Anonymous wrote:Wealthy = when your kids will never really need to work. They still should, but it's not a necessity

This is incomplete. You should say: never need to work to live an opulent lifestyle.

Rich isn’t only about not needing to work. It’s about not needing to work to live a lavish lifestyle.
Plenty of retirees don’t need to work but live on a modest income. They aren’t rich. Same for the FIRE community. They don’t need to work but aren’t rich by any measure.

Wealthy = when your kids will never really need to work. They still should, but it's not a necessity

The notion that having a “network” means you’ll never have to earn your jobs is false.

As someone with an amazing network of wealthy people, the cardinal rules of remaining connected to wealthy people are a) never give them reason to think you’re interested in them for their wealth or position and b) you have to contribute something of value (either materially, or prestige, or expertise or actively using your own connections to help others) to maintain your place in the network. Wealthy people don’t tolerate freeloaders. You have to pull your weight to stay connected.

There’s also the practical reality that most of the people in your network may not be in your field and really don’t have the ability to “get you a job” at the level that keeps you wealthy.

Anonymous wrote:Rich is working at NPR or as an artist for the sheer sport of it, living off a trust, connected to other very wealthy people - no actually risk of ever being without a sport job or a real job with this network - and knowing that a $25M inheritance is on the way. I know more than one of these. Some of them do play-pretend that because they aren’t pulling in big law salaries, that they’re not rich beyond imagination. This is not a good look.

I knew one of these whose entire expected $ was tied up with Madoff. They died penniless and young.