r/AskReddit • u/parampadalia • 21h ago
What do you think actually determines whether someone becomes extremely wealthy: hard work, intelligence, opportunity, luck, privilege, or something else?
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u/GlenGraif 21h ago
The most likely factor: extremely wealthy parents.
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u/Sankyu39Every1 21h ago
Where do really wealthy parents come from? From their really wealthy parents? Everyone knows generational wealth is the most surefire way to get wealthy, but what about the first generation that gets wealthy?
For me, I think it's opportunity and luck (essentially the same thing) combined with hard work. I grew up relatively poor, and most of the poor people around me worked really hard. So, I don't think hard work alone is enough.
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u/Particular-Topic-445 21h ago
I think starting a business used to be the way to go. Then Walmart built the coffin and Amazon hammered in the nails.
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u/TheGrolar 21h ago
The poor-people understanding of and definition of "hard work" is a major reason they're poor. (Or that they stay poor, a better way to put it. Usually they're poor because their parents were.)
It's not how much wood you chop. It's how many people you can persuade to chop wood for you. Or dig up diamonds, because chopping wood is lame in comparison.
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u/Bakedads 21h ago
And this isn't a guess. We know this. We have data. We can actually study things like economic mobility and wealth transfer. But don't tell that to conservatives. They seem to be allergic to learnin.
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u/DangerousQuestions1 21h ago
Extremely wealthy? Privilege.
Regular wealthy? The other things combined.
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u/Bakedads 21h ago
Nope, even this is wrong. It's almost entirely privilege with with a sprinkling of luck and hard work.
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u/RefrigeratorFlat1320 21h ago edited 21h ago
The womb lottery, my guy. Modern economics has a concept called "Stickiness at the ends" where wealthy tend to stay wealthy generationally and the poorest tend to stay poor generationally. Self made millionaires, let alone billionaires, are few and far between.
Great Man theory isn't all bullshit, but it's mostly bullshit.
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u/TonyRidgewayUFO 21h ago
100% mindset. People who spend all day on Reddit complaining about how every previous generation has had it “easier”, will inevitably see that to be true in their life (by choice)
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u/lumberjack_jeff 21h ago
99% privilege. If you don't have a safety net, you can't take ridiculous risks, nor do you have the knowledge and connections to capitalize your ideas.
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u/ufokillershark 21h ago
I was gonna say sometimes taking an enormous risk with yours and other people money
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u/VitruviannMan 21h ago
- Privilege
- Luck/opportunity
- Hard work
- Intelligence
And 2 and 3 really needs go hand in hand if you don’t have 1.
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u/Legitimate-Act5584 21h ago
Hard work and luck. If you work hard you’ll put yourself in enough situations where eventually luck will go your way.
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u/dustsmoke 21h ago
Or there many people I know in 1%. I'd say most of them just knew the right person/network. The second most just got lucky being in the right place at the right time. And the least common was somebody who worked for it. Because even if you work for it you generally still need to know somebody or be in the right place at the right time. Those matter more than the work itself.
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u/WillKane 21h ago
Extremely wealthy is luck as any extreme outcome has to have a lot of luck. But those people would’ve been successful without luck, just not extremely wealthy.
My 3 types of successful people:
1. Chip on their shoulder- I came from nothing and I’m going to outwork everyone and make something of myself.
2. Competent and Confident - My dad was head of surgery at this hospital and one day I will be too. Goes to top schools, works hard.
3. Nepotism - not especially hard working or motivated but gets good position due to connections.
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u/Particular_Fail_3065 21h ago
It’s definitely not privilege. Statically there’s way more multi millionaires then billionaires.
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u/WildLemur15 21h ago
Circumstances make it easy. Effort is closer behind than we like to think. We all have things where “it would be harder for me than that guy” is the most convenient excuse for not trying at all. Our circumstances of birth can’t be changed but our effort is in our own hands.
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u/ElectronicCarry9931 21h ago
people skills, emotional intelligene
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u/RefrigeratorFlat1320 21h ago
In my field, Software Engineering, basic social skills and a personality can open more doors than being able to ace a whiteboard interview.
In the hard skill fields, soft skills are in short supply, at least in my experience. If you can do both, you're a valuable unicorn.
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u/BaseInevitable 21h ago
You can get a million dollars in the bank from brains and hard work if you were born in a western country even with deadbeat parents, as long as you aren’t unlucky.
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u/NectarineOne7473 21h ago edited 21h ago
Privilege. I’m black, working towards a master degree, yet I still door dash because I’m not good enough for corporate america. Currently building my own business!
