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Source: Quora
I didn’t personally know him at the time, but he was my manager a few years later.
He ran a very successful property business in the UK. He was super rich at one point.
The way he tells the story is he leveraged up as his confidence grew. He went on an expansion after several Eastern European countries joined the Euro.
It resulted in a situation whereby his business wasn’t just leverage but also balancing many things:
Lehman went bust. If they had gone bust six months later, he probably would have been one of the richest people in Europe.
To cut a long story short, he needed to sell properties to pay the bill, staff etc.
A vicious cycle was the result. Leverage is great on the way up, but awful on the way down.
It would have been easier if he was running an online property company with fewer overheads.
It just wasn’t workable, and he was left with just one-family house. So, he didn’t lose everything, but almost 100%.
He certainly lost his business, lifestyle, 99% of his savings and investments he accumulated and tried to sell off to save the business.
If he was less greedy, he would have used cash more, and de-leveraged as he got bigger.
In that case, he could have just waited for valuations and rental yields to recover, and make some staff members redundant.
So, the bottom line is people don’t usually lose everything when the stock or property market crashes.
Asset price do recover. They tend to lose everything when two or more events happen.
Like a crash results in a credit crunch, and you are too leveraged as a business to get out of it.
What’s more, businesses who have been successful for a decade or two, tend to become more relaxed about risk, as they assume they can always come out of crisis.
Covid-19 has exposed many more businesses than even 2008–2009, despite the stronger economic recovery.
Better to strike a balance between taking too many risks, and too few.
Most people actually suffer from the latter, and being petrified of losses or even declines, more than the former.
The former tends to affect people who have taken many calculated risks, and it has worked out for them, and then they relax more.
Calculated risks in investing is key rather than the two extremes.
Source: Quora
When I was at school, the education system didn’t suit me. I didn’t do well, most years, in class.
That all changed when I started to read a lot, and focused on my hobbies. I didn’t start to read to help me in school.
Like most 12, 13 or 14-year-olds I wasn’t that motivated. The reading inadvertently helped me, and I went from struggling to near the top of the class in subjects like English in two or three years:
I then gradated with the best grade barely seven or eight years later.
That taught me an important life lessons early on. It helped me when I became more motivated.
The lessons were:
Now studying isn’t life, as I have said on other answers, but I also found reading opened my eyes to travel, business and many other subjects.
Most of the world’s most successful business people read a lot, and for that matter, many struggled at school or university.
The only other hobbies that transformed my life were:
What matters even more than hobbies though is actions and habits in general.
Habits really do change your life, for better or worse. Even the most successful people can be pulled down by negative habits like engaging in excessive vices such as gambling.
Source: Quora
There are broadly different kinds of wealthy people:
1). People who have got rich at a young age from things like sports and entertainment
2), Those who have became wealthy slowly, by for example investing for decades
There are other groups as well, but we don’t have time to go into that.
Now if you have become wealthy due to inheritance or early in life, you might not be sensible with money. It just depends on your upbringing.
In comparison, if you gradually became wealthier over time, you are most likely sensible with money.
That doesn’t mean being cheap on every little item, but it does mean having some common sense with spending.
If you spend 100% of what comes in, you will be broke, no matter how much you earn.
A car is a depreciating asset, unless you are good at buying and selling vintage cars.
If you are going to spend loads of money on things, at least buy goods that go up in price or hold their price.
A Rolex might be a waste of money, but you will be able to sell it back and probably make inflation in a few decades time.
Houses might not go up as much as stocks, but that holiday home will at least make inflation and give you rental income.
The same can’t be said for cars.
Even those wealthy people who do buy luxury cars often only buy them due to creating cashflow.
I saw this on Twitter recently and there is an element of truth in it:
The reason I say an element is that most of the wealthy people I know don’t even buy new cars.
Most drive used cars. An increasing number seldom drive, or don’t drive at all, due to environmental concerns.
A meta-analysis which was done ten years ago showed the average decamillionaire ($10m+) only spends about 60k on a car.
It wouldn’t surprise me if that figures goes down as environmental consciousness increases.
You also have to remember
Of course that doesn’t mean that 100% of wealthy people don’t buy luxury cars.
Many don’t. That’s the point.
Source: Quora
You are quite right that Malaysia doesn’t attract as many expats, and indeed tourists, as Thailand.
One reason is Thailand’s image in the world. Speak to somebody who lives in most Western countries about Thailand.
What’s the image? Maybe something like this:
A nice beach.
Or maybe some great street food and bustling city life:
Only those two pictures were taken from Malaysia!
Many people don’t know some basic facts about Malaysia, such as the English is great, the cost of living is probably lower than Thailand these days, and it isn’t some kind of intolerant religious country for the most part.
The people who know have typically worked in Malaysia, or nearby countries like Singapore.
Malaysia therefore attracts quite a few long-term expats who have lived in the region for a long time.
There are negatives too, for example buying property in Malaysia isn’t such a great idea.
The government bureaucracy isn’t great. I almost moved to Malaysia years ago but got fed up with that side of things.
The same is true of Thailand though.