What Are the Chances of Becoming Rich?

[Forza]

What percentage of people in the US are multimillionaires, and what percentage of people who you know personally (in the US) have really tried to become rich in a fastlane way?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[djs13]

I think the better question is how many people actually attempted to become rich in a constructive way? There's a huge social stigma against becoming financially independent. Furthermore, there's a huge belief that you can somehow become rich working for someone else.

If you're just trying to collect data I'm not sure where you can find it. But if you're looking at the data to examine your odds, just remember life is not a dress rehearsal. Good luck.

 

[PaulRobert]

Millionaire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wiki has a chart but it was last updated in 2006. I am pretty sure the numbers have changed, especially in the past 2 years.

 

[EastWind]

What percentage of people in the US are multimillionaires, and what percentage of people who you know personally (in the US) have really tried to become rich in a fastlane way?

the percentage is directly proportionate to your drive for success. if we can measure drive/determination/ambition, i will reckon that those that have the drive to be wealthy, will almost always be wealthy. many times we hear of men who made millions, lost it, make it all over again, and some repeat it more than once. it's not lucky, it's not a chance thing, they got the drive. why are you too concerned with percentage of people in the US who are multimillionaires? it's actually quite high. there's over 10million households in the US who have a net worth of over a million dollars. but you know what? it means nothing! who cares if there are only 5 people? are you going to let that stop you?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[yveskleinsky]

What percentage of people in the US are multimillionaires, and what percentage of people who you know personally (in the US) have really tried to become rich in a fastlane way?

Hmm. Not to be difficult, but I suppose my answer would depend on what you mean by the words "try" "rich" and "fastlane".

All the people that I've met that have "tried" anything have never succeeded. The people that I know that are successful are the ones who committed to their goal. Sometimes it took 5 months, sometimes it took 15 years. Oftentimes they weren't as successful as they were hoping, but they all had varying degrees of success.

As far as "rich" goes, I suppose it depends on what that word means to them. Most people use the word rich to mean more money than they can possibly spend--or a more modern definition for the masses is that "rich" means having so much money that a person can be a total financial idiot and not have monetary consequences. ...I would think that most of us here would define "rich" as being in the ballpark of financial freedom, and that is a definition that varies from person to person.

But to play along with what I think your intention is, most millionaires (doesn't mean rich necessarily) that I've known that have started a business have started bricks and mortar or some type of service biz, and none of them did it in a "fastlane" way. (Fastlane meaning building a biz with scalability in mind.) I have one set of friends who kinda developed a biz in a fastlane way, but it wasn't intentional, and they ended up veering off course and getting back to the hands on, mom and pop type biz.

 

[mkzhang]

My old friend and I used to talk about get rich schemes. We had so many ideas (actually he did, I just tried to see if they worked). We made a little bit of money, enough to get some minor gifts like golf clubs etc.

I then quit my job, took the one opportunity I had at the moment and committed it to it.

He is still at his old job at our old company.

I made 2x as much as his salary in the first 2 months of 2010 (granted he doesn't make much lol). I am not rich, my income is not even stable, but getting "rich" depends on action, not who tried or who got lucky, but who persisted and did an above and beyond job.

 

[Runum]

Chances of becoming rich?

ZERO if you don't have a plan and take action.

Well, I guess not zero, if you buy a lottery ticket.

I agree with Yves, gotta define rich and fastlane.:fastlane:

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MJ DeMarco]

When you say "chances" of getting rich, you are talking about odds.

Odds are mathematical.

That means, if you are talking about odds, your "chances" are predicated on the universe which you operate within.

For example, if there are 100 balls in a paperbag, 99 red (mediocrity) and 1 green (rich), your odds of randomly picking the green is 1% -- this is akin to the Slowlane (I'd say the chances are worse than that since the Slowlane is a total loss of control). However, if there are only 10 balls in the paperbag and 9 of them are red, and 1 is green, your odds are 10% -- this is like the Fastlane.

Your chances (or odds) are based upon the universe you operate within ... it acts like the physics of your wealth universe. If you operate in the Slowlane universe, you are playing with 100 balls. If you are playing in the Fastlane universe, you are playing with 10 balls and better chances.

This little example is the centerpiece of my book -- and that is -- to get wealthy, you FIRST have to change your universe and play on the correct field...

So to answer your question, "what are the chances to becoming rich?" ...

I DON'T KNOW. Before I can judge, I first need to know which bag you are playing with.

