To ask if you're wealthy, how did you acquire your wealth?

[PinataHeeHaw]

I'm sat here in the early hours looking at luxury Spanish villas, wondering how I've never got rich.

Yes l have a villa in The Canaries.

Attended state schools but worked my ass off to graduate as the top of class in each. Parents not poor but we lived from pay check to pay check so always felt like this is the only way for me. Managed to land a scholarship to get me into a very prestigious yet obscenely expensive grad course where I lived on pasta and eggs until I graduated. That degree helped me land a 6 digit salary which helped me save and invest. In the city I relocated to I met DH. His parents weren’t wealthy but gave him a few thousand when he graduated with the condition that he does something sensible with it. He was about 25 and it wasn’t uncommon for his friends to be spending it all on rubbish. He bought a small cheap flat and sold it on a profit…and he repeated it 5-6 times. Fast forward 25 years we are extremely comfortable if not wealthy.

The only way to acquire significant wealth now if not through inheritance is to have your own business. Not even with a very good salary can you acquire wealth particularly fast.
We are wealthy now. Large family home. second home we rent out and a nice lifestyle. But we have been flat broke when DH left his well paying job to start up on his own and reliant on my nhs wage for a couple of years. If DH had stayed in his job we would have been comfortable but would never have had the life we have now.

If one (or two) of you in a household takes home this salary, you can do pretty well, even once expensive student loans and mortgages are paid off.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_United_States–based_law_firms_by_profits_per_partner

law

I am strongly encouraging my children down the self-employed route. If they want to do law fine set up your own law practice it’s not difficult.
Do you want to do Marketing ? Great? Set up your own marketing Agent agency again it’s not difficult.
People waste years and years in jobs, paying PAYE tax which is a mugs game.

Accounts, set up your own practice.
Even medicine, it’s possible to practice privately and set your charges accordingly.

We are comfortable. We prioritise family time and memories over other savings.

I'd rather make the kids a packed lunch and go on an extra holiday per year.

If they want to do law fine set up your own law practice it’s not difficult.

I beg to differ. Law firms are highly regulated and you have to be qualified to a certain level and then deal with significant compliance obligations. You can't just set up a law firm.

@marsaline yes that’s my understanding too -

I am a mysterious and sophisticated international jewel thief who has baffled and frustrated Interpol for thirty years.

I haven't even changed my MN name to tell you this. That's how good I am.

I was born in the UK in the late 20th century. That makes me wildly richer than most people who have ever lived. Even as I contemplate the latest round of price rises.

(In reality I'm doing fine, but not rich, but try and take the long view!)

How wealthy do you mean?

I'm nicely comfortable, but not filthy rich annoyingly. Yes I worked hard at school and beyond and take care to look after our money properly blah blah. But I can't deny that by far the biggest factor is who I married 🤷‍♀️😆

You really can. And that’s what keeps the elite in an elite position this fallacy that it’s all so difficult to do. You might have to buy in the expertise initially to make sure that you are compliant. And then you’ll have to employ people as you go along to continue to remain compliant. But it’s not beyond most lawyers.

Yep, nail on the head. Most professions can be turned into self employment or small businesses. But then again, most trades can too, i.e. car mechanics, plumbers, electricians, cleaners, etc.

But as could be seen on another MN thread a week or so again where someone asked why more people weren't self employed - the vast majority just wanted the "easy life" of being employed, less stress, less risk, not having to quote/bid for work, etc etc.

People can't have it both ways. Again, as per other MN threads, people whinge about the self employed "over charging" as they wrongly think, but don't want to take the risks (and enjoy the rewards) themselves!

Find something you are good at that pays well and do it again and again.

Of course a random person can't just set up a law firm, just as a random person can't start up as an independent financial advisor, or surveyor, or architect, or auditor or liquidator.

There are minimum professional qualification requirements, practising certificiates, professional indemnity insurance, money laundering registrations, etc etc etc.

But someone who's qualified in a profession and has the requisite working experience, can pretty easily do all the box-ticking, get the certificates, insurance, etc that they need. They'll know what needs doing as they'll have been doing it in the workplace.

It's what I did, as a chartered accountant and registered auditor. Just ensured I got the practising certificate and relevant experience whilst working for others and then took the plunge to do it on my own. Insurance and regulations wasn't too onerous.

I've a couple of self employed solicitors with similar background who've done the same. And 3 independent financial advisors - worked for others first, got the professional qualifications, got the experience signed off and then go on their own.

We're talking professionals here - none of the setting up on your own is rocket science.

DH is an equity partner at a major American firm (one of the ones on the list above), I was but decided to leave and do something else a few years back. I can't imagine anything worse than setting up your own law firm when you can do so very, very well while letting someone else shoulder the burden. We have a friend who has done just that (and tried to convince DH to join) and they are doing extremely wel, about 15 years on. But the stress is unbelievable and, if anything, the hours are worse. Had they stayed at the firm they were at, they could have walked away at any time with a bucketful of money but now they have almost 100 lawyers on staff and are tied to this massive responsibility. They enjoyed the challenge but say they would make a different choice if doing it again.

The PP said "if they want to do law fine, set up your own practice". Just pointing out that of course you can't just do that. It's highly regulated and generally just the professional indemnity insurance on its own makes it cost prohibitive unless you already have a very strong and loyal client base. Plus it takes years to get to that position.

I've done it. I could make it work because I already had about £250k of clients who I knew would follow me and stay relatively loyal and I work in an area which enables me to have slightly more limited regulation. But you don't get those clients overnight. It takes years and years of hard work for others) first.

Rather pedantic, don’t you think I wasn’t suggesting the leap from checkout cashier to Law owner/partner would be an overnight move.
Everyone else seems to have taken the point as intended.

Well you actually went in to say in your next post that you can just do it straight away by “buying in the expertise”. That’s not actually true.

there’s no point being ambitious if you’re being completely unrealistic. It’s misleading to suggest that these things are just a fallacy designed by the rich to prevent the little people from trying or that you can do things like that when you’re just starting out.

if your kids want to do law and you encourage them to set ultimately up on their own then that’s great. However that is likely to be after 3 years of university, up to 2 years of law school, 2 years of on the job training and around ten years of practising (because you are only allowed to do it once you have a certain level of experience) and even then realistically only if they can pinch a good number of clients from the firm they are with and have a good buffer of cash to tide them over as well as start up money to pay for professional indemnity insurance (the big one that even for a very small firm can run to tens of thousands of pounds), public liability insurance, practising certificates, SRA fees, legal accounts software, time recording software, legal knowledge subscriptions, accountancy fees etc etc. That’s even before you think about computers, offices etc.

What was your business in?

The business was in tourism.

Depends how you define wealthy - I’m not private jet wealthy or anywhere towards that but mortgage free and a good amount of money in savings / investments etc and good quality of living. Plenty of holidays and don’t really need to look too much at the price of things so feel very comfortable
I have my own business which I run from home and dh is in finance
Moving out of London also helped us to have the mortgage paid off and more money spare to put in investments / long term savings
No family money, I’m nc with my family never took a penny from them

DH is self made. He came from a working class family like me. He is mathematically gifted, went to uni and qualified as a chartered accountant. He was earning in excess of £100k pa by 30 working as a finance director at different big companies.

He set up his own tech business in his 40s which took a while to 'take off' but now at 50 he is making anywhere from £200 - £500k pa. We now live in a mortgage free £1.4M house, have nice cars, I don't work, and we can afford to buy what we want.

He sacrificed is party years to study hard and it paid off.