The book "The millionaire next door" is a must read. It's not a philosophy book, it's about a study that the authors did interviewing thousands of wealthy people. The book describes their collective knowledge, a countless times proved way to become rich.
The way is pretty simple and obvious: frugality. The real millionaires live a much cheaper life than they could afford. They don't have luxury stuff, they live much lower neighborhood than they could afford and they save serious part of their income every month. So they could keep up their current life for years without income. Less than 20% of them inherited significant wealth, and only 0.02% scored big via lottery or became a star or an inventor. 80% of them accumulated their wealth in one generation, slowly, month by month.
The other people, even those who earn more than $50K/year practically have no wealth besides their home, car and furniture, and live from paycheck to paycheck.
Why this book is so great? Because - unlike others - finds the way how people do it. I mean it's 101 to "spend less than you earn", yet people can't do it. This book tells the exact thing that separates rich from poor: "They believe that financial independence is more important than displaying high social status". So, they don't show off, don't give a damn what the Joneses think. Isn't it familiar from somewhere?
End of spoiler. Go and buy it!
PS: Quick EVE business report: cash+buy+sell orders = 1.13B (500M player gift).
PS2: In EVE the players can elect representatives, and the game developers at least listen to what they say. I was thinking a lot about CSM7, both where to vote and to tell it on the blog or not. So instead of just throwing in a name or two, I read all programs and add a few words of opinion about them. Please note that I evaluate programs and not people, spare me from "X is a liar!" posts. Also, be surprised how few actually have a program!
The way is pretty simple and obvious: frugality. The real millionaires live a much cheaper life than they could afford. They don't have luxury stuff, they live much lower neighborhood than they could afford and they save serious part of their income every month. So they could keep up their current life for years without income. Less than 20% of them inherited significant wealth, and only 0.02% scored big via lottery or became a star or an inventor. 80% of them accumulated their wealth in one generation, slowly, month by month.
The other people, even those who earn more than $50K/year practically have no wealth besides their home, car and furniture, and live from paycheck to paycheck.
Why this book is so great? Because - unlike others - finds the way how people do it. I mean it's 101 to "spend less than you earn", yet people can't do it. This book tells the exact thing that separates rich from poor: "They believe that financial independence is more important than displaying high social status". So, they don't show off, don't give a damn what the Joneses think. Isn't it familiar from somewhere?
End of spoiler. Go and buy it!
PS: Quick EVE business report: cash+buy+sell orders = 1.13B (500M player gift).
PS2: In EVE the players can elect representatives, and the game developers at least listen to what they say. I was thinking a lot about CSM7, both where to vote and to tell it on the blog or not. So instead of just throwing in a name or two, I read all programs and add a few words of opinion about them. Please note that I evaluate programs and not people, spare me from "X is a liar!" posts. Also, be surprised how few actually have a program!
- Akirei Scytale: his post is idiotic
- Alekseyev Karrde: PR bullshit, nothing exact
- Blackberry Bold: direct democracy. Bleh!
- Blake Armitage: he is not running for CSM, he just want a job at CCP as API programmer
- corebloodbrothers: no program at all
- Darius III: it's a bugfix list and not a program!
- Dovinian: PR bullshit, no program
- Draco Llasa: wants to bring more life to 0.0 industry and warfare. Not my field, if yours, support.
- Elise Randolph: stands for low-sec small-gangs. Not my field, if yours, support.
- Fon Revedhort: mostly bugfix suggestions. Technical, without political vision.
- Greene Lee: messy posts, no paragraphs. Learn to write first!
- Hans Jagerblitzen: A coherent and huge program (his PDF linked) to support the Empire players without planning to take anything away from 0.0.
- Issler Dainze: no program, just "join me and we'll be great" propaganda
- Kelduum Revaan: PR bullshit, no program
- Korvin: not even PR bullshit, no program
- Leboe: he is for NPC 0.0 Not my field, if yours, support.
- Lyris Nairn: list of technical suggestions, no vision
- Meissa Anunthiel: "I'm everyones man, vote for me!"
- Michael BoltonIII: technical suggestions and Arena. In EVE. Abomination
- Mike Azariah: idiotic post
- Mintrolio: idiotic post
- Mu'ad Diib: PR bullshit, no program
- Prometheus Exenthal: technical suggestions
- PsychoBitch: idiotic post
- Riverini: technicals and PR stuff
- Roc Wieler: PR bullshit, no program
- Seleene: I'm honestly puzzled by his post. He has great vision. And none of it was listed on his official page. Nothing but PR bullshit. It means that he prefers getting a seat than the vision itself. Too bad, if I don't read his official post, I'd vote for him.
