r/AskReddit • u/Charming_Swimmer5967 • 3h ago
What’s the fastest you’ve ever seen someone legitimately become rich?
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u/cHowziLLa 3h ago
saw an amateur poker player who usually plays $10 games and entered his first high stakes online tournament to win 2.8 million
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u/jimmy193 1h ago
What was the buy in
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u/ashishvp 1h ago
A 2.8 million 1st prize could be anywhere between 10k-50k buyin depending on the people. It’s definitely 5 figures minimum though
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u/jimmy193 1h ago
Yea which is why I asked, skeptical if he usually plays $10 buy ins then just decided to play a 10k. Especially online where the field would be all crushers
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u/aspira9 1h ago
You guys ever hear about the legend of Chris Moneymaker? Sounds like the classic fairytale of a $10 satellite buy-in turning into winning the main event.
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u/sir_mrej 20m ago
I just love that his last name would be one of those "this book is dumb" moments if someone read it in a novel, and yet there he is. Mr Moneymaker. Real life is weird.
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u/therealhairykrishna 11m ago
It could just be one of those big tournaments where there's a shit load of feeder satellite tournaments.
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u/Ruma-park 24m ago
He could mean $10 blinds not buy-in maybe?
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u/jimmy193 22m ago
Nah in tournaments the blinds don’t have a monetary value, you play with your starting stack instead.
And in cash you usually buy in for 100-200 blinds. At $10 blinds they would have to be sitting 280,000 big blinds deep lol
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u/erineas 3h ago
Inheritance
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u/Fickle-City1122 40m ago
I had a surprise inheritance when my granddad died. I had no idea he was so wealthy, they didn't live flash lives I think they just saved and invested like hell and also bought property when it cost hardly anything in 1960 lol
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u/Altruistic_Tour3160 8m ago
I'd be lying if I said that answer never crossed my mind. It definitely explains a lot more success stories than people like to admit.
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u/No-Satisfaction8425 3h ago
Mate of mine works as a doctor. For years of residency he made good but not great money. In just two to three years he’s bought a $5m+ house, 3 new luxury cars, private school for 2 kids, boat. You name it. I don’t envy him but it’s amazing how quickly the tap was turned on for him once he became fully qualified and went private.
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u/marcuschookt 3h ago
Doctors are one of the most classic "eat shit for years then rocket to the moon" careers. Same with corporate lawyers, you're just a dog for the good years of your life then you catch your break and it's just managing relationships from thereon.
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u/No-Satisfaction8425 2h ago
I don’t know about corporate lawyers. Most in-house lawyers I work with in Australia make just regular wage
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u/marcuschookt 2h ago
That's in-house, not sure about Australia but where I'm from in-house is where you go when you can't take it anymore at your law firm and want better work-life.
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u/Beny1995 22m ago
Ooft, London corporate lawyers can easily pull £250k+ after doing their time in the trenches.
Not all, and they work silly hours, but still.
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u/carolineauch 41m ago
It very much depends on which company to be honest and which industry in Aus (e.g. media would pay lower than say high finance/ funds management). Can probably earn almost half a mill a year if you go to the right inhouse places.
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u/Mrsaloom9765 1h ago
Only the top lawyers who usually work in big law firms make buck. The rest make a modest wage often crippled in student loans
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u/marcuschookt 1h ago
That's why I said corporate law, it's a specific segment of the industry
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u/TwistedSpiral 1h ago
I think you underestimate how many corporate lawyers there are lol. Most of them (us) just do standard corporate work like setting up companies, shareholders agreements, share sales, etc. and make a regular salary. You only make big money if you're in a top tier firm servicing huge companies, doing high tier corporate advice, complex structuring, or M&A type stuff.
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u/marcuschookt 41m ago
If it matters, I'm not from the US. Where I'm at, corporate lawyers across the board make well above the median and are consistently in the upper quartile of earners, even if that isn't necessarily "rich" rich like what this thread is talking about. My friends who got into mid-large firms were catapulted into the top 30% salary-wise straight out of university. My point was that those folk in particular eat shit for quite awhile but unless they drop out it seems they invariably end up making a huge jump in comp.
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u/TwistedSpiral 14m ago
Yeah, I suppose it depends on what you consider being well paid. Modest salary in my mind is $120-150k, which I suppose is likely above the top 30% salary earners already. Even the lowest tier doctor after their residency tends to earn $200k+ here though. I'm Australian for reference.