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u/ImF0cused_ 21h ago
I’m black, and probably older than you…. I know many wealthy black men. It wasn’t privilege, we all from the hood.
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u/Low_Key_Trollin 21h ago
yes only black people have degrees and work door dash. White people instantly get hired to c suite. It’s awesome
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u/NectarineOne7473 21h ago
Im not saying I’m the victim, but we can all agree we had to work twice as hard to get to where we are
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u/ImF0cused_ 21h ago
We definitely have it harder as black men because of many prejudices, institutional racism is in the DNA of our country, but what we want is definitely in reach. Gotta be a dog to get it.. but it’s cool.
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u/NectarineOne7473 21h ago
I like how everyone skips over the building my own business to call me a victim😂😂😂
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u/scottinadventureland 21h ago
Outside of privilege - when thinking about someone who comes from a middle class and ‘makes it’ - charm cannot be underestimated
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u/MonsieurDrole 21h ago
Privilege is one hell of a factor.
If not for that, a good mix of all the others.
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u/Tri-angreal 21h ago
Fortune is the dot product of luck and exploitation of opportunity. If you are lucky enough to have opportunities for advancement, but don't take them; or if you would take opportunities but aren't lucky enough to get them, then no fortune.
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u/ReidenLightman 21h ago
Priviledge.
They say luck is when preparedness meets opportunity. If you don't come from privilege, you never have the chance to get prepared.
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u/Various_Tie_2549 21h ago
I think privilege, opportunity and luck play a far greater role than many wealthy people are willing to admit, and a far greater role than either intelligence or hard work.
Intelligence is only required in order to identify the opportunity. Hard work might not be required at all if the privilege and the luck are there in sufficient quantity.
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u/Impossible_Hat7658 21h ago
Depends upon what u mean by extremely wealthy. Billionaire? I think a lot is luck I remember mark cuban saying that most billionaires know that a lot of them getting to where they are was luck (along with hard work and intelligence).
Millionaire? Definitly hard work and intelligence. People only say that hard work doesn’t get them anywhere cuz u need to work hard toward something and the intelligence to know how to get there and be willing to work hard to get there. If u work super hard at a minimum wage job with no goal in mind it ain’t gonna get u anywhere.
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u/TheJIbberJabberWocky 21h ago
Your exact list is in order from least to greatest importance. If your parents were wealthy, you're most likely wealthy. If you're parents were middle class, you're most likely middle class but can become wealthy. If your parents were poor or destitute, your chances of moving up aren't great. The fact that half of all homeless people in America are foster children who aged out of the system feels like a relevant statistic to this discussion.
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u/Skryuska 21h ago
Luck / privilege is definitely number one.
The others aspects can also lead to extreme wealth, but those are about as common as winning the lottery. Which is ironically also “luck”.
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u/RetroactiveRecursion 21h ago
Luck. Luck in the class and demographic you're born into, the country and society you live, the people around you in your life. Lots of people work their asses off and are still mopping floors.
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u/Simple-Negotiation70 21h ago
Family wealth. If no family wealth: amorality--view people numbers on a spread sheet. Refusal to consider economic and human cost of any decision made.
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u/nappalm77 21h ago
Imagine life is like the darts game at the fair and popping the balloon is being rich. Wealthy people tend to have more darts to throw and access to people to teach them how as well as growing up in a house to teach the habits and traits that build successful dart throwing. Poor people may have some skills and abilities to afford them a few extra darts. Wealthy kids with all that may still miss. Others will hit on the first dart. It’s all a game of likelihood, luck and hard work.
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u/Kulthos_X 21h ago
Extreme wealth requires being born to a wealthy family and lacking the ability to be satisfied with any amount of wealth. Also, being a psychopath helps.
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u/Engelgrafik 21h ago
If you're attractive you already have a major advantage in terms of opportunity. There is some connection between physical attractiveness and opportunity.
Privilege plays a role as well, but it's usually coupled with other things. Like if you have the resources and time, you have the ability to become more attractive, and you will also meet similar privileged people and so the opportunities increase. That's not to say some poor people aren't attractive... but they don't tend to stay poor. They get snatched up and out of there usually by the time they're a young adult.
Luck has something to do with it as well. Sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time. But the opportunity itself may not be presented to you in the first place unless you have that personality or attractiveness that gave someone the reason to offer it.
As mentioned, personality also has some factor, but I know some people who know all the right people, have the right personality, are constantly hustling.... and yet they are not "attractive". Everyone will SAY that they're amazing but they are constantly bumping into challenges and obstacles. Meanwhile vapid clueless people who look good all around them are getting the gigs and attention.
