How the top 5% do it?

[NW-Bound]

I don't know why this subject of luck vs. hard work keeps coming up on this forum.

Six years ago, I was diagnosed with a serious disease that could put me 6 feet under. A lot of people with the same condition do not make it. Some are as young as in their 20s and 30s. They fixed me up, and I have been OK.

Was I lucky or unlucky? Compared to the affected people who died young, I am lucky. But I am not as lucky as the people who are not afflicted at all, because they did not have to go through painful surgery and treatments that I had to suffer.

I cannot control luck, whether good or bad. I can control what I do. That's what I concentrate on.

 

[Rianne]

Wow, there are no words. It is far and beyond my vocabulary to stress my thanks to anyone and all who served in any conflict/war to protect this country and all the opportunities and blessings it offers. My dad served in WWII, my brother in Viet Nam. This ridiculous back and forth is embarrassing to read on this forum.
Edit: I wrote this before NW Bound posted.

 

[karen1972]

I've always believed success is a mix of
A) Not having bad luck.. not luck but a failure to have bad luck.
B) a strong work ethic and goals
C) a failure to take no for an answer and allow setback to deter them.

I never made the top 5% but was one of the top 5% female income earners (which doesn't say much when you see the gap men vs. women).. I failed at A & C. I ended up having a back injury at the same time I was being outplayed by a few men who weren't going to allow me to move up the ladder and thus become their boss. Had I not been in so much pain I likely could have managed to overcome that but the two together was just too much and I gave up and walked away earlier than planned.

I grew up poor, but technically "made it". I can easily identify a lot of spots along the way where things could have turned out differently. Basically at any point I could have thrown in the towel and most would have and I did eventually.. it just depends on where any given persons limit is and those that succeed tend to have a higher tolerance than most or their challenges weren't as extreme.

 

[pj.mask]

Perhaps I was. So, for the civility of the ER site I apologize for calling you rude.



Having said that, your first post implied his several deployments meant nothing. In your follow up post you acted surprised that he might be a tad upset, and then doubled down by compared his deployments to the bad 'luck' of someone who committed crimes and as a result was incarcerated.

I never implied that his deployments meant nothing.
We all had the option to join the military and risk our lives to pay for an education. I strongly considered it myself but ended up going with loans and scholarships that anyone would have access to.

As posted above - luck is how you view it. Is he unlucky he had to go to war or lucky he survived? I don’t know the answer to that but I know there are both sides. The original post discounted luck and pegged it all on hard work.

I was not surprised he was upset - this is the Internet where people tend to say things they would not face to face and we certainly have opposing strongly held beliefs. But because of *how* upset he seemed, I did not want to continue to escalate the situation.

Didn’t Bush do cocain? Clinton and Obama smoked pot? They were lucky they didn’t get caught for their choices. I believe back in the 70s you could get long prison sentence for pot.
We all make choices and have some luck on how the outcome ends up. I’m not going to judge if doing drugs are wrong and I’m not going to judge if joining the military or going to war is wrong.

The difference between treason and patriotism is only a matter of dates.

Just because our government makes a decision doesn’t mean I have to morally agree with that or judge others who do.

 

[Rianne]

IMHO we are using the term "luck" incorrectly. By definition:

"success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions."
Maybe "opportunity" would be a better term. I'm not sure anyone would admit they achieved success by mere luck. Such a fleeting term.

 

[Rianne]

I never implied that his deployments meant nothing.
We all had the option to join the military and risk our lives to pay for an education. I strongly considered it myself but ended up going with loans and scholarships that anyone would have access to.

As posted above - luck is how you view it. Is he unlucky he had to go to war or lucky he survived? I don’t know the answer to that but I know there are both sides. The original post discounted luck and pegged it all on hard work.

I was not surprised he was upset - this is the Internet where people tend to say things they would not face to face and we certainly have opposing strongly held beliefs. But because of *how* upset he seemed, I did not want to continue to escalate the situation.

Didn’t Bush do cocain? Clinton and Obama smoked pot? They were lucky they didn’t get caught for their choices. I believe back in the 70s you could get long prison sentence for pot.
We all make choices and have some luck on how the outcome ends up. I’m not going to judge if doing drugs are wrong and I’m not going to judge if joining the military or going to war is wrong.

The difference between treason and patriotism is only a matter of dates.

