Things I've learned as a millionaire.
David Jaffee with BestStockStrategy.com you can visit beststockstrategy.com and enter in your
email address to receive over $400 worth of valuable free options trading content
and in this video we are going to discuss things I've learned and popular misconceptions
as a millionaire so the first thing is that your friends think that your life
is significantly less stressful when you have money than it really is the reality is
that when you have money you do not necessarily have less stress than someone else who does not
have money i think that oftentimes what happens is that when people have more money they might have
more opportunities but then they end up entangling themselves in situations that end up causing
themselves more stress for example they might get involved in poor investments and make poor
business decisions or they might marry someone who is using them solely for money and then once that
money spigot turns off then that person will no longer find that there's any love in the marriage
the second thing is that when you are actually married with kids it is so incredibly stressful
that whether you have money or not is not necessarily a big indicating factor on whether
your life is going to be less stressful and more healthy for example earlier today my wife our kids
and our nanny went to the beach it took us about 45 minutes to actually get to the beach
if i didn't have kids then it would have taken me about 10 minutes to get to the beach additionally
when we got there my son started running around and he didn't want to go in the water
he was running off he wanted to go throw sand on the sand castle and it just became a huge mess
where we actually ended up leaving the beach after being there for only 45 minutes because
my son was throwing a little bit of a tantrum the point is that whether you have money or not
i think that many people misattribute how much money actually improves your life i think that
there is scientific research out there that indicates that once you receive or once you have
a certain level of wealth the incremental or the marginal utility from every dollar of wealth that
you have over that threshold which i think is about four to five hundred thousand dollars is
relatively immaterial meaning that someone who has about four to five hundred thousand dollars
of wealth is going to be as happy as someone who has wealth of about 50 million dollars the
other thing which is really important to take into consideration is you might be thinking
okay well i don't have five hundred thousand dollars or you might also be thinking okay
great that's nice to know but i still want fifty million dollars even if i only have
a few hundred thousand dollars the problem with that thinking is what are you going to sacrifice
in order to obtain that level of wealth and this is extremely important because as someone
who in my early 20s worked at some of the largest investment banks on wall street i worked at Morgan
Stanley I worked at CIBC world markets i worked at an extremely successful m a boutique called Petsky
Prunier on Wall Street i can tell you that many of the managing directors who were probably worth
$30 to $50 million dollars were extremely unhappy i remember seeing someone like
Geoff O'malley who now works at Santander he was a miserable individual now also someone like mark
Henkels who i believe is a managing director now at Moelis he always struck me as someone who lived
a very balanced life and he was very happy but i can tell you that in general i believe that
about 70 percent of the managing directors many of them were worth at least 10 million dollars
were extremely unhappy and the reason is that they sacrificed their 20s they sacrificed their 30s and
they sacrifice their 40s in order to obtain the status and the wealth that they currently have
and no amount of money has ever been able to buy back one second of time and i feel that when
looking at those people in my early 20s one of the reasons why i only stayed in investment banking
for about four to five years is that i saw the managing directors and i made a conscious
decision that i did not want to be like them two other quick things that i've learned
as a millionaire is that it's extremely important to keep things as simple as possible i wear
the same clothes every single day i eat the same thing every day and in fact often days i don't eat
because i fast i don't really buy anything i just in general keep the same habits i don't own a car
i think that by keeping things as simple as possible it's very easy to be able to focus
on the things in your life which are the most important and not be pulled in constant directions
and i feel that it's really important especially when you have money and you
have all of these opportunities to lose your focus and to lose sight on the important
aspects of your life and to become extremely distracted and waste a lot of your time
in general i have found that status and access are the most important things in life status and
access are more important than wealth i remember when i was in my early 20s and i was working as an
investment banker and also as a nightclub promoter because i had high relative social status and i
also had access to some of the most exclusive and prestigious nightclubs in New York City i was able
to share common experiences that were incredibly fun i was able to party in the Hamptons i was able
to befriend some of the most beautiful women in the world from Ford, Wilhelmina and Elite modeling
agencies I was able to party with celebrities and none of them ever asked me how much money i had
instead because i was already in the club because of access and high relative social status i was
able to partake in these very fun experiences even though as an individual in my early 20s i didn't
really have nearly as much money as some of the other people did so remember instead of focusing
solely on wealth i would also focus on building up your social status and building up your ability to
access some of the same things that many of your wealthy friends have so for example if you can't
necessarily afford to go out to the most exclusive nightclub in your city and spend a few thousand
dollars on a table then instead you can simply be friends and befriend a local nightclub promoter
and offer to work with him in exchange for access to his table which will then provide you with the
ability to make friends with local celebrities attractive women and successful businessmen in
your area i guess the best two things that i have found in life about being wealthy is the first i
don't necessarily have to worry about money so god forbid somebody gets sick or god forbid there's an
unexpected expense then i don't necessarily have to worry about it the second thing
which to me is the most important is that it does provide you with an opportunity to live
in a nice house or a large enough space where you have the ability to decompress
and to de-stress and to have designated areas such as your home office or a place where you
can record Youtube videos or a place that you can just go out for a walk and not necessarily
have to worry about your safety or many of the other things that people have to worry about
so i think that the most important thing that I've been able to take away from being wealthy is just
simply you're able to live in a nice neighborhood and live in a nice house
and but i do feel that that same level of security and safety and lack of stress by living in a nice
house in a nice neighborhood can be achieved and accomplished by someone who is earning a hundred
and fifty thousand dollars a year or in some places and in some states that are less expensive
perhaps even just a hundred thousand dollars a year so then you have to ask yourself if you can
accomplish the same level of stress mitigation as someone who earns a hundred thousand dollars
relative to someone who earns one and a half to two million dollars a year
ask yourself is it really worthwhile for you to make the sacrifices that
are necessary to increase your income and to give up your time and to increase your stress
to increase your earnings from a hundred thousand dollars to two million dollars a year and i can
tell you that for eighty to ninety percent of the people out there the answer is going to be no
that you are better off earning a hundred to two hundred thousand dollars and having
your weekends free and reducing and mitigating your stress and having more of your free time
than you are if you give up your time if you make additional sacrifices if you increase your stress
and you increase your income to about one to two million dollars a year now i know that this is
counter-intuitive and in many respects people are going to think that this is blasphemous and it's
untrue but i can tell you from experience that i believe that about eighty percent
of the people are better off earning a hundred thousand dollars and enjoying their life and
having more of their free time than they are trying to earn over a million dollars a year and
sacrificing their free time while increasing their stress David Jaffee with beststockstrategy.com
i appreciate your attention let me know your thoughts below and leave a comment and let me know
what you believe are some of the misconceptions that people have about wealthy people and also
let me know your thoughts on whether you believe that many people will be better off earning a
hundred thousand dollars or if they will be better off sacrificing more of their time and increasing
their stress to earn a million dollars a year thank you again and i appreciate your attention