If someone tells you to buy something and you risk your money you are responsible and can claim you are self-made. There is a lot of free advice if you followed all of it you would probably be broke or dead.
Re:Just How Much Money Do “Influencers” Make?
by megaremote on Monday June 18, 2018 @07:47PM
(#17342592)
If you have access to someone is giving out good investment advice, you are better off than 99.9999% of people.
It's as hard to know whether the person is giving good investment advice as it is to give good investment advice yourself, though. So generally, it's not very helpful.
Re:Just How Much Money Do “Influencers” Make?
by IggleSniggle on Tuesday June 26, 2018 @10:13PM
(#17405319)
...doesn't this just reinforce that having family connections matter more? Are you more likely to follow the advice of your family or some stranger? If your family connections have insight and/or inside knowledge of markets, aren't you more likely to accidentally take good advice than the average joe? You're still not immune to bad advice, but you have a higher percentage chance of having higher quality information to act on.
Re:Just How Much Money Do “Influencers” Make?
by skookumchuck on Monday June 18, 2018 @06:12PM
(#17342042)
> are you a self-made individual?
Yes. You took the risk. The rewards are yours - and if you fail, nobody's going to bail you out.
> So clearly family connections help. But that doesn't appear to be most of the picture.
That's a very simple view of the OP's statement - notice that OP did not say inherited wealth, but instead 'family connections'.
For example, if you received personalized advice to invest a lot of money in a business that later became wildly successful, are you a self-made individual? There are even more subtle examples of how relationships can lead to wealth.
Anyway, perhaps a better analysis is asking what happens to children who grow up either in poverty or in wealth: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-c...