Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire is it better to become rich?

He is.

Jim,

I See the pics of you and your chillin's, on the farm,
and I am envious. You are living the life I would choose if could.
So feel extra rich. Your kids are.
There is no better life for kids than growing up on a farm.

My kids get to do a lots of stuff I didn't even think of,
but I often think of what they are missing,
and not learning.

They don't even know how to get milk out of a cow.

so much difference in the backgrounds of people who grow up, then some succeeds, and some succeeds magnificiently.

always was told there's about three ways to acquire wealth:

1. work for it, and save & invest.

2. steal it whatever way possible, if caught the penalties can be high.

3. inherit it from family somewhere along the line.

4. perhaps any and all combinations of the first three.


the prisons are sitting full of people from category 2.

there might be other ways too, but the list is short.

endless differences between growing up on a true farm, suburbia, and downtown big cities.

it's like people from different planets once they get out into the real world. i met some of all when i was in the military.

I get accused of being rich all the time...because I'm towing a nice boat. Most people don't realize it's like towing a tractor or pressure washer to me.

ha ha. yes i understand perfectly.

just doing things in proper order can go a long ways toward achieving a modicum of success on earth.

get through school.
get a job.
get married.
have children.

in that order. that point by point process can make all the difference for a majority of the rank & file.

Know of a very ordinary Spanish background catholic guy who works at Delta as does his brother, married an extremely wealthy jewish family woman lawyer,
effectively married into a family with several hundred million $$$, he knows his jewish kids are set for life , but he also knows his place
and has the sense to keep his humble job at Delta, ..

seen it before where the rich family and friends polarize the situation by corralling around the seperated/divorced daughter and kids,
and put the ordinary background father of the kids on the out...ie; "you were tolerated for a while for the sake of our daughters happiness"

I blame ordinary folk for marrying into such affluent circles.

The richest($$$) people I know have modest homes and drive 'standard' vehicles.



Conservative folks that fly under the radar so to speak.

I got a lot of thoughts on this and have seen opportunities be seized upon and squandered and many of those examples are within my own family. I enjoy the topic but hate the scrutiny and assumptions about myself or implications about my work ethic, so prefer to pen my thoughts in relative anonymity. Obviously some of you know me, but few know my family history details, though I’ve shared aspects of this in the past. There’s some kind of perverse pride in crying poor mouth or trying to out poverty someone’s upbringing, but somehow it’s rarely ok to talk about “privilege” or family heritage in a non braggadocious way. I feel no guilt for past good decisions.

My dad came from generations of blue collars and small holders. He worked his way up from essentially nothing, got a PhD and designed weapons systems for aerospace companies, but he could also sell the systems and write proposals, which made him a unique commodity. His three siblings are all white trash. Their kids are the same at best. At least 4 are felons, one lives on the street and likely hooks in her upper 50s. 32 years went by on that side without a child born in wedlock, and there were a bunch. All of whom struggle with competence.

But my dad was super conservative with his investing or lack thereof. He did poor people stuff with money because, while he had knowledge, he wasn’t comfortable in practice. He could out earn his poor choices, and still retire comfortably. If he had done any kind of investing beyond single company stock ownership as part of his benefits and measly money market squirreling, he’d of had many times what he has now.. There’s still a mortgage on their house at age 70 and 38 years in that house, partly due to playing the idea that using home equity for purchases is better than cash money. My brothers and I still benefited from that because it paid for our schooling so I shouldn’t complain, but it’s not what I would do.

My mom came to the US from Finland at age 7 in 1956 around the time of socialist revolutions and protests. Her parents came from the exact opposite of my dads family. She’s much more comfortable with investing and far more aggressive in that realm. She also comes from people that buy cars and houses in cash. And do business without debt. But they also missed out on huge deals with their conservative ethics. One company her family was involved in was sold for $300 million. Another that her grandad helped start is worth over a billion today and privately held, some relatives have ownership, but not us. They own Baltic islands, we don’t.

Her dad was handed a vice presidency in a paint and wallpaper company then gambled big and lost on a shipping company after WWII in his 20s, knocking him down several rungs of social status. He still got knighted (political honor, not hereditary) eventually but his businesses were much smaller after that. He later sold sailboats, then furniture, and then had a travel agency.

They invested but weren’t that good at it. My moms grandfathers were both titans of industry and politically connected, but my mom was merely an administrator at the end of her career. And she did have to work. She got a worthless PhD in French linguistics, but later got an MBA. My mom and dad were still worth double her parents when my grandma died two years ago. My moms parents had money and access but never made nearly as much as you’d think they did given their status symbols.

Everyone I’ve known thinks they are middle class regardless of what the numbers say. I grew up considering myself middle class, but looking back would call it upper middle class. Most of my college friends I’d say were lower middle class. I didn’t struggle with student loan debt like they did. I’ve benefited from the security of coming from my family and hope my kids will benefit similarly.

My wife’s family is a similar but different mix compared to mine. One side successful for generations, the other mediocre at best. But they held onto and built much of their wealth through absentee farming. We (her side but I’m married into it and part owner by marriage) now have a ton of land plus producing oil wells.

Our household income with two kids is very middle of the road. But we will still be millionaires of our own making. We know we benefited from past good decision makers, but our investments are our own and we do not need to lean on our families. Our children will especially benefit despite our modest incomes because we operate debt free except our mortgage and have room to invest despite daycare being more than our mortgage. Through no doing it their own, our kids will have the advantage two sets of millionaire grandparents, millionaire parents and two millionaire uncles with no children. They could have had much more if we had the ambition of our great grandparents, but we are comfortable and will be even more so with time.

Everyone has a different idea of what rich is. I see opportunities I didn’t take for myself and wonder what could have been. I see what some branches of the family had and wish I benefited from their decisions. I also see what others have and want those things. I don’t feel rich, I don’t feel like my parents are rich, nor do I feel like my wife’s parents are rich. We all had to work. But others look at us differently and in comparison maybe we are rich by their definition.

As others have pointed out, richness can come from the pleasure of raising your family and other meaningful aspects of life. I feel like I have these things. We do have a burden coming to us in my wife’s adopted brother but that’s another story but this one thing that money helps to ease. Without it, it would be a real stressor.

You may think money matters .....until you have only a few years left.

Then grandkids seem all important.

Rich can mean different things to different people. I’m rich because I’m basically a happy, satisfied person. However, I have a friend that’s worth $800 million . He’s easily the most unhappy person I’ve ever known. He has perhaps three or four friends, of which one is me.

I'm sitting in a room with a friend that most would consider wealthy. Great guy...when he's not worried about money.

Having money and having control of it is a good place to be.

If you had (some do) 100k in your checking account, what would you do with it? The answer to that will say a lot about people and their relationship with money.

Dennis hits the nail on the head.




Money will pay off some misery, but never buy happiness.

i debated under the full moon to decide whether to head the title of the thread "how much is enough?"