> Wealth = freedom to do what you want.

I have a friend who is pretty wealthy. I've noticed he spends a fair amount of time worrying that his money is secure. Seems like the ultimate first world problem to me, but it's real.

Seems like the issue is having enough cushion so that your lifestyle is well below your means, so you can invest very conservatively without having to worry about your circumstances changing.

Of course, this can be accomplished by either dramatically increasing your assets, or by dramatically decreasing your expenditures.

Good points. In this case, I was attempting to refer to he's concerned he'll get hacked, or a trusted associate w/ access to the money would run off with it.

Did your friend come up with any solutions to the trusted associate issue? Seems like there are two obvious approaches: the carrot (pay your employees well above market rates) or the stick (a literal stick, in the extreme) to encourage loyalty.

But there are presumably other ways to engineer your account permissions so that one or two rogue associates cannot clean you out?

It's kind of like buying a safe. You can always improve the quality of the safe, but you can't always trust the safe is 100% foolproof. The more you have in the safe, the more you worry there's that one thing you didn't think about that prevents someone from walking away with all the money.

You can put your things in many smaller safes, and spread them around a bit!

"Divide your fortune into seven, or even into eight, for many are the mischances of the world." - Proverbs (in the Bible).

The thing is, the mindset that gets you wealth isn't necessarily the same mindset that makes you realize the true value of it which makes you secure. Non-exclusive sets, I say. There can be two types of people who get to the top.

> Wealth = freedom to do what you want

Once you're wealthy, kind of :) (there are some complications and the fact that often the main limitations of doing what we want are usually not wealth, but not knowing what we'd want the most in the first place, or lacking courage/skill to pursue it)

But there's the process of getting wealthy, which can include self-restriction of freedoms...

Possibly.

The wealthiest person I ever dated (he wasn't super wealthy while we were together just doing well, but I just saw him a month ago and he was excited because he CAN retire now but doesn't want to - he's 38) spent TONS of money doing rich people things in the pursuit of wealth, he stretched his bank account very thin over and over doing this.

Going to Sundance, Cannes, Burning Man, TED, etc to network. Spending gobs of money on impressing friends and others he wanted to be friends with. Picking up thousand dollar tabs for groups of people then minorly freaking out the next day.

But spend money to make money. Worked for him. And he got to be super self-indulgent along the way.

How did he make his money, in the end? A talented software developer can make enough money to retire as comfortable middle class by 38, by getting a job at a FAANG by age 25.

The thought of going to Burning Man for millionaire-business networking makes me sick, the quintessence of how Silicon Valley tech bros are murdering human culture.

He raised money for start-ups and was a marketing consultant. Ended up on advisory boards for various start-ups and most recently as a CXO for a prominent start-up (which got tons of traction but ultimately went down in flames). He had his hand in a bunch of different companies and often worked for equity and a small fee.

And as smart as the guy is in many respects (language, social skills, etc), he is a dumb-dumb when it comes to technical anything or analysis of any type of market/business. But holy fuck, that guy can sell anything (most especially himself - was a fascinating person to watch).

Perhaps that's one reason these events exist - FAANG and start-up schmooze fests sweetened with a sprinkling of cultural sugar frosting.

Also, data point of one. Sometimes faking it doesn't work out so well.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/09/anna-sorokin...

Of course that's the far side of the line - someone with no real income at all. But if your networking expenses are regularly on the far side of your income and you don't have some kind of track record to prove to yourself you can make the networking work, you're playing some very high stakes poker.

That’s an interesting anecdote because most wealth building strategies don’t really discuss the value and cost of networking.

[This might sound cynical.]

That's because it's a dirty secret. Most people selling you wealth building strategies are loathe to openly talk about how so much of it is based on "who you know" more so than "what you know". They might touch upon it incidentally in the course of their spiel, but it's either glossed over, or they don't have the level of insight/self-reflection needed to be able to articulate the value and cost (and indeed the pathways and mechanisms) of networking.

Wealth != freedom to do what you want

Freedom to do what you want is given to you at birth