- Skippermonkey: idiotic post
- Skye Aurorae: PR bullshit, no program
- Sollana: goes for 0.0 station cannons. While this looks technical, I see the vision behind it: make it much easier to hold 0.0, make safer to build, live there. Not my field, if yours, support.
- StarConquer212: technical issues, no program
- T'amber: technical issues, PR crap
- The Mittani: clear vision: "If “war”, “murder” and “conquest” are naughty words that scare you, I don’t want your vote."
- Tiger Would: Propaganda bullshit, democracy bleh
- Trebor Daehdoow: Mostly technical issues, with little program hiding: "deliver improvements to the game that the current players of the game want". Worth considering.
- Two step: seems to be the man of the Wormhole-dwellers, but was hard to find it in the PR crap. Not my field, if yours, support.
- UAxDEATH: clearly for the 0.0 people, Not my field, if yours, support.
- Vincent Athena: PR crap, "I'm everyones man"
- Voloses: technical stuff, no program
- Xenuria: mix of idiotism and vanity suggestions
24 comments:
Ah yes, I remember reading this a while back. A great read. It is usually recommended in the personal finance world.
Another interesting book on how to practically become rich is "I will teach you to be rich" by Ramit Sethi.
Thanks for the recommendation. I'm about 1/5th of the way through this book and am quite liking it. It's kind of like your blog, but with less references to the M&S.
I really like that this book focuses on the intrinsic value of financial independence versus showing off to other people while secretly living in fear for your future.
I wasn't aware that we have 2 votes, I thought each account can only vote for one candidate. Does that mean you currently have a second active account in eve too? What's the reason for having a second account with your play style (if you do have, of course).
Oops, I read everywhere that "my 2 votes" go for X, I thought people have 2. Updated.
Have you played long enough to get a vote? I think you have to have an account active for 4 months.
1 month only and I successfully cast my vote
The only input I have is that The Mittani and Dovinian are pretty much shoe-ins. All of GSF is voting for Mittens again, and TEST is voting for Dovinian.
Last year, Mittens got 5,365 votes, but that may be inflated a bit because of the split TEST vote. That won't be happening this year(as long as TEST aren't idiots and listen to instructions). Even without the extra TEST votes, I predict that Mittens will get the Chair again.
I am 43 years old. I always had a job and made decent money, worked very hard since I was 16, even earlier since I delivered newspapers when I was a kid. I have nothing to show for it, in fact I have been working my way out of debt the past years.
I was always smart enough to understand investing, interest, and even living frugally. The biggest mistake I made many times is same I see many young men in their 20s and 30s make: spending money on women so they will love you and/or go to bed with you.
Men make this mistake very often, even famous men who make lots of money. They end up bankrupt because they feel very needy for women's affections. It is a shame.
Just another quick comment now that I have my morning coffee in me and have survived my first meeting of the day:
You characterized Dovinian's platform as "PR bullshit, no program." While that's basically correct for the summary he has provided, you'll have to remember that many of the CSM candidates are from the large 0.0 alliances, and like I alluded to in my earlier comment, they're heavily promoted within the alliance as the "Official Alliance Candidate."
The High/Low-Sec vote is usually a pure popularity/bullshiting contest, and the dwellers split their votes pretty hard amongst the many vocal candidates (with the possible exception of EVE-Uni). Since it's extremely unlikely for most Alliances to vote for another Alliance's candidate (1.), and a good chunk of High-Sec views all 0.0 Alliances as power-hungry griefers/pirates/non-very-nice-persons, it's extremely easy to completely ignore High-Sec and just campaign internally within your Alliance.
1.With the possible exception of the very few Alliances that have a close relationship/friendship like GSF and TEST.
(I may have rambled a bit, sorry about that.)
@Treekat: their totally dismissive opinion about high sec people will be their undoing as they give up on the votes of the large majority
@Gevlon: I agree with your statement, in that ignoring the High-Sec vote is foolish.Even though you may win the election, that's only half the battle. Once the CSM is in place, they still have to balance public opinion, and ignoring them during the election will just cause the problems to compound down the line. As it is, many High-Sec dwellers see the CSM as biased towards 0.0 activities and PVP, and dismissive towards High-Sec, PVE, and new players. While it's not my place to say whether that's true or not, perception can be everything, especially in the absence of actual communication/PR.
With that said, the 0.0 alliances will probably still have a huge showing, regardless of their High-Sec campaigning. Just take a look at last year's election results: http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=886
The Mittani won with 5365 votes. That's more than 1552 votes than the next candidate. Seleene got ~500 more than the next, and the rest mostly had even smaller margins. The 0.0 Alliance voting blocs can be extremely effective when given guidance at the Alliance level.
