How did you do it? Whats the secret sauce?
So for context. I am 38 years old guy living aan otherwise healthy 10/10 family life. Happily married for 8 years. I have a 4 years old who means a world to me. My wife is the best one could ever have. Supportive. Its because of her that i moved to tech froma low paying job in mid 30s. She came from a rich family but she always believed in me that i would do okay. After getting into tech i got laid off because of a merger and i am back to square one. I have never seen good money in my life. Its always been paycheck to paycheck and living hands to mouth. I am a positive person myself and i always believed that things would be okay. I worked my ass off during the job. Upskilled. Built my homelabs and everything. My wife supported me through that and took care of our son. Managing house on our own. I feel that i have disappointed her and she deserved better life. The light at the end of tunnel seems like a mirage at its best.
Now the question. How did you become rich? What did you do which most of people didn’t? Whats the secret sauce. I don’t mean crazy rich. I mean some savings for both rainy days and miller time. I genuinely wanna know: also. I don’t want anything for myself now and want to see both of my family having good times. They never had a vacation or dining out in a long time. If you could teach me, ill be grateful.
Apologies for my bad English. Its my third language and I am from a third world country, low on self confidence these days.
24 comments
Bro. You are rich.
I built online businesses. I researched things that people wanted then I sold them the things they want by putting advertisements where those people would see them online.
Then I expanded those businesses and invested my money.
The way I think about it people are spending money every day all over thr world.
You just have to take out a net and catch some of it.
You give up your family and friends and pour everything in your business
That’s how I did it
Not sure it’s worth it
You’re doing way more right than you think. You took a risk, switched careers, built skills and you’ve got a supportive family that’s huge. Most people never even make that leap.
As for the secret sauce honestly it’s consistency + time. Keep learning, keep networking and aim for stable growth not instant wealth. Use layoffs as a reset not a failure. Maybe freelance, build small projects or find remote contracts while job hunting. The money comes slower than social media makes it seem but it does come. You’ve already got the right mindset just keep going.
Software sales
Which 3rd world country are you in? What kind of work gave you been doing?
Remember you are not getting rich on your own. Your wife maintaining a supportive family is doing it too.
Many, if not most people, don’t have that.
One way that I have seen people from Pakistan doing, is just to leave for better country. I heard that the economy is not doing well over there, not to mention other things. Many countries offer free and high quality school for your kids too.
130K into RKLB @ $7.
I sometimes hesitate posting my story because it seems like it was easy – and for me it kinda
was but the field I’m in has a huge failure rate.
I switched from being an Engineer at 30 making $140k a year to becoming an Advisor in wealth management.
My first year at 31 I earned like $53k (we were given a $50k salary for the first year and that’s it – so I earned the $50k + $3k commission). By year 2 I was at $40k (all commission), and then it went $95k, $135k, $210k, $300k etc and 12 years later I’m over $1mm a year. Very satisfying, fulfilling career that just felt natural to me. But the firm I’m with (major bank in Canada) brought on 30 rookies that year and after 10 years just 2 of us were left.
51 years old male.
Fired at 41.
Never married,
No kids.
Alarming number ladies came and went
—————
TLDR:
Nothing fancy:
Spend less than I made
Bought assets
Picked up passive income
LCOL
No big sinks (divorces or kids)
———-
Highlights:
8 year undergrad, on slow plan for engineering but
– published a textbook in engineering
– year abroad
– co-op
2 year masters when I dropped from PhD
– two more book projects
15 year engineering career
– all those books were about the software the company made. This made the interview a cake walk, one interviewer had read the book.
– maxed out 401k in index funds
– got solid equity in home
– pivoted to other book genre
– 7 titles still bring in decent royalties 12 years later.