Just because our government makes a decision doesn’t mean I have to morally agree with that or judge others who do.

Seriously?

 

[Luck_Club]

I had a boss (when I was in HS) in the restaurant business that would tell me that if you ever had a difficult job to do, you hire a lazy person to do it. They will always figure out the easiest way to accomplish the task. That was typically after he assigned me a difficult job...


I have always been a bit lazy. And that is why I worked so hard, so I would not have to work as long. Maybe it's the lazy people that make it to the 5%?

A common response to why I'm in sales is I like helping people and sales pays better then social work. Lucky, intelligent or lazy? Probably all of the above. I knowingly chose a profession where every day l face rejection, and high levels of stress, because it pays well. I could have chosen to be a social worker, and been unlucky.

Meanwhile after a few months of study, I'm having fun and making money writing options, which the prevailing wisdom was don't do it. I guess I'm just lucky and should start buying lottery tickets where the real big bucks are just a simple scratch away.

 

[aja8888]

seriously?

+ 1000

 

[pj.mask]

+ 1000

I know, right!

 

[NW-Bound]

... Meanwhile after a few months of study, I'm having fun and making money writing options, which the prevailing wisdom was don't do it. I guess I'm just lucky and should start buying lottery tickets where the real big bucks are just a simple scratch away.

Hey, welcome to the club.

In some other forums, option traders would be treated as pariah.

Looking at your screen name, I have to say that I keep trying to ask myself whether the premium money I got from option writing was due to luck, or skill, or work. I think it is a mixture of all 3, but I don't know how to assign the weight. Who cares, as long as you make money, right?

But the question is can you make even more money with a different method? Now that's hard. It has to be evaluated based on a risk-weighted basis. Ah, but talk about risk, then we are back to luck again.


PS. I use option writing as a way to reduce my potential loss, at the expense of capping my possible gain. In other words, it is a way to hedge, to mitigate risk. It is about not pushing your luck, contrary to what people think of option trading. And of course options can be used to take huge risks in trying to obtain obscene gains. It's all about what you want to use this tool for.

 

[jollystomper]

IMHO we are using the term "luck" incorrectly. By definition:

"success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions."
Maybe "opportunity" would be a better term. I'm not sure anyone would admit they achieved success by mere luck. Such a fleeting term.

+1.

 

[Letj]

I attribute luck to most of my success. Yes, it’s true I took advantage of many opportunities and many I didn’t take advantage of. However, it was luck that I was born fairly good looking, tall and reasonably intelligent into a background that highly valued education and ambition. It was luck that I landed a job in a corporation that paid well and provided a lot of opportunities for advancement. Luck I met and married a stable man for whom the family and remaining in a married committed relationship are paramount. Luck my company transferred me to a location where I could make low cost real estate investment for a good return. Need I go on? I seized the opportunities but none of that would be possible without luck and the smarts and ambition I was born with/cultivated. I try not to forget that many people are born with a brain that holds them back and in some cases, born into an environment that doesn’t foster ambition and progress preventing them from seeing and taking advantage of all the opportunities before them. Of course, if you’re born in a 3rd world country into poverty with no connections, all the luck and hard work won’t help.

 

[razztazz]

Maybe "opportunity" would be a better term.

Yes, it's generally less of an affront that saying luck. A rose is a rose... Or maybe it's just teh front-end of luck and leaves off the back end. i.e. How it all worked out

I'm not sure anyone would admit they achieved success by mere luck.

Of course they won't

 

[dtbach]

In my case its both opportunity and fair amount of luck. I was lucky I could work my way through school and got my degree without any loans. Getting my degree was hard work and going for the opportunity. I had the luck of good eyes which got me into the Navy in Aviation, the opportunity to get experience as an Officer. When I got out I was able to get into the Reserves which turned out to be rather lucky as just a few years later massive cuts in defense left many turned away from that opportunity. I saved all of my Reserve pay by investing in the market during '90 to '99. I was lucky the market was fantastic during those years. I could go on, but sometimes serendipity can go a long way into getting into the 5% club.

 

[unclemick]

Do you really think that the attributes of working hard and saving a large percentage of one's income is uncorrelated with success? I mean come on.

Okay fine, being born in the USA or other industrialized nations is luck. So is being born into a middle income or higher family with good genetics. But after that, it's mostly hard work and perseverance. Sure, people get lucky along the way; they also get unlucky too. Most wealthy people didn't inherit the money or win the lottery. They work hard.