Also, take into account that GSF has gained ~3000 more members since the last election, and TEST has probably gained a slightly lesser amount. (Extrapolated, since Dotlan won't let me generate growth charts before Mid-Late 2011.)
(Disclaimer: I am a member of TEST, who is closely allied with GSF. I'm probably biased, but I think my post will stand on it's own.)
No, don't buy the book. Be frugal. Borrow it from the library.
What you missed is part of CCP's p2w is that the average number of accounts per customer is above 2. My guess is the average for Mittani voters may be nearly 3.
But if I had one wish for Winter, it would be that CCP take on the issues of a POS rewrite and an accompanying refresh of Industry.
- on an e-mail exchange with me and Trebor.
I had to ask him what he was doing this time, but i'm voting for him - again.
Mittani is the bad side of EVE incarnate, by the way. His chairmanship was retarded, but not actually unappropriated. DariusIII, the same.
Mittani and Darius are the destroying part. Seleene, T'amber, Trebor and white tree are the creating part.
Both are needed.
Hi there. You say I have a "great vision", so I can assume you've read it. I'm happy that you found something there that you like. However, if you DID read it, then surely you read the part about how that blog, and the one preceding it came to be? I will quote myself here:
"On last weekend's 'Lost in EVE' debate, toward the end of the show, Two Step came out of nowhere to ask me directly what my thoughts about mining and industry are. It may have been meant and, admittedly answered with a bit of humor, but my mind shifted gears and I started to ~talk~, which can sometimes be pretty dangerous. Following up on that, on Monday I published a blog detailing some of my thoughts about this issue and making a commitment to Fight for Industry in the future of EVE. While there are a couple people running for CSM 7 that have decided to talk a little about this subject, or just focus on mining to the exclusion of all else, no one else with my varied background has stepped forward."
These are not ideas that I just pulled out of the blue or that I've never talked about / discussed before; I'd simply not committed them (publicly) to the written word until after my initial Jita Park post. If you will take a look at my JP post now, you'll see the thoughts of those two blogs on more prominent display now.
I'm quite confused as to why you believe a former CCP Dev that has already been to Iceland countless times over three and a half years 'only cares about getting a seat'? Dismissing my main EVE-O post as 'PR Bullshit', because of a blog written more than a week later, would seem to indicate that's exactly what you were looking to do - discredit folks at the first sign of wrongdoing.
One more point, just to illustrate how your research seems to be a bit off - you characterize Elise Randolph as, "stands for low-sec small-gangs." Elise Randolph? One of the three lead Fleet Commanders of Pandemic Legion, the chosen candidate of the Tech Cartel consisting of PL, Raiden and NCDOT (basically the biggest nullsec supercap / ~elite pvpers~ in EVE)? I'm going to figure that you mis-matched him with someone else. :D
Because of my history in EVE and at CCP, I make it a habit to listen to players from all areas and try to not belittle or dismiss them out of hand; your 'vote of last resort' is not only famous for this, he revels in it. I submit to you that my 'vision' is sound, inclusive, non-biased and not in the least based upon where I believe my alter space ego might take me. I do not have an entire alliance behind me cheering me on so I cannot chill out and just let the votes roll in and be all all smug. I've actually had to CAMPAIGN, post on other forums, actually answer questions on those forums and the official forums, respond to eve mails, organize campaign art, etc... sooo yeah. LOL!!
I'm glad that you seem to have taken the time to at least look over all the candidates, but I hope you will re-consider some of those evaluations in light of this rather long and rambling comment (sorry!) :D
@Seleene: I'm sorry, my vote was cast to Hans before your comment.
I dismissed your EVE-O post as "PR bullshit" because it was PR bullshit. It had nothing to do with your blog. If I haven't read your blog, I'd just write "PR bullshit, no program". Exactly because I read your blog I displayed my surprise that you posted PR bullshit when you HAD program. A program that would clearly get my vote. Actually if you'd post nothing on EVE-O I'd write "Seleene is somehow missing from EVE-O but I read his blog so my vote is his".
Look: I'm probably more informed than most voters but obviously I have limited information too. The official EVE-O post is the deepest that vast majority of your prospective voters get. Some voters don't even get there settle with even "whatever my FC suggests".
