I would also add, stay away from any kind of luxury real estate, even after the one year moratorium. It’s a white elephant. If you must, buy a house, but forget about your dream house because it’s actually a nightmare, which you will discover about an hour into the movie. There’s probably another Stephen King story in there.

Also don’t think in terms of percent. Think in real dollar terms. Gee, only one percent to manage my assets? That’s not so bad. No, it’s actually $100,000 a year and if you learn the basics of investing you can do it yourself and probably do at least as good a job. Trust me, I’ve worked with “the best” of Wall Street and came away amazed at the stupid things they’ve done with my money. Well, not really stupid; clearly we just have different agendas. Stay away. Aim for average returns. That’s pretty good if you can get it. But you probably can’t because you’re trying to get more and your name is not Warren Buffett.

I appreciate the part about luck. I can’t help but feeling that it all came down to luck and without I wouldn’t have one percent of what I have now. But since the rest of this article is so true I will take it on faith that if I had to I could do it again, hard as that is for me to believe. I just hope I don’t have to.

Once you see something like this year after year after year, you start to believe it. I believe in luck. But I do not believe everyone is lucky.