How to get rich quickly (2/2)

In the last post I talked about getting rich quickly, and showed that it is not the amount of money you have that determines if you are rich or not. It depends more on what you can buy with the money, and even more on what you want to buy with the money.

Quote from somewhere on the internet: "If you earn 300 and only use 150 you are rich, if you earn 600 and use 601 you are poor".

Here are 3 ways to get rich quickly, they all involve pain in one form or another.

Be rich with less money
You do not have to be a millionaire to be rich, some of the riches people in the world have almost no money. Look into yourself and see that true happiness does not come from have a big house, a nice car, the finest clothes and vacations in every corner of the world. Some of the best moments in your life are just small events with friends or a loved one. Those are the things that make you rich. See that life is so much more than material things. Stop competing with your neighbours in having the fines house, car, etc. Live your life to the maximum and do it with good friends. The pain comes from having to adjust your expectations of richness to reality.

Sell yourself to the bank
You can have everything you ever dreamt of and you can have it soon. I am assuming that most of you that read this have university degrees and are currently happy sitting quietly doing research for some university, and complaining that you do not get well paid.
Well there is a way to fix that: Get some education in economics and marked yourself to financial companies. There are people out there in their 20's which are earning million of dollars, and you can be one of them if you work like hell, marked yourself, and be hungry for that promotion. Show that you are a cut above everybody else, if you have the university degree you have the brains that is need you just need to show the world how good you are. You have it in yourself, stop complaining and get off your ass.
Get that job earning yourself over a million dollar, and leverage that income to loan some more millions from the bank. The material dream can be yours, you just have to work like hell.

Inherit your wealth
One of the easiest ways to earn money is to inherit it. We will all be richer one day when our parents die as your children will get rich the day we die. If your family is dirt poor, do not worry, find some old person without any living relatives, make them happy and they will give you the money when their time has come. If you are an attractive girl in your 20's find some old guy in their 80's and marry him. For attractive guys in their 20's there are more single old women out there for you to shower with affection, they are not as likely to marry you, but they might be equally likely to leave you with some money. But from personal experience I would say that this is one of the most painful ways to get rich, not so much when an rich childless uncle of my father died, more when my only living grandmother died, and the most when I lost my only brother.

To be off by a bit is easy, to miss by 100km takes some effort to do

This tale starts on Thursday, when a gaming event Østfronten 1943 started, as I have mentioned earlier. I could not go to this event on Thursday, as I had some students that had a security computer lab, and my co-lab assistant had gone to Russia for the week. So although all students this week had finished quickly and were done by Wednesday, I thought it still prudent to be there on Friday (coming a little late as usual).

Then I went home to pack on Friday evening, but was not feeling to well so I ended up sleeping the whole Friday evening. My role was not as a paying participant, but rather as an extra. So I would have probably been put into a role of playing attacking Russian soldier who is about to get killed or some other role with a quick life.

So Saturday morning came and went, and I was not sure if I would go or not, but still I said I would go so it would have been fun to be there, so I packed, ate an early dinner, checked on the net for directions, checked email and mobile for messages of some sorts, and off I went. Everything was fine, I had been at that place before, I had a car and could drive back whenever I wanted and I might do some good when I came to the gaming event, although I was 2 days late.

The place where it was planed to be, was a place where gamers have been building a secluded place to have such events. The place is called Landsbyen, and it is about 100-110 km from Trondheim, but when I came there and expected 100 people, 30-40 cars, there was no one. It was only me and nature, total silence. Just me, the forest and some patches of snow on the ground.

So I had to drive 100km back in darkness, not knowing what was wrong. Had I read wrong? Had I done a mistake somewhere? Was it the wrong weekend? Had they finished already?
What it was, was moose hunting season. This had created a crisis because some government people did not allow people in camouflage to run around the woods at night with make believe guns, because of real hunters might mistake them for moose and shoot them.