Working hard sucks. Saving/investing over time is a barn burner.

1957 My 'Swedish maid' Aunt watched what her 'rich New York City!' employers did and did the same over decades. Not at 5% when she passed but left us a nice chunk for the 1950's. Which my Father promptly spent on a new house since they were stocks and mutual funds.

heh heh heh - I was am still am totally opposed to er 'hard work'. Time in the market is my best pal. All praise to the late Mr Bogle. Being cheap can be fun also.

 

[24601NoMore]

I don't know why this subject of luck vs. hard work keeps coming up on this forum.

AMEN to that. It frustrates me beyond words every time someone states that "luck" or "privilege" (God, how I HATE that word - it's just loaded with political positioning) is even .00001% of the success that many of us have worked our tails off to achieve.

I really need to stop reading these posts to keep my sanity and civility, because I might just pop next time someone says the "L" word.

As I've said before, I had ZERO "luck" and was born into a very lower middle class family so most certainly not lucky to be born into "privilege" (unless you call being Caucasian being "privileged", which appears to be en vogue nowadays) yet managed to work my tail off to get to what I suppose is called the "upper 5%" (yipee). And what's the "upper 5%"? Yeah..80+ hour weeks for years/decades on end that damn near killed me. Never seeing my family. Traveling all over God's creation dealing with obstinate, demanding, difficult people. Generally not getting a lot of sleep. Working my TAIL. OFF.

Yeah, it's all about "luck". Gimme a break. Anyone who thinks this for one nanosecond has been listening to the politicians far too long. I for sure was not born into "privilege", nor did I have "luck", but I WAS raised at a time that valued incredibly hard work, tons of sacrifice, and making the right choices for your future. And I did all of those things (albeit with many mistakes along the way) and then some. Regrettably, it seems that today few want to do the same and instead blame those who DID "make it" for having "luck" or "privilege" and in my experience, that's utter nonsense tinged with heavy politics.

BTW, I do agree that being tall and (especially) being LUCKY enough to be born with "good hair" is helpful. FWIW, I'm short, bald (I very much prefer the term "hair free", though) and slightly overweight yet somehow managed to make it. (ETA - hmmm..maybe decades of crushingly hard work and good old fashioned American EFFORT had something to do with it?) And if this short, overweight, bald kid from inner city Detroit can make it, ANYONE can.

 

[523HRR]

How did we do it? DW and I just worked hard at mega corp jobs overs the years, moving up the ladder and LBYM. Retired at 49 and moved to Florida. I don’t even have a blog!

 

[NW-Bound]

There is always an element of chance in what we do. It could be good, or it could be bad. As I said earlier, it is out of our control, so why keep getting hung up on that? Why not concentrate on what we can do to improve our lot?

In "Outliers: The Story of Success", Malcolm Gladwell describes how Bill Gates was fortunate to be growing up in an environment to get exposure to computers very early, and to be at the right age to participate in the birth of a new industry that changed the world. Gladwell convincingly argues that if Gates was a few years older, he would have gone through college and settled down in a comfortable job with a megacorp, instead of being a kid with little to lose, in order to put all his effort into Microsoft.

Another billionaire, Steve Jobs, also was of the same age as Gates, and had the fortune of being in Silicon Valley. So, yes, it took some luck to become a billionaire like these guys did. It is not to discount their gumption and smart, because many others were of their age and did not get as far.

I am not as smart as Gates or Jobs, also did not work as hard as they did. Even if I had their opportunity, I would not be as successful. I am quite sure of that. But I did work hard enough to get to the 5%, and I am happy already with my effort. It takes a lot of things to be a billionaire, but the top 5% is nowhere as hard. Some cavemen did it, come on!

They say that people who fall to alcoholism, drug addition have something in their genes to predispose them to that. Even nicotine addiction has something to do with genes. That does not mean people can blame their "bad luck" genes for every wrong doing. Heck, mass murderers and serial rapists will use their genes for an excuse next.

 

[24601NoMore]

While I'm doing my best to be non-political here, I do think that our current political climate is heavily emphasizing and using the perception of "luck" and "privilege" along with a very heavy dose of envy and class warfare while dividing different socio-economic groups against each other.