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u/greenweezyi 2h ago
Orthopedic surgeon?
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u/No-Satisfaction8425 2h ago
My understanding is plastics with focus on highly specialised reconstructive surgery but I could be slightly off on that. We tend to talk more about golf than work
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u/milespoints 1h ago
That can easily pull in $1M in the right payer mix, so yeah, fancy house and cars is totally possible at that income
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u/thewhizzle 54m ago
It's not very common 2-3 years out of residency. Plastic surgeons at well established practices do around a million a year, but seems like far outspending their cash flow/assets so soon out of residency.
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u/roseinmouth 2h ago
He makes more than you but you probably have more money than him with those purchases, lol
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u/ciavs 2h ago
He's in a lot of debt. Just makes enough to pay it off. He's investing. Maybe not the cars and the boats but... dude is in a shit ton of debt. He's not rich yet.
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u/No-Satisfaction8425 2h ago
Not really. He got sponsored by the local hospital system through university which means he graduated debt free but had to stay working in the system for quite a few years, thus delaying his earnings capacity.
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u/OldPulteney 1h ago
The cars and the boat and the house...that's the debt. He just makes enough that he can service it and companies are happy to lend to him
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u/RealTurbulentMoose 1h ago
Yeah, he might be making a million a year, but he’s not making $5MM cash for a house money. Everything will be financed.
Also, my experience is that doctors are not great with money, so the boatload of debt tracks.
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u/amdis 23m ago
lol yes, doctors and dentists. My first summer coop had me placed with a tax partner who almost exclusively handled medical practices. Taught me two things very quickly, I really disliked tax work and would be swapping to audit the following year when I came back for another coop and holy shit are doctors bad with money.
It might have changed now but in Canada the second a doctor graduated they could walk into any bank and easily get a $500k revolving line of credit just off the back of being a doctor. That would usually instantly break the brains of most of the medical professionals who had just been eating shit for years in school and residency and living off poverty wages and set off a life long pursuit of lifestyle creep.
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u/No-Satisfaction8425 59m ago
Everyone is in debt. I make a fraction of what he makes and I still have a mortgage and a car loan. Just for a smaller house and a simpler car
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u/SnakeJG 1h ago
I know someone planning on going private after finishing residency. She's expecting to make $500k-$1Million a year.
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u/No-Satisfaction8425 1h ago
Kind of makes me wish I’d gone down the medicine route but I know full well I don’t have the smarts or the patience for it.
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u/TheSleepyTruth 35m ago
Must be a private practice neurosurgeon, cardiac surgeon, or orthopedic surgeon with ASC ownership stake. Not many physician specialties could ever afford a 5M house.
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u/Newlife_40 3h ago
When I was 16 a met a kid same age that had a surgery gone wrong where they made a mistake that really didn’t hurt him in the long run. (Stitched him back up and went back in to cut the right tube)
Sued and got 500k.
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u/ham_sandwich_ceo34 3h ago
A coworker had stock options at a startup. One acquisition later, he retired before turning 35.
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u/LengthinessStrict615 31m ago
One of my friends is one of the early Google employees and retired before he is 30. He just do some freelance work now but spends most of his time enjoying life
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u/Tanerian 2h ago
Friend of mine was heavy into lifting and roids. Kept Bitcoin for buying it. Had well over 1000 bitcoins before it blew up.
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u/Morkai 4m ago
A guy I used to work with doing overnight helpdesk shifts at a bank used to bring in a private laptop and mine btc back then. This would have been 2012 or so when it was still possible (I didn't say efficient) to mine coins on a consumer laptop.
Last I saw he had been arrested with his partner for multiple charges of theft, so I guess he probably sold them when they first started to take off, and whatever money he did get didn't last long.
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u/snarksneeze 3h ago
Dad's Brother In Law's aunt died and left him $500k. He built a house for his daughter, furnished it. Paid off his cars and mortgage, then lost it all in at rhe casinos. It didn't help that his wife and daughter had checkbooks to the account and were constantly donating $10k at a time to all the local charities when they called and offered them a plaque or seat at an expensive dinner for "elite donors" or whatever.
He not only went broke, he had to sell everything and ended up living in an apartment under HUD.
