend. By any measure I had it made and then I became depressed because I thought to myself, is this it? What was I going to do with the rest of my life? I dumped everything, job, girl, house, everything. And went to college just for the heck of it. I got a degree in International Business and Marketing. After college I started a computer consulting company with two of my college buddies. By the time I was 28, we were a multi-million dollar company. By 36 I was living in Brazil, Europe, and Miami. I had a nice apartment on the water in Miami and nice car below that I rarely used. Again, I became depressed thinking if this was it, so once again I dumped everything and actually ran up a huge debt just for fun. (Actually, I've basically zeroed out my net worth. I have burned my ship at the shore. Either I will succeed once again or I will die broke.) I wanted it to be really challenging this time. Now I am having fun, doing it all over again. I have to admit though, it's lot harder now simply because I don't have the same energy I did when I was 28. But it's what I love to do, dig myself out of deep holes. To me, that's what makes life fun and interesting. Whenever I had "made it" I was bored and miserable. As an underdog, I feel alive. My next money making attempt will be some kind of software/website/app business. Anyone want to join me?
PS That was my apartment building below. When I sold that apartment I made a cool $250,000 and I wasn't even here - I was in Brazil. There is also no sure path to wealth or pussy. For every path that can lead to success there are thousands of paths to failure.
John Galt2 said:
I am almost at the opposite end of the spectrum from Mr. Galt.
He is going to manage his investments, I have hardly any. Good chance I'll never own real estate except in some Godforsaken desert.
I envy him very much in some ways. One thing I think we could agree on is start saving early, no matter how little. $50 s month, $200 would be better. Keep your credit clean and try to buy at least one rental property. Worry about the big coup also, but start saving.
But you have to choose what fits your character, or rather your character will choose what you do. Because you can't be/do everything in life unless you are an .0001% outlier, like Ian Anderson who was world famous as a musician and now is very wealthy in Britain.
I'm guessing, OP will never, for instance, be able to play guitar like I can; or write songs like I can. If he, can after working that hard as well, he's a genius and hats off to him.
What we tend to do is tell others what to do-- based on our own character, not theirs.
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I have a friend who's even flakier than me, he hasn't been able to hold a job more than a few months his whole life.
But now he has two kids, his genes will outlive mine unless I play "catch up" child wise.
I wouldn't want to live his life of financial precariousness ( he's always trying to mooch money off me.).
But I also would never want to live Mr. Galt's period of 10 years of 70 hour weeks. I really appreciate his honesty in revealing that period, I'm sure many people would minimize it, "It was hard for a few years.."
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I'm in my late 50s, somewhere in the middle, less responsible than most people but not a total scrambler. I don't have anything like 7 figures saved, more like low 5 figures, but I played catch up, which-- as Mr. Galt says-- doesn't really work. When I called up Social Security the worker wondered why I had only worked full time about 10 years in my life. Well, lolzlzl, that was one of my primary goals in life.
I spent many days, carelessly riding a bicycle through the fields of Upstate NY, or northern California, admiring the beauty, while other toiled in cubicles. I can never catch up with them, and they can never catch up with me.
I can make about $500 a day with a skill I learned, but I'm too old in my late 50s to want to do it long enough to buy a nice house etc. ( My credit is so fucked up they should put in in a museum.)
I have a passive income, but only enough to live in Cambodia or maybe Phils.
And I think each of us lived according to our characters....
I've always had really bad business sense, but was book smart. Top 1% in all verbal tests I took, about top 5% in math.
I leveraged that to get some education that saved me from total desperation.
Ahh, but playing the guitar... that was/is the joy of my life. To create Art is to feel like a God. And to be good it must be central for the critical time period between 16-30.
Right when more materialistically oriented people really get their money train going.
Catch up isn't a viable strategy in the arts any more than it is in money. Neuromuscular plasticity declines too fast.
As you get older, you face the fact the great majority of people can only live maybe 1.5 lives. Only a few can really do two things well. For most people, if you have no particular creative drive, you're better off busting ass like OP did, so you can say FU later.
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If you want to bust ass and make money early, the medical doctors where I sometimes work get $5000 per week to work ONE DAY and be on call to prescribe over the phone , which amounts to 5 calls a week-- they get about $800 per five minute phone call.
You could start at about 30 if you went straight through and did a four year residency.
worldwidetraveler said:
Not to minimize your good choices and efforts, but yes, there was luck involved.
You were lucky to have been born with the capability to comprehend maths, algorithms, programming, all that stuff. You had this luxury and you are an exception. Most people with an arts degree suck at maths and they can't help it.
Spede said:
While I am not bad at math, I am not gifted which is one of the reasons I chose an IT degree and not a Computer Science degree.
An IT degree isn't math intensive and was within our Business School.
Again, that was a choice I made and no luck involved.
Everyone should be playing up to their strengths. To say it is luck to do that is a terrible argument. Don't get caught up in my specifics. Everyone. and I firmly believe this, has natural born strengths that can be used to make a lot of money. Unfortunately most will take the easy way out and not develop those.
worldwidetraveler said:
My point was that you can handle maths, and the reason for it is both genes and education. You can't control which genes you receive. Thus, luck is involved.
Even more so given that within our societies, STEM degrees and professions are much in favour whilst other are derided (haven't you witnessed how arts degrees are systematically denigrated on this forum?).
That being said, again, I do not discount the efforts you've made and which have allowed you to make it thus far.
I also agree that one should play on his natural strengths as much as possible - though as outlined earlier, those will bring different outcomes depending on which areas/skills are in demand, and how good one can become.
Spede said:
That is an excuse, plain and simple.
Art degrees are denigrated on here because people take out on-godly amounts of loans in order to pay for something that most people can't turn into jobs when they leave college. That doesn't mean they are worthless, that just means people who bitch about getting an art degree and no jobs are idiots for not planning better. More than likely most of those kids didn't even look at what was available out there.
You are making the assumption that people in art are only good at art. Hardly the case and things are not as black and white when it comes to our natural abilities and strengths. People learn valuable skills all the time through persistence and consistency. I have learned skills that did not come naturally to me and many others are doing the same thing every day.
You want to know what skill makes me the most money? It isn't IT or computers but marketing.
I learned marketing on my own. I may sell software programs but the money comes from marketing not programming.
With my marketing skills, I could make a ton of money using my art skills. In fact, I have used my art skills in my business many times.
Look, you can make excuses but I prefer having more control over my life and relying on luck isn't about control. I'm lucky to be breathing but I don't owe my success to breathing.
strengthstudent
Robin
Samseau said:
But you can get luckier by proper preparation and putting yourself in positions where there are more opportunities for luck.
Samseau said:
In terms of being healthy, born into a rich society and such, yeah, there is luck there.
Let's take being healthy, I was born healthy but that doesn't mean I will stay healthy. I can get fat and come down with diabetes. That isn't about luck but about the choices I make. Unlike getting something like, say, cancer.
I still think you guys are trivializing the decisions we make and the experience we gain.
There are plenty of people that will come up with all kinds of excuses as to why they don't have money, why they can't get women and a whole plethora of problems their brains can come up with.
I am sure plenty of people believe life is all about luck. That dismisses any responsibility on their part.
If you were born in a rich society, like the US, there is little to no excuse as to why you can't do well.
I would hope most guys, on this forum, understand the difference.
strengthstudent said:
Being prepared for opportunities isn't luck. Most people think it is luck, but it normally comes down to the hard work you put in to be able to SEE the opportunity and capitalize on it. That is typically attained through experience. The people claiming it was lucky normally don't see all the time, effort and sacrifices people make in order to be able to get lucky.
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