The richest IT pros on this street

Three tailors lived on the same street in Berdichev. The first one had a sign: “The best tailor in the city”, the second one - “The best tailor in the world”, and the third wrote: “The best tailor on this street”.

The merely strangely increased number of articles about recipes for rich IT people did not encourage me to write the next episode in this habr series if the recipes would remain in an innocently neutral version of the “better to be rich than sick” type. Any slogan, any idea, even the most vague, can really inspire someone to think, to act, and there, you see, another millionaire will appear. But looking at all the new and new “practical” tips, I venture to publicly argue. It has already come to saving on purchases in the supermarket and following popular books. It's time to intervene: suddenly, someone will be able to avoid unnecessary and even stupid gestures.

You will never, NEVER get rich from saving on purchases in a supermarket!

Hundreds of millions of people in the world save both on purchases and on supermarkets themselves, not to mention the millions of hungry people who “save” on food in general. It can be assumed that a sufficiently large part of saving people falls on the bait of relatively large numbers, obtained by multiplying pennies by 20-30-40 years ... without any positive financial effect. The reason is elementary: an economic plan for decades is an oxymoron. Such a plan does not take into account many factors, the impact of which is quite significant and for a shorter period of time, so it can be called a dream, a fantasy, somehow, just not a financial plan. Crises, exchange jumps, inflation, changes in life, work, income, political environment ... but only a short-term fluctuation in the exchange rate can instantly destroy the accumulated overwork (and vice versa, by the way). You will not get rich in 20 years, denying yourself chocolates, or not spending money on cigarettes, or “collecting bottles”. Rather, not so. Your chance to get rich in NN years is completely independent of your current actions and even less dependent on trifles. And all because

The method of obtaining wealth is not algorithmized

It would seem embarrassing to write such trivial things, but the mention of a trivial thing like “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” excuses me. Banalism must be fought with its own weapon. All the proposed tips and methods have no meaning, because there is no publicly known sequence of actions that potentially leads to wealth. There is a well-known parable about a banker who successfully escaped the crisis of the Great Depression thanks to a shoe polisher who, while working - cleaning the banker's shoes - began to talk about what securities and how much money to invest. This gave the banker a reason to think about the overheatedness of the exchange and the need to withdraw capital from there. The parable, too, of course, simplifies, but the basic message is absolutely true: even if an “algorithm” exist that increases the potential for getting rich anyway, the more it would lose its effectiveness, the more people would know about it. Wealth (no matter what everyone means by this word) is a very limited resource. You can imagine access to a limited resource with limited information (for example, insider information), but it is impossible to imagine an obviously working access to a limited resource by a prescription multiplied in millions of copies.
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The above is true for well-known slogans. The call “Do at least something!” Is not at all different from the call “Do not do anything!”. For all the examples about Vasya, who did, tried and achieved, you can find counter-examples about Pete, who did not do a damn half his life, and then he came up with some kind of thing and got into “a shot”, or counter-examples about Kolya, who did, tried, did, tried, ditched health, did not really enjoy life and ... did not achieve anything, or about Fed, who quietly was engaged in his favorite work and was in trouble with life and with his income all the time. Any example, any story is strictly individual . It describes (it describes!) The specific circumstances of a particular lucky person or group of people, which is impossible to repeat. You cannot summarize “Invest in assets!” Because no one knows what will happen to these assets in a few years. If humanity knew about any super-asset that always and under any circumstances brings income (well, just a philosopher's stone, not an asset), it paradoxically immediately ceased to be an asset. Life constantly shows us the ups and downs of corporations, financial empires, real estate kings, industrial magnates. And again there will be stories about Vasya, who did not eat ice cream and did not walk with girls, but by the 40th anniversary he lived on income from 2 rented apartments, and about Petya, who ate less and walked, but all his saved ice cream in an instant melted under the hot Florida real estate crisis, and about Kohl, who, without a second thought, acquired some kind of fruit company © for the new 2000th year for $ 25 and happily forgot about them until today, having received a formal income of thousands of percent, and about Fedyu, who bought the same shares along with Kolya, but sold them for $ 10 in 2003, remaining at a loss.

I am extremely indignant when stories of successful people are interpreted as a textbook, as a guide to action. Of course, they are good for curiosity. You can learn from them clever thoughts, individual examples of behavior or decision-making, but by no means a general recipe! The instructions “take away / leave / make / buy, write / create / sell / repeat, and you will be as rich as I am” are as useful as the last lottery winning ball combination in a lotto is useful for the next draw. The chances of its repetition are not one iota higher than the chances of another combination, because the balls have been different for a long time, the automata choosing them, and the stars are differently located.

Biographies and memoirs clearly demonstrate the incomprehensibility of the path to wealth. One studied before the doctoral degree, and the other left the first year of college, one plowed like an ox, and the other smoked weed, one before retirement developed the business, and the other caught the Bird of good luck by the tail at 18, one created complex systems, and the other indulged simple scripts, one sold-apple-bought-two, and the other grandmother left a legacy.

What should I do?

Continue to do what you like, what you express yourself, what feeds you, what brings satisfaction. Grow in any chosen direction, whether technically, emotionally, financially. To do anything, but only for yourself, and not to get rich. Always remember that wealth is orthogonal to your activities. You cannot bring it closer, you cannot plan it, so think about yourself. Think of wealth as one of the possible (and unfortunately unlikely) side effects of your occupation. And then your chances of getting rich will be 50%: you will either become rich or you will not.
Oh yeah, still treat any books, manuals and articles from the “How to become rich” series with a healthy degree of skepticism, including this article.