From: Michael Lorrey (mike@lorrey.com)
Date: Mon Dec 14 1998 - 12:00:48 MST
James Rogers wrote:
> At 02:37 PM 12/13/98 -0500, Michael Lorrey wrote:
> >The page he referred to also considered economic mobility to be under that
> topic.
> >It is true, its easy for a hardworking person who has a couple ounces of
> brains to
> >play things right and become wealthy. My older brother dropped out of one
> of the
> >state colleges, and started mowing lawns with one push lawn mower, about
> 10 years
> >ago. Now he has a business worth almost a million, managing the
> maintenance for
> >around 40 condo/ apartment complexes and doing all sorts of landscaping. He
> >expects to retire before age 40. He works 12-16 hour days almost every
> day, and
> >has 15-20 employees.
>
> Most people don't realize that 60-70% of the millionaires in the US are
> "blue collar" workers. What's more, old wealth is fairly rare: 75% of all
> current millionaires in the US are self-made. The richest person in my
> family is a blue-collar (construction worker, no college) multi-millionaire
> who worked hard and started his own construction firm. Although he doesn't
> need to, he still works 70-80 hour work weeks out of habit.
>
> What I do find interesting is that most people who become millionaires are
> not the "white collar" professionals who make considerably more money than
> their blue collar counterparts. I suspect (and I believe studies have
> shown) that typical white collar lifestyles are not terribly conducive to
> saving the money required to become a millionaire, whereas middle to
> lower-middle class workers are habitually frugal and tend to save their
> money even when their incomes rise.
>
They are also not as likely to be into do-it-yourself concepts, they'd rather
pay someone to do it for them. The white collar guy is more likely to hire
someone to cut down a dead tree in his yard than to get a chain saw and do it
himself. This happened with my parent's house, they were gonna spend $500 to
have a professional tree guy cut down a dead tree in the yard that had the power
and phone lines running through it, so when they were gone for the weekend, I
went and cut it down for them, so they couldn't object.
I must admit that I'm of the white collar type when it comes to cars though. I
don't have the space to do the kind of work I'd like to do on my vehicle, and I
usually don't have the time. I do have the tools though...... oh I love my
tools.
Mike Lorrey
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