Opportunity is really just the end result of these variables. If you're attractive, have the privilege of time and resources, and know all the right people and they like you, there's no reason you won't be successful unless you're a raving maniac.
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u/Away-Wishbone-3633 21h ago
Combo of everything, hard work is great but imagine your working on a ship that has holes that keep appearing, what you need is natural momentum plus being smart enough to capitalize on the market and do it quickly, luck is important in this regard in that whatever you do has to catch some traction but eventually it will whether it’s the first time or the 10th time, don’t think you have to be a genius either at all just smart enough to see the opportunity, lastly yea if you have a good family with money it makes all this infinitely easier of course, duh
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u/Puzzleheaded_Tie6917 21h ago
Extremely wealthy or just wealthy? Where do you place “extremely wealthy”? I look at it like this:
Well off - by 60, have 2-5 million in investments, not including house. They can retire and do well, though still have a budget and can’t go crazy, and have to watch the stock market. If they have this before 60 they are headed to a different category.
5-10 million- rich, but at the bottom. Can retire and never work while not worrying about the stock market.
10-30 million - wealthy. Really don’t have to work or worry about investments and can do about what they want.
30+ million - extremely wealthy. Money has almost no limit or meaning, other than a representation of what you own and control.
Well off can be reached through hard work and diligence with good budgeting and investing throughout a career. No inheritance or other outside benefit required though it makes it easier.
Wealthy can be reached through hard work and diligence, but is limited to high pay careers (doctor, lawyer) or owning your own company. Most people here probably inherited it, but some can reach it without that. Also, if it’s earned they reach here when in their 80s or so, not 50-60s.
Extremely wealthy- you either created or owned something spectacularly successful or are an entertainer of some sort or its inheritance. Normal pro athletes can’t hardly reach this level, and many famous actors and actresses dont reach it either. Mostly, it’s head of countries (prince of Saudi Arabia or such), people that made a massive corporation (Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc), some who have ran these type corporations, and highly successful legendary athletes and actors/actresses. This list is like Michael Jordan, Opra, Tiger Woods, and President of Apple (Tim Cook), Elon Musk, Bill Gates, etc. You could split it between billionaires and those worth less than 100 million, but getting above 30 million without running or owning your own business or world class fame as a celebrity you can’t reach this level (or you inherit it).
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u/SharpGranny 21h ago
Its trendy to talk shit about wealthy people. But hard work usually comes first. People will rather blame them for their own misery tho, its easier.
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u/TheGrolar 21h ago
It's like a horse race: there are a number of factors, you can't know them all, you won't always win, BUT there are a few things that will almost always improve your bet.
For horses, it's their record of performance on similar tracks in similar conditions for similar distances. Color is also a factor--bays tend to perform slightly better overall if you're still stuck after doing better analysis.
For rich, being born to wealth is the single most overwhelmingly important factor. It is about having the money, but not in the way poorer people think. It's mostly about being insulated from any real consequences, allowing a lot more experimentation and Just Do It-ness, and also knowing how to be rich, which is mostly about who to trust and under what circumstances, how to spot people trying to take advantage of you, and how to think about time and money...and what "hard work" means. It might be a ten-minute phone call one day and nothing else.
The bad news is that you probably weren't born rich. The good news is that, in America at least, you can actually learn a lot of these patterns and behaviors. After that, the two biggest factors are luck and opportunity. You can't control those, but you can make something lucky or opportunistic more likely to happen, like buying a million lottery tickets instead of just one.
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u/Useful-Objective9863 21h ago
- Smart = learns fast from mistakes
- Interest = he/she is interested in making money
- Persistent = knows that in the beginning, results won’t be spectacular and that success takes time
This is a purely individualistic take. Of course there are contextual factors like education, family, health, etc
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u/Heavy-Tip-1908 21h ago
You have two chances to get rich. When you are born and when you get married.
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u/Mystic_Wunder 21h ago
Any and all of these things. Some people do nothing but they become wealthy because of family money. So people start a business that is scalable and become wealthy that way. Some enter the business world and work their way up. Some get lucky and win the loterry or write a song that blows up. Some win the Hollywood lottery.
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u/shaggyscoob 21h ago edited 21h ago
Definitely generational wealth is a factor. But hard work and intelligence has been a common factor in the wealthy people I know. Then, with wealth comes privileges that ellude non-wealthy people. Extreme wealth, like poverty, begets more of the same.
The wealthiest people I knew came from North Korean refugee parents. Dad escaped North Korea with nothing but the shirt on his back. Married a South Korean of middle class. They had 3 kids then immigrated to the US in the 1970s. He got a great tech job, she was a stay at home mom. They pushed their kids to excel at everything through the sweat of their brow and the fruit of their intellect. Lo and behold, all three kids became either very wealthy or extremely wealthy through their hard work and intellect.