Being north of mid 50s at this point, I don't remember an earlier time where anyone was bemoaning "luck" or "privilege" the way we seem to be doing nowadays - and that's very frustrating, as it belittles the MASSIVE effort that those who have "made it" did make to achieve what they have achieved.

After all is said and done, isn't hard work, grit and determination what the American Spirit is all about?

When did we lose that and start blaming / envying people for their success?

Yes, Gates and Jobs had the OPPORTUNITY to dig in, SACRIFICE and make massive effort to achieve what they did. So did every single other person on earth that was born at roughly the same time. Just the way it is. Let's quit belittling people based on a perception of "luck" and recognize their (often massive, unbelievable) sacrifices to achieve what they did. I don't blame Jobs or Gates for being more "privileged" than me or anyone else on the planet..and I don't think anyone else should, either. I was born at roughly the same time. Why am I not a billionaire? I sure don't attribute it to "luck". They simply had a vision and made the efforts that I did not have or make, much to my DW's chagrin (hey, it'd be great to a billionaire..too bad I didn't conceive the iPod, iPhone, Windows, MS-Office, etc. Dems the breaks).

We used to call that the American Spirit. Let's start recognizing people's accomplishments and quit blaming them for this mythical "luck".

 

[Calico]

Seriously?

+ 1000

+2000

 

[cyber888]

63% took a personal risk ... there's an element of luck there.

Many people also took personal risks to open a business or do well with their investments, but they are not all in the Top 5%. Being in the right place, at the right time helps. Good karma

 

[dirtbiker]

Seriously?

+ 1000

+2000

PJ and I had a short conversation over messages. I don't think he meant his posts on this subject to come across the way they did. No worries guys. Thanks though. Cheers.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

Here is an interesting article on the role of luck in success, or at least the influences of factors outside of our control: https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...life-success-is-far-greater-than-we-realized/

Along the lines already mentioned of being tall and good looking helping with success, here are a few others:

• About half of the differences in income across people worldwide is explained by their country of residence and by the income distribution within that country,
• Scientific impact is randomly distributed, with high productivity alone having a limited effect on the likelihood of high-impact work in a scientific career,
• The chance of becoming a CEO is influenced by your name or month of birth,
• The number of CEOs born in June and July is much smaller than the number of CEOs born in other months,
• Those with last names earlier in the alphabet are more likely to receive tenure at top departments,
• The display of middle initials increases positive evaluations of people's intellectual capacities and achievements,
• People with easy to pronounce names are judged more positively than those with difficult-to-pronounce names,
• Females with masculine sounding names are more successful in legal careers.

 

[pj.mask]

...
After all is said and done, isn't hard work, grit and determination what the American Spirit is all about?

When did we lose that and start blaming / envying people for their success?
...

We used to call that the American Spirit. Let's start recognizing people's accomplishments and quit blaming them for this mythical "luck".

If hard work and grit works in America - why can’t it work elsewhere just as effectively? I haven’t seen anyone blamed for earning success. I do see discount of those who were given/inherited it without working on their own.

It is even common congratulations to hear that ‘you put in a lot of hard work to get where you are’ - cool.

But there are some percent who advertise that they had no luck and that anyone could accomplish their success if they only worked hard / pulled harder on their boot straps.

I just can’t support this ideology because it is always used to denigrate others. These stories of hard work always have a part about ‘my school mates didn’t study/sign up for the army/take this chance’ or ‘my family was just lazy’.
It minimizes your success (what you accomplished isn’t special if anyone can do it with hard work - they just don’t) and it really puts focus on all the other people. If it is just hard work to get from where they were to some successful position - they must not work at all because they are in a terrible position.

This builds into people on government benefits can just work harder and be successful but they are lazy.

Everyone has their own issues. I know I have mine, probably a fair bit on display. But between luck and hard work - I am glad that my issues haven’t prevented achieving my goals in life.

 

[JoeWras]

I'm average height, bald at age 16, and ugly. Yep, unlucky.

It drove me to study damn hard and choose a profession requiring a lot of education. I couldn't just skate through certain jobs that require nothing but good looks.

It was OK. While the pretty boys were out partying during the week in college, getting lucky, and smoking pot, I was studying. Didn't have a choice. Who would want to party with me, the ugly duckling?

So maybe I was lucky to be ugly because it drove me to work hard. Yep. That's it! I'll take it. I was lucky.