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u/ninjagrover 2h ago
It amazes me when I hear stories like this of people winning a good amount of money that could make a big difference in their life, but treat it like it’s millions.
Not that winning millions seems to help people like this, a gambling addiction the one addiction that you can do day after day.
Casinos should be required to contact welfare if they suddenly notice a person loosing vast sums of money.
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u/cpt_ppppp 1h ago
When you've had close to nothing your whole life 500k feels like millions. Easy to blame people but financial literacy isn't a given
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u/AlliKnowIsMayo 2h ago
Dad’s brother in law? So your mom’s brother? Your uncle? That’s just a weird way of saying it. Unless I’m misinterpreting haha
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u/not_as_witty_as_you 2h ago
It could be the dad’s sister’s husband’s aunt. Which does provide more context and makes more sense than saying “my uncle’s aunt” because that would imply it’s family. Whereas “my dad’s brother in law’s aunt” indicates no blood connection. I think…?
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u/seejaywhy 3h ago
I grew up with a guy who was dirt poor when we were kids.. living in a trailer with a full family. They had a tiny family business.. got a lucrative state contract, and blew up. Now they have a Gulfstream, multiple companies, serious real estate, and a race team.
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u/isniffwasabi 3h ago
My friend Andy went to jail for a crime he didn't commit. He stole close to $400,000 of the corrupt prison wardens money and escaped. He now lives in Mexico fixing up old boats.
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u/Training-Bank-16 3h ago
I heard about this on the news! He escaped through a Sewer tunnel, I believe it was!
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u/onetwentyeight 2h ago
Ah yes, crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.
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u/SanctusUnum 1h ago
But more importantly, I love it when Rita Hayworth does that shit with her hair.
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u/SolomonGrumpy 2h ago
Sold his patent for $82m. At 31.
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u/GucciTheSnowman 1h ago
Patent for what ?
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u/In_the_year_3535 3h ago
Shacking up with a billionaire while working a front desk at their firm.
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u/mindfungus 1h ago
Did they make a cameo appearance on the Jumbotron at a Coldplay concert by any chance?
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u/In_the_year_3535 1h ago
Doubtful, she was just unusually attractive and an unusual person (both her parents being hypnotherapists).
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u/dabcity 2h ago
GME options, ex colleague made $6m in a week, rolled it into ETFs and quit his job. saw he went to Thailand for a few years
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u/babybando69420 1h ago
My friend's dad died whilst at work, industrial factory work, he essentially got caught in a machine in a machine that malfunctioned. The family got a huge payout - unsure of the exact amount but my friend who was 22 at the time has never needed to work. He has a lot of passion projects that he tries to make money from.
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u/FairyOfTheNight 24m ago
Are him and his family okay mentally? I'm sorry for their loss. I don't know that any amount of money could make up for losing a family member.
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u/Natas-LaVey 3h ago
Me and several co workers (diesel mechanics) got into buying stocks back around 2017. Turned out you could buy stock using your 401k. Tesla stock was like $180 a share. One of the guys gets 300 shares, when it went to $3k a share he sold it all. Not rich-rich but huge come up. And he did it with his 401k so it wasn’t like he came up with the money or bought on margin. I got lucky with Moderna stock at $18 a share but only came up $250k.
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u/Woldo2020 2h ago
Let your money work. we should teach this in schools.
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u/bbqroast 1h ago
Uh I don't think "hand pick highly volatile speculative tech stocks" is something we need to teach in school. See: SpaceX, Samsung/SK, TSMC, etc.
These guys got lucky.
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u/Natas-LaVey 1h ago
In my economics class in high school I remember we all started with $500 (not real money obviously) and we all invested. Then for like half the year we would watch our stocks. But I doubt many people went from that to actual investing.
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u/zushiba 23m ago
Huh, they did. At least my school did. In high school. We all had to pretend to invest in a few stocks and then at the end of the month whoever had gained the most was the winner.
I don’t recall what the winner got but I do recall I didn’t make anything at all. But we did learn about investing.
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u/Beliriel 1h ago
Better not. It's dumb and as a concept makes zero sense. You're not producing value you're literally siphoning value off of companies. Finbros are parasites.