This was not announced on the laiv calendar, this was not on the web pages for the event, not in any email sent to me, but in a laiv forum thread. For some this is an important forum, but for me I do not feel I have the time to check it so often. They had almost had to cancel the whole thing, but at the last moment they fond a place north of Trondheim to hold the event.

So to give you some perspective of the error, if we map the area around Trondheim to places in Denmark. You can then imagine starting from Århus and thinking you where going to an event in Odense. Only to come there and find that the whole event has been moved to somewhere outside Aalborg.

Update: I never went to the place where the laiv was. Afterwords a friend told me that he had told me to check the web because the event had been moved, but I do not remember that he said anything to me.

Snow in Tronheim

Before I continue with my rambling about getting rich quickly (which still does not have comments). I have to talk about yesterday, a strange day. Below is a picture taken from my flat that morning.

Winter has come to Trondheim.

Now if you ever wonder why I want to move back to Denmark, this picture says it all. I want to move somewhere where there is something else than rain or snow. I do not care about the fact that Al Gore or the Panel on climate change won the Nobel peace price. All I care is that the place where I live is dry. (For all you Danes who things it rains all the time, Trondheim is worse with just a few drops all day long for months on end and with early snow).

Yesterday I also bought plane tickets to visit a friend in Oslo area in two weeks time. After trying to get hold of that friend all week long to coordinate when I should come in the weekend.

Yesterday was also the 11.th which is usually when I get paid from the university. This time was no different than any other time, only that I achieved what I would call money neutrality. What I mean with that term will not be explained, only that it was a financial goal I had.

Lastly yesterday it was so cold that I had to start warming up the apartment for the first time this winter. I usually leave that task up to my 4 neighbours. I should also have packed for a trip this weekend to be part of a gaming event this weekend (Østfronten 1943), but I was too tired to do it. (I am only assisting, so my somewhat later arrival today will not affect things).

The snow did not stay yesterday, it was washed away by the rain which fell for the rest of day yesterday.

How to get rich quickly (1/2)

In my post on financial blogs I read Mirca commented "isn't there any advice/magazine/blog about how to get rich QUICKLY?"

This post (and the next one) is my attempt to answer this question. Now I will start off with saying that there is no single way to get rich that can work for everyone, there is also no single way to get rich quickly that is without PAIN. Some will read my articles and still not like my answers, to those I would tell then to go buy a ticket to a lottery and hope it is your lucky day that is their only solution.

We first start out by defining what is it to be rich, most people will tell you that to be rich is to have lots of money. That is a good definition, but it is not correct, because of one little thing we all forget and that is that money is worthless. Money is nothing, money is represented by pieces of paper, or bits representing bank accounts in some computer, but in reality they have no real value in and of themselves. Let me give you an example:


Above is the first note in the newly created national bank of Tord. They are created by a national bank and they are usable as legal tender in the country of Tord (still to be created). They are not counted in kroner or dollar, but in units. For all practical purposes this is money.

What is missing in the previous definition is that to be rich is to have lots of money, money that other people can accept in exchange for goods or services. To really define what it is to be rich we have to go deeper, we have to define it in terms of what you can do with the money.

If you want to be rich quickly, you have to find out what you wanted to do with the money before you get them. So dear reader, what would make you rich, not in terms of an amount of kroner or dollar, but in terms of what you could do with the money? If you cannot define this, then let me give you a million units and you will be rich in a flash.

More on this next post.

Vrrmmm!

Yes, I now have a car! I have just "signed" the contract for a Mitsubishi Pajero — I got it last Sunday, yeah! Behold:

I have tried a lot of different cars, but this old wreck was the one that fitted my needs and budget the best. It comes ready with lots of miles and some rust, so that means that I do not have to mistreat a brand new car myself. It also does not need an expensive insurance as it is almost ready for the scrapheap.

And the best thing is, I did not have to wait nine days…

(this posting is a parody of a blogpost by Martin Geisler, the car is real)