Let's see what your current EVE-O says, paragraph by paragraph. "bla-bla-bla" means something that EVERY SINGLE candidate (besides idiots) wrote down too:
1: bla-bla-bla I'm proud to be crucial on CSM6 bla
2: bla-bla-bla
3: 3 years developer, 3817 votes (which looks very small to someone who is uninformed and assumes that out of 400K players 2-300K votes were cast, should have written % of all)
4: bla-bla-bla and some alien crap about starbases years ago (please, those who know how starbases were during CSM4 are already in 0.0 and vote for the official candidate of his alliance)
5: bla-bla-bla
6: bla-bla-bla I was a dev bla-bla-bla
My Goals as a member of CSM 7:
bla-bla-bla
- "Fix / finish null sec sov" practically bla-bla-bla, everyone wants to fix/finish that
- "Improve Factional Warfare & life in low-sec" practically bla-bla-bla, everyone wants to improve that
- "A full blown industrial expansion: [external link, most people don't click]" Even those who read it and liked it are demotivated by "More importantly, I don't want CCP touching #3 until they can literally put a full expansion's worth of resources into it. It is not an easy task as everything in EVE springs from the way we mine, build and trade. I don't want them rushing it!" which reads as "never".
So. After we cross out the PR stuff that EVERY SINGLE candidate wrote down we get:
"I was in CSM6, I was a dev and I wish the industry fixed but even I don't think it's going to happen in CSM7 (the term I'm going for)"
Seriously, would you vote for this guy?
"Seriously, would you vote for this guy?"
Its rare to see you give a really comprehensive answer to any comment in my opinion, but this: wow. you really nailed that man to a cross(in my opinion).
By the way do you plan to make a "pug" corp for those of us who followed you into eve? Or would you rather solo in this whole mess of griefers, kiddies and egomanics?
@Nightgerbil: don't know yet but the option is clearly on the table.
Gevlon, I think you're just being a little too gung-ho against the politician.
Simple people are always drawn into by "PR bullshit". I suspect that said RR bullshit is to draw those who cba 2 read, lol.
In-depth explanations are provided for those who seek more information past the PR bullshit.
It's just how well I'd expect a real politician to behave. (Only most politicians stop at the PR bullshit, because, sadly, it is the most effective.)
In any case, expecting a politician to win on clear, concise, well-thought out programs is lulzy. The crows seeks the glitter, not the bone.
You should be happy that a politician actually has a program, past the PR bullshit. From looking at the real world, I see that most don't.
Hello again.
I'm not going to point by point discuss this because I think anyone that reads beyond the "PR bullshit" may find that there's a reason for it. I understand your point of view to a certain degree, but how I present myself and my thoughts require more than a few catchy phrases and insults. Some people are drawn to that sort of thing and those people will probably not vote for me anyway. I try not to waste words, but I won't apologize for being a tad verbose in explaining my history in EVE as a player and a dev, that's just the way I am. :)
You made the point at the start of your blog that you weren't looking at the people so much as the platform; I'd simply say that, especially when it comes to how many bloc level candidates there are in this election, that the person you are voting for matters at least as much, if not more, than the platform.
I appreciate the time you've taken to look at this stuff though; as I said before, if everyone was as engaged as you I believe the election results would look much different than they will probably be. :)
One thing to be careful about "The Millionaire Next Door."
This isn't actually describing how to become a "millionaire" in the popular conception, with connotations of extreme wealth -- what it meant to be a millionaire in he 19th century when people first started using the term.
These are millionaires in the way that my parents and both sets of grandparents (and probably any well off older person who doesn't have a big pension) are/were millionaires -- they had > 1 million $US in net worth.
But of course, this does not mean what it did when the term was coined in the 19th century. A millionaire in 1900 had enough wealth to live purely off investments in a lifestyle that even most "1%ers" of the day could not afford.
A million dollars doesn't even get you close to that, although for most people it's enough that you don't really have to work anymore, but only if, like those profiled in the book, you are willing to live like a regular joe.
Trying to live the lifestyles of the rich and famous will eat through a million dollars *very* quickly, which is why you hear so many stories about broke celebrities.
The equivalent today of a million dollars in 1890 would be to have a net worth of around 50 million.
That's not something that you see often in the people "next door"
What this book tells us is what upper middle class people have known for a long time -- that if you make good money and regularly save a bunch of it, you can retire with enough money to be and stay quite well off by average joe standards: have a nice house, furniture, take vacations, etc.
It does not tell anyone how to become super rich, because there simply isn't a way to do it that doesn't involve a fair bit of luck.
"The way is pretty simple and obvious: frugality. The real millionaires live a much cheaper life than they could afford."
And that's why I'm torrenting the book. :P
frugality is not what separates rich from poor. It's what separates the comfortable from the paycheck to paycheck among the middle and upper middle classes.
If you are actually rich, you don't have to be very frugal to be just fine.
If you are actually poor, you can't realistically save enough money to become comfortable by middle class standards. Sure, you will be better off than your non-frugal peers, or at least less likely to end up on the street or public assistance. But you won't get rich saving money out of non/barely-living wages.
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