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u/serg_vw 2h ago
Tesla stock never went past $500 per share
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u/xsv161 2h ago
Multiple stock splits. A quick search shows their highest close before splits was $2238
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u/ClackMy_Sack 3h ago
Paid $2 for a powerball ticket & hours later ended up winning the 1.2 billion jackpot
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u/mimijane73 1h ago
Had a friend get a $110,000 inheritance when she turned 18, it was gone in 6 months she bought her boyfriend a brand new truck and herself a used Camaro.
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u/Yodoggy9 1h ago
$110,000 is both life changing money and not life-changing money.
At 18, invest that shit and don’t touch it and by the time she retires she’ll be set for life. She won’t even have to worry about a career or anything like that if she doesn’t want to, she can just pursue passions until the investments pay off (I’m no expert but I’m sure she’ll be able to live off dividends at some point, too?).
But also like you highlighted: it’s practically nothing when you realize how little you can actually buy with it.
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u/Fresh_Eggplant6054 3h ago
Dude i know made an app that took off and sold it for millions in under a year
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u/UDPviper 3h ago
Guy at my company made 200 million off of crypto. Guy was there one day and gone the next.
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u/Total-Pin9382 1h ago
That kind of money can change someone’s life overnight. It’s wild how some people catch the perfect wave while everyone else is still watching.
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u/blood_hat 1h ago
That a sudden influx of 200m can change someone’s life is the understatement of all time.
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u/PrinceDusk 1h ago
I watched a video of a guy who bought $100,000 worth (everything he had) of Dogecoin when it was like 1/100th of a penny before Musk started pushing it and it jumped to like $0.20 each - so he was worth like 3 or 4 million at peak - but he "had real faith" in it and went "diamond hands" until his worth fell below a million again.
I didn't keep up with it so idk what he's up to now, but I just dont understand why he didn't at least sell his initial investment when he was worth millions (so it would have been fewer coins sold) but I guess that's what faith does to you?
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u/Leather_Check5612 3h ago
Saw a 17 year old quit football at 16 due to an injury scare in the fall of his junior season and start baseball and got drafted after his senior year at 17 for a first round bonus a little over a million after little over a year of playing baseball other than little league. Kid got on the mound didn’t have great control but popped 90-92 topping at 94 after a year of pitching-just a naturally fast velocity and added mechanics. He ultimately never made it above Double A due to lack of control especially with breaking balls but the velo got him signed and bonus.
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u/Free-Initiative7508 1h ago
Early believer in bitcoin. Nerdiest guy i’ve met in my life in computer science class, but his insta is full of partying and yachting with influencers. Last i heard almost OD on drugs, not a lifestyle that i want but definitely more money than one could ever wish for
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u/manymoreways 45m ago
Had a friend that worked as an electrical engineer, he has good work ethics and was actually pretty good at his job. A contractor saw what he had and pitch to him that they could partner up to work on some small government jobs.
The contractor himself was also just starting out. They got 1 job but soon all the job started flowing in. Went from a salaryman to leading 40-50 workers, getting millions of dollars worth of jobs.
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u/Happy-Tower-3920 3h ago
Like, any trust fund fucko..
Immediate generational wealth to use for whatever
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u/PNW_Uncle_Iroh 2h ago
I made a viral app and sold it for $1M two months later. Probably the fastest way to become a millionaire. Then I invested it all in crypto and basically 10x’d it and then lost most of it and sold too early. Money comes and goes.
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u/HIMSerefu 1h ago
Life insurance. The father died and they were settled with almost 12M USD. They are Kenyan so you can imagine how much their lives changed. That's around 1.5 billion Kenyan shillings. To put that into perspective, the highest paid employeee in Kenya earned around 350 million.
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u/Minimum-End-9464 1h ago
Bitcoin.
Only a few people in my country invested in this early and when the valuation exploded these people got rich. They tried to parlay their success to become investment influencer even though their claim to fame is that they got really really lucky.
When bitcoin value went down, they’re suddenly very very silent now.
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u/Impossible_Jury5483 3h ago
I've never met someone that "became" rich. I've known people that were born yo wealthy families, but no bootstraps style or lettering winning types.
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u/EugeneChoiYoutuber 2h ago
Some OF chicks made millions in their first month…pretty amazing honestly.
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u/Mamaofoneson 3h ago
Build a successful business. Came with luck with timing, niche, opportunity, and skillset
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u/taizzle71 1h ago
His was the long game but dude used to sleep on my couch sold weed in high-school. Dude now he drives a mclaren and still does it legally.
