The opposite end of “The most expensive thing is to be poor”.
It’s a common image for so many millionaires to have a Scrooge McDuck vault, but that’s the thing; so often their millions are out earning them further millions.
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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I just walk to the 7/11 and buy a scratcher. I never win anything but I could make at least $100,000 in just one day!
I know you're joking, but I used to work at a convenience store and the scratcher addicts were the most depressing part. I guess I should be grateful that the store I worked at wasn't in an area where more depressing kinds of addicts would be around.
I remember one day walking into a 7/11, in maybe 2002, and there were 2 guys in suits, totally dishevelled, collars undone, looking like they've been awake for 3 days, depression coating their faces, and they had a stack of scratch tickets that they were silently just scratching off.
The story I have in my head is that their business fell apart and this was some past ditch desperate attempt to save it with the little money they had left. I have no idea what actually happened but here we are 20+ years later and I still think about them occasionally.
The one thing that going to a real casino taught me is that, despite what Hollywood would have us believe, casinos are not full of impeccably dressed classy people, but very old retirees that look like they only have a few years left to live, and disheveled men who look less well dressed than me in my PJs at home, who are gambling away large sums of money in a fit of anxiety and addiction.
Really depressing crap.
I associate my time in Las Vegas mostly with elderly people with oxygen tanks, chain smoking while they put coin after coin in the slot machine. Just sad.
Vegas is a good place to go if your idea of a good time is eating and hanging around the pool. Other than that, it's a glittering shithole in the desert built on the losses of prior visitors.
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Now you just hook your debit card to the machine and you don't even have to put a coin in!
And they took the pull handles away because they can siphon money out of retirement accounts much faster if the ~~victim~~ player only needs to press a button.
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Oh for real. Walking through a casino is like being immersed in despair and obsession. I find no enjoyment in it at all.
And yet Donald Trump still managed to lose money somehow, which should have really told us something about his supposed "business accumen".
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And smoke. Don't forget about the smoke
The guy who started FedEx literally put his company's payroll on a roulette table just to make enough to stay in business.
That makes me think of the chinese guys that took cash from the bank they worked at to buy lottery tickets. The idea was to use the winnings to pay back the money and keep the rest.
They got lucky and it worked the first time. Then they decided to try again and lost.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Bank_of_China_robbery
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I know of a few small stores that owe their livelihoods to the local gambling addicts and the lottery machine. The entire business if dedicated to a few whales since selling snacks and coffee to randos didn't work out and they would otherwise close. They even set up private rooms where they could sped the day scratching tickets as they would come in and blow and entire pay/welfare/retirement check.
The logic is always the same, "I'm up $500 today" not even calculating the losses and "I just need one big win". People will farm gamblers like cattle.
A similar establishment by me also diversified into bongs. A wall of bongs, a wall of lottery, a wall of smokes, a locked case full of smaller smoke accessories, half a wall of cooler, and three tiny islands of "food." It's very bright and clean but also sad as fuck.
That's really sad. It's the equivalent of putting lab rats in a cage with a cocaine/amphetamine button.
Perfectly legal since the state owned the equipment being used to ruin lives.
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I never understood the appeal of scratch offs, 100k? If you gotta dream, dream big, play the lottery
I remember hearing a story like twenty years ago about a person that figured out that serial number were disclosing payouts. They would buy a bunch, find the winners, scratch them, then return the losers for their money back. I think I heard about it on a planet money or this American life ages and ages ago.
Who in their right mind is accepting returns of lottery tickets, scratched or not????
Store clerks who just want to get through their shift without committing battery upon their customers and are definitely not paid enough to deal with that shit.
Not paid enough to say "no refunds" but given the ability to authorize giving out money for unofficial reasons? If it's unauthorized, then they're essentially stealing cash and assuming an extremely high risk of getting fired to avoid confrontation.
I've never worked a gas station, but I've worked fast food and I would have been fired soooo fast if I were giving out unauthorized refunds. Maybe even prosecuted if the amount was large enough. I've seen people fired for less.
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The keno addicts at the bar i work at are wild. They just keep silently putting in money and watching the drawings. I prefer that to the ones who try to explain their strategies to me or complain that some number appears in every drawing. Or the guy who came in Wednesday night and kept betting $10 that the first pitch of every at bat of the Mets/Brewers game was gonna be a strike. It's bleak.
“No, you don’t understand! I have an angle!”
Instant gratification is a hellava drug
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Since when have treasury bonds gone above 6%?
Apparently this was a failed attempt at a joke.
https://www.crossingwallstreet.com/archives/2024/04/cws-market-review-april-2-2024.html
Oh, I get it now! 8%! How droll!
(What the fuck is he talking about?)
Three million is the joke, 8% is the hint that it’s a joke. It’s the same sort of satire that Lemmy frequently reposts. “I became wealthy with hard work, determination, and a small loan of a million dollars.”
How I became a Tech VP at age of 30
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Wake up at 5am
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Only take cold showers
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Have a dad that owns a tech firm
If you only have $300,000, just buy an 80% treasury bond and you should be good.
Well, both of us are socialists (I can't comment on the other person). We think about money in such a different way that any money joke about investment is going to lose it's humor. I don't understand it as a joke either, but I definitely understood the financial advice. He selected some large, relatively uncontroversial companies that will pay you part of the quarterly profits based on the number of stocks you own. Tbh I'd avoid the day trading and choose high dividend ETFs instead. $100k is still very out of reach for most people, but it's a reasonable investing portfolio.
I get conflicting information about high dividend ETFs. Some people swear by them, others say they're terrible or at least should be avoided. I'm too ignorant to know why either way :/
By the nature of ETFs, you're definitely going to make less income because your money gets put into an investment pool and returns are proportional. However it makes you less tied to the stock market, which is increasingly tied to a person's ability to retire
Those are my main investments outside of my 401k from work, I was just curious about the high dividend ones but someone else answered what is going on there. Thanks for the info!
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It's like those educational explanations of compound interest I remember from childhood that tried to encourage you to save money. They would always start with 1 dollar and a savings account with 20% interest, and end up retiring as a millionaire.
I remember getting really frustrated as a young man when I decided to take that advice, and wasted hours looking for these mythical 18% return accounts.
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A treasury bond delivering 8% is probably one from a dangerous country to invest in.
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