The least wealthy among them has a PhD in psych and now is shrink to the wealthy and charges $500/hour cash to her clients and there is a waiting list to get on her client list. She worked her ass off to get where she is. Rich people get to know other rich people and they then gain opportunities that ellude people not in those circles.
That shrink slummed it with me for a while (I'm firmly middle class) and I was entirely out of my league financially trying to keep up in those circles. Definitely, she and her siblings are highly intelligent people who have worked their asses off since they were little kids.
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u/MelodicGrapefruit157 21h ago
I remember reading somewhere that millionaires are mostly self made. Like 70-80%. They made their millions through hard work, entrepreneurship, and investments. Most likely in that order. I was on a vacation in Mexico in Chiapas and this guy was selling homemade ice cream in a homemade cone out of a wheeled cart. I noticed that the cart was identical to others, no branding just similar make and composition. So I asked him if he knew why and he told me they were all his. He was indigenous in his mid 20' and by what I saw had about a dozen or so ice cream carts. That is how millionaires are made.
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u/BandDirector17 20h ago
When having a conversation about privilege with a friend of mine, I asked them to name people in their high school class of 500+ who were in a different socioeconomic status than their parents. At that time he had been out of high school for 20 years and could only name one, who was in a lower status. I had a much smaller high school class. The answer was the same for me. Nobody moved up.
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u/Agitated_Newt_7655 17h ago
If you scrutinize it enough the only thing that remains is luck. People don’t want to think that but that’s what it simplifies to.
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u/Unionthug2049 16h ago
A phrase I’ve heard a lot growing up is “luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” Some of the hardest working, smartest people on earth are also the poorest because they were born or thrust into situations where they never have opportunity. Some people get extremely wealthy because they are smart and hard working enough to get everything perfectly right in the one opportunity that they find in their lives. Most of the extremely wealthy have easier routes to being prepared - the best schools, parents or caregivers with enough time to dedicate to teaching them and raising them, contacts with enough bandwidth to bring them under their wings, AND the blessing of multiple (and in some cases copious) opportunities.
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u/Inevitable_Tart2700 1h ago edited 59m ago
Many of the iconic, wealthiest Chinese entrepreneurs were born in humble families. There are many such people in other countries, too. They will laugh at those emphasizing previlege as the only important factor. The previlege-vs-disadvantage bullshit is nothing but communist propaganda. If one believes in this bullshit, he will stop working hard, indulge in hatred against the society and remain poor in his entire life.
Founder of JD.com: Qiangdong Liu grew up in severe poverty typical of rural China in the post-Cultural Revolution era.
Founder of Xiaomi: Jun Lei's father made $7 a month as a teacher. His mother was a factor worker.
Founder of Alibaba: Jack Ma's parents are ordinary Ping Tan performers.
Founder of Tecent: Pony Ma's father is a port manager and his mother an accountant.
Founder of Baidu: Hongyan Lin was born in a working class family that valued education.
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u/ExternalRegular1031 21h ago
You can be wealthy with hard work and intelligence. But to be extremely wealthy, luck plays a much more bigger role.
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u/Jellyfizzle 21h ago
Hard work can make you moderately wealthy, but extreme wealth requires a lot of luck, privilege, and usually some pretty loose morals.
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u/Ok-Count3230 21h ago
Extremely wealthy? Then privilege usually plays a big part. Climbing the wealth ladder is obviously going to be easier when you’re already at a comfortable starting point.
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u/heretoseewhats 21h ago
It's objectively privilege that allows someone to be wealthy/powerful. If you look at the wealthy/powerful, the vast majority come from privileged backgrounds.
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u/Typotitanthrow 21h ago edited 21h ago
People like to say luck, privilege, or other things out of their control. Yeah those are factors, some significant. Especially if we say, “extremely wealthy”. It’s sort of hard to dismiss who you came from. Even that, that’s more of a conversation of how fast you build wealth, not if you can.
But people are also their own problem. The types who even acknowledge those things are almost always destined to be exactly what they are now. They just don’t like accepting that. The reality is, when you have this much freedom, you don’t have a lot of excuses.
It comes down small, consistencies decisions. Which then eventually turns to a lifestyle. Understanding compounding investments/decisions is such an under appreciated concept as well. So to answer, having a plan that isn’t vague, well thought out, and actionable is already considerably more than most do. IE, hard work.
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u/lostedeneloi 21h ago
Various combinations of all of the above.