 

[EastWind]

When you say "chances" of getting rich, you are talking about odds.

Odds are mathematical.

That means, if you are talking about odds, your "chances" are predicated on the universe which you operate within.

For example, if there are 100 balls in a paperbag, 99 red (mediocrity) and 1 green (rich), your odds of randomly picking the green is 1% -- this is akin to the Slowlane (I'd say the chances are worse than that since the Slowlane is a total loss of control). However, if there are only 10 balls in the paperbag and 9 of them are red, and 1 is green, your odds are 10% -- this is like the Fastlane.

Your chances (or odds) are based upon the universe you operate within ... it acts like the physics of your wealth universe. If you operate in the Slowlane universe, you are playing with 100 balls. If you are playing in the Fastlane universe, you are playing with 10 balls and better chances.

This little example is the centerpiece of my book -- and that is -- to get wealthy, you FIRST have to change your universe and play on the correct field...

So to answer your question, "what are the chances to become rich?" ...

I DON'T KNOW. Before I can judge, I first need to know which bag you are playing with.

I like this, but I will like to modify it a bit.

Imagine there is ONE BAG, the bag of life, and there are 100 balls in it. 90 red balls, and 10 green ones. The red balls represent failure and the green balls represent success, then the chance of being successful in picking the green ball is 10%

However in the field of Statistics and Probability there is an event known as Conditional Probability.

"Conditional probability is the probability of some event A, given the occurrence of some other event B. Conditional probability is written P(A|B), and is read "the (conditional) probability of A, given B" or "the probability of A under the condition B". When in a random experiment the event B is known to have occurred, the possible outcomes of the experiment are reduced to B, and hence the probability of the occurrence of A is changed from the unconditional probability into the conditional probability given B." - Wiki
Conditional probability - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Well, as you can see if event B has happened, and event A happens, then it changes the outcome.

So let's go back to this paperbag with 100 balls.
Let's assume that before you pick up the ball, that something does happen to 10% of the balls, 9 green balls, 1 red ball they increase in size by 10%. So 9 out of 10 of the green balls are a little bit bigger than the other balls. This is event B

To the person who is completely unaware of event B, their probability of picking a green ball is going to be 10%. However to the person very aware of event B, they can stick their hands in the bag and feel out the balls, until they feel a bigger ball. Their probability of getting that green ball is 90%. This is because they know they can ignore all the smaller balls.

This is how chance of success works.

Take the case of blackjack, most players go and play knowing the current event A, the current hand the dealer just dealt and they don't win much. But a professional blackjack player, knows of the event that has happened before B (by counting cards), the average of all the cards the dealer has dealt before, this gives him an edge!

For the business man, there are many events that will happen to give you a better chance, your mindset, your knowledge of business structures, taxes, industries, hardwork, team, etc. As those events happen, your odds keeps going higher and higher.

So instead of just going out to get rich, realize that somethings must happen before that can happen. You must work, You must create value, you must market it, get customers, have them happy, etc, etc.

 

[Brootal]

I am not rich yet, but I see it this way:

I see becoming rich as a skill and not a wild gamble. When I am first learning a skill there is a very high chance that I am going to screw up and do something wrong. As time goes on the chance of me succeeding becomes much higher, and the chance of me failing becomes smaller.

When I did my first brake job I screwed up. There was a high chance that I wasn't going to get it perfect because I had not built the necessary skill set.

Now that I have done literally hundreds of brake jobs I very rarely make a mistake. I know exactly what to look for every time. Sure there is always the chance that something will go wrong, but I have greatly increased my chances of making things go right.

This is one reason why I believe serial entrepreneurs become so successful. They learn the necessary skills, and then just get better and better as they go on.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[hatterasguy]

"Consequently, the share of income of the top 1%—21.8% of total reported income in 2005—has more than doubled since 1980,[94] leaving the United States with the greatest income inequality among developed nations.[85][95] The top 1% pays 27.6% of all federal taxes; the top 10% pays 54.7%.[96] Wealth, like income, is highly concentrated: The richest 10% of the adult population possesses 69.8% of the country's household wealth, the second-highest share among developed nations.[97] The top 1% possesses 33.4% of net wealth."

From wikipedia.

This shows that you need to be in the top 1% which is hard. It also shows if you make money you get to pay a ton of taxes to drag along all the dead weight.:cuss:

 

[Bilgefisher]

I have a 100% chance.

 

[WestCoast]

I have a 100% chance.

This attitude rules. :eusa_clap:

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.