– Started a small online company
– mostly silent partner, but nice little monthly stipend still
Fired to MCOL area in USA then to LCOL Philippines
– Discovered bitcoin for sending money here
– Took some risk on bitcoin from “a position of FU”
(https://youtu.be/XamC7-Pt8N0?si=rBpvRS_LrwY6BugA)
– No longer see that as risk, I am up plenty.
sounds like you’ve already got the rich part figured out it is just missing the money. supportive wife, healthy kid, self-awareness, and hustle ngl that’s half the battle most people never win.
As a humble civil servant, the key to my relative affluence relative to peers has been a high savings rate and not having kids.
To get rich you need to spend less than you make, use that difference between your income and what you spend to pay off your debt. Then invest that difference in a broad based index fund for the rest of your working career. Throughout that time you’ll build up the margin you’re wanting.
To spend less I’d recommend doing a budget.
A financial advice rule of thumb is to save and invest 20% of what you make from your job every year. By the time you retire you will be affluent.
Also, something else I realized is it is MUCH easier to set your children up for success than to get there by yourself in one generation.
During the 2007-9 financial collapse, having been laid off 2x in that period, I was determined not to work for anyone else again.
At 38 I started a contractor management business, managing foreign contractors for American companies. It was rough starting, but fast forward and my company now has locations in the US and South America, and manages 5000+ independent contractors in 15 counties.
I didn’t necessarily reinvent the proverbial wheel, but contractor management companies weren’t really a thing back then, during and post COVID though it’s become mainstream.
We bill around $1.4 million per month, and I work around 3 hours per day with 30 direct employees.
It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t success overnight, it was grueling and tiresome but it has paid off. The valuation for my company is around $9 million.
Invest
The secret sauce for me was/is time. Started a career at 18, 401k at 21, and investing in real estate at 21. Pay yourself first, and stay out of debt as much as possible.
I’m not sure I’d classify myself as rich although some might, but I married a woman who had a similar middle class upbringing but a desire to climb the social ladder. We worked really hard and saved really hard. It’s allowed us to keep saving despite having young kids.
I’ve sacrificed a lot for work. A lot of long nights. A lot of time networking with people I didn’t necessarily like, traveling places I didn’t want to go, and doing things I didn’t want to do. Career wise, the secret sauce was making people like me. Every career move was at the suggestion of someone who thought I was a good fit for a role they had or told someone else I was their guy.
I’ve also avoided the most ludicrous kinds of overspending. We have reasonable cars and we didn’t overbuy our house.
You would think we are doing ok from the outside looking in, but we don’t look like we live any better than friends that we know we make 3-4x more than.
Sounds like you married a good woman and you operate like a team. That’s good. Really good. We’ve had great years and not so great years. Our strategy was to get to a place where we only needed one salary to survive as a family/couple and then bank/invest the other salary. All windfalls are invested and we can only spend the cashflow/dividends spun off the capital. It’s not an easy thing to do these days but the old saying “live beneath your means” really does help. Good luck bro. The seeds we planted 2 decades ago are blooming today.
Just work insane amounts of OT at a trade job.
I am not rich. But seems like the paths are 1) Entrepreneurship 2) top tier MBA that leads to executive roles 3) highly successful investments
Outside of inheritance
I’m sure there are other, less likely ways as well. Could win the lottery. Hypothetically could work your way all the way up the ladder.
To become rich, you have to be either born rich so you can take risks early in life or be very lucky with some well timed career/business decisions.
There’s no secret sauce, it’s luck.
If you are smart, work hard, and make consistent right decisions you can become middle class though. That’s what you have to shoot for.
You need to stop thinking about what will make you rich and what will be a consistent and supportive career for your family right now. Start talking to previous work colleagues you made over the past 5 years since your career change. Network and see if they know of any jobs with potential for promotion. Get your resume looked at by a professional. Automate your application process. Think of other jobs that would have interest in your background and apply to those too.
I’m not rich so no advice on that front, but you would probably find Taleb’s book ‘Fooled by Randomness’ interesting and relevant.
Just to add most people don’t become “rich” with a 9-5 job.
Starting businesses and expanding is usually what makes people rich.