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I completely agree with this. I am nowhere near the 1% right now as far as yearly salary (early career science professor) but I am doing everything I can to build additional income including rental properties, scientific and educational consulting, and aggressive investing in small businesses personally familiar to me. in 2013, roughly 2/3 of my income will be my salary and 1/3 will be 'other'. I am hoping that twenty or thirty years from now my academic salary is a small fraction of my overall income, but even if it is half I will be very comfortable.
Some people have suggested that I could make more money if I gave up teaching altogether and consulted full time. They may be right, but I love teaching as well as the stability of academia. 90% of my job is a joy to do and if I was wealthy I would pay for the privilege of doing it. I can definitely see, however, that if my goal was to become as rich as possible I would never get there collecting a paycheck.
All of my friends that are my age (mid 30s) and millionaires made their money through starting a business. Even the investment bankers, lawyers, and surgeons are going to need a few more years to finish paying off loans and accumulating assets before they are what I consider 1%ers. On the other hand, business ownership can be very risky. My friend who owns a algorithmic trading business is under a ton of stress because he is so leveraged that he could potentially lose millions if his computers executed flawed code by accident. I went rafting in the Poconos with him this summer and I could just feel his blood pressure spike every time his phone rang, even when we were out on the river. I would not want to trade him careers, even though he probably clears over a million a year.
You sound like you're on the right path... Exactly how I started out... I lived frugally and took a substantial amount of income from my first professional job (in marketing) to buy multiple investment properties all while starting a consulting business. I then leveraged my properties/business into buying more businesses and hiring more employees, which I have continued to grow. Leverage works. Successfully leverage your own (and other people's) skills and money... Having only billable hours for one person (yourself) is quite limiting, as is only being able to invest your own money. Being frugal, on 1 salary, with only 1 person's savings/income (e.g. a sole doctor, lawyer, accountant) gets you only so far (maybe barely into the 1%)...
I have been very highly leveraged, however I have an exceedingly high tolerance for the risk of financial ruin... Although making money is important to me, I am really not that fearful of losing it all and being poor again. I also don't care what people think of me. I have often thought the banker would call in the multimillion loan, or that big deal would not go through, but for some reason it does not overly stress me out (unlike your friend in the Poconos).
Maybe I am irrationally optimistic (crazy?) about things and narcissistically believe too much in myself and my ideas. I think: This is a great idea and what is the worst thing that could possibly happen? I lose my entire life savings and everyone hates me? Ok, I can handle that. It does take a certain temperment to live like this. I am strangely low stress for the amount of money flowing out of my hands each week... Not sure many are wired this way.
Given that rather few Americans are in the 1% (1% of them to be exact ) this list doesn't do much of anything but show a sufficient (as opposed to a necessary) link between college major and future financial acumen. There's a pretty wide variety of majors in that list, and most of them are clustered pretty close together in terms of 1 %age shares.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but a lot of people who get dirty for a living (digging ditches, mopping floors, mixing cement, planting flowers, etc.) work damn hard and are not anywhere near the 1%. Many of the people who have these jobs in the trades WORK HARD and are just scraping by at $30,000 a year.
Let's not pretend that everyone is born with equal opportunity. There are some inherent structural advantages that make success far more attainable in some communities compared to others.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but a lot of people who get dirty for a living (digging ditches, mopping floors, mixing cement, planting flowers, etc.) work damn hard and are not anywhere near the 1%. Many of the people who have these jobs in the trades WORK HARD and are just scraping by at $30,000 a year.
Let's not pretend that everyone is born with equal opportunity. There are some inherent structural advantages that make success far more attainable in some communities compared to others.
Nobody is pretending anything. This thread is about what to major in to break into the 1%, not whether there are people who work hard and make little money.
In order to break into the top 1% it is necessary to work hard. But not everyone who works hard will break into the top 1%. More than that is necessary.
My father is a self made one percenter...albeit on the extreme lower end of the spectrum, but he was a history major and got to where he is by hard work and networking. He certainly wasn't born into it.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but a lot of people who get dirty for a living (digging ditches, mopping floors, mixing cement, planting flowers, etc.) work damn hard and are not anywhere near the 1%. Many of the people who have these jobs in the trades WORK HARD and are just scraping by at $30,000 a year.
Let's not pretend that everyone is born with equal opportunity. There are some inherent structural advantages that make success far more attainable in some communities compared to others.
There is also a limit on the mental capabilities of some people which keeps them doing manual labor.
I am not sure of this, but cannot brilliant students from anyplace in the country get scholarships and grants?
How do we solve the problem of the cost of education? College costs have, for decades I believe, risen much faster than inflation. Colleges just figure that the federal government will give loans to the students who are stuck paying it back, so there is no incentive at all for colleges to cut costs and every incentive to raise them.
In some communities the home environment is more conducive to learning than in others. Parents sometimes limit their offspring from succeeding.
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) this list doesn't do much of anything but show a sufficient (as opposed to a necessary) link between college major and future financial acumen. There's a pretty wide variety of majors in that list, and most of them are clustered pretty close together in terms of 1 %age shares.
Plan ahead