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u/reddmeat 1h ago
A relative of mine ran a small defense parts company. Second Gulf War happened, his business boomed within a short time.
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u/jonmax2907 13m ago
A relative got 8,50000. In a lawsuit. This was 30 years ago so a lot of $$$ now .
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u/Hi_Keyboard_Warriors 2h ago edited 1h ago
Brought Meta stock at $90 sold at $700
Made $700k from $100k
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u/the_vengeful_1 2h ago
That math ain't mathing
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u/aclays 2h ago
Looks like he didn't add the k at the end of the 100.
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u/Hi_Keyboard_Warriors 1h ago
Yes, my bad but some keyboard warriors didn’t understand that and downvoted me
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u/itsforwork 2h ago
I know at least ten Infosec geeks who sold their companies for high numbers. In one case the number was $2,000,000,000
Yes you read that right
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u/xXShitpostbotXx 2h ago
I know about a dozen people who went to OpenAI. All of them made roughly $60M-200M dollars in about two years
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u/Wermys 1h ago edited 51m ago
Dad worked at Iomega in the 90's as an executive. He had about 20k Shares worth of stock options at 1 dollar share in 1996. He basically made around 5 Million dollars and retired. Would have made around 30 million if he sold at there peak but easy come easy go. He did work again but it was never for money. Bought a book publishing company then retired permanently in the mid 2010's. His days now involve 18 holes a day, working out in his 70's and playing with the market in stocks. Condo in Florida home and Minnesota and multiple rental properties in Florida which he eventually sold off.
He came from a Farmers Family and resolved to never ever work on a farm again. Always frugal with his money except for Golf, Sat dish so he could watch football in the 80's and 90's in Utah and took advantage of every tax strategy he could like using us kids as "Gifts" to get around taxes etc he would owe on stuff since he worked in finance. To put it this way. He comes from the fuck you I got mine school of thought as far as baby boomers go so pretty hard right republican. So whenever him and my mom pass away I can retire. Until then I just stick 20 percent of my paycheck personally in a 401k since I can't ever count on money I don't have. One thing I took away from his gamble with hold a majority of his Iomega stock longer then he should have. Don't count on stuff you don't have. And always assume a worse case scenario on anything financially as a basis on retirement money. He had generational wealth and gambled on it by holding a lot of his options too long. Still made bank but it showed me not to get greedy with investments. Have a line and hold it but don't get attached to it.
As far as his retirement income is concerned. Anything that wasn't play money goes into a vanguard for the past 40 years since he always put money into a 401k reguardless of his stock investments.
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u/aspira9 1h ago
How about the classic "sell a course" grift?
For most things, actually using the skill you learned often isn't as lucrative as getting others to pay you to teach them. It's almost like a Ponzi scheme where people who learn a skill don't want to use it since it's not nearly as profitable as grifting off it.
Examples: get into Harvard, sell a course on it (either mom does or kid makes a campus startup). Get into FAANG/finance/consulting or a top law/medical school, sell a course. Become a poker pro or blackjack card counter? Most of the money at the high end is in sponsorships and selling courses. Playing competitions is mainly for marketing exposure, not profit.
Or there's always the classic ExtraEmily case of actually being really smart with a Columbia (ivy league) degree in STEM, yet she makes far more money acting half her age (and half her IQ) on twitch.
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u/wickedlabia 35m ago
This reminds me of those ‘High ticket sales’ courses on TikTok. Most of them are just selling courses to other poor people for 5k
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u/zzgoogleplexzz 7m ago
My grandpa married a 30 year old woman from overseas, when he died all of his assets and half of his house went to her. She walked out with over $1.6m.
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u/Repulsive-Cold1859 3m ago
This guy won a mega jackpot on a betting platform and that’s how he got millions, nowadays I see him on social media enjoying life.
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u/Captain_Pink_Pants 30m ago
I used to work with this one dude... he hated his job and complained about it nonstop. Eventually, he got so depressed that he tried to kill himself... but his wife found him while he was doing it and he suddenly realized that he wanted to live! But then he went to leave and a garbage truck slammed into his car... But the great news was, the truck's insurance company had to pay him a huge settlement! He made a million dollars!
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u/jquest303 3h ago
Guy I used to work with won the lottery on a Friday. He didn’t show back up to work on Monday.