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Search Results for: stealth wealth

The Rise Of Stealth Wealth: Ways To Stay Invisible From Society If You Have Money

Updated: 04/09/2021 by Financial Samurai 288 Comments

Becoming wealthy has never been easier in America. However, feeling comfortable as a wealthy person on the other hand, has never been tougher. The pandemic has created a K-shaped recovery where the investor class has widened the gap between the working class. This widening gap is why I’m a big proponent of practicing Stealth Wealth.

The investor class crushed it in 2020 with the S&P 500 up over 16% and the NASDAQ up over 45%. Meanwhile, millions of people lost their jobs or were long-term underemployed. To be open about your income and wealth gains would be completely foolish when so many people are hurting. Instead, if you are rich, it’s much better to convince people you are middle class. This way, when the revolution comes, you will be spared.

Further, just look at how the government goes after your money. The government taxes you based on income and much less so on wealth. Taxes are likely going up under Joe Biden as well. Therefore, stealth wealth is paramount.

Stealth Wealth To Avoid The Government

For example, once you make much more than $250,000 a year, you will face an abundance of taxes or tax phaseouts: Medicare tax, AMT, deduction phaseout, credit eliminations, education tax, Net Investment Income tax, etc. With Joe Biden as president, he has promised to raise taxes on households making over $400,000 a year.

However, you can pass on at last $11.7 million per person in wealth, tax-free to your heirs in 2021. This sounds like a lot of money, however, you already got taxes on the $11.58 already. So don’t think the high estate tax threshold is really a great benefit.

Stealth Wealth To Avoid The People

If the government doesn’t get you, regular citizens will. Who did you cheat or rob to get to where you are? Is the common attitude among those who feel left behind. This is a real problem for those who want to make it big in the land of dreams and hand guns.

Freedom is one of America’s greatest attributes. Yet, if you go too far on the income curve you’ll start feeling like a prisoner to society. Finally, hundreds of millions of Americans know what losing freedom is like due to months of shelter-in-place to combat the coronavirus pandemic of 2020.

Despite the rich giving more to charity in one year than many others will give in their lifetimes, people will protest their wealth and hate them forever. Despite paying more taxes each year than what the median household makes, the rich person will be demonized for not paying his or her fair share.

Class warfare is no fun, even if you do have the financial means to own a bazooka.

Practice Stealth Wealth

Most readers here are ambitious folks who want to improve their financial health. Thanks to disciplined savings and investing habits, in another 10 years, I’m sure everybody is going to be that much wealthier, if not millionaires.

But once you get to where you are going, you’ll wonder what’s next. Never lose site of the fact that it’s really the journey to financial independence that’s most rewarding.

When society turns their back on you for being successful, just recollect on all your struggles and take a deep breath. Be proud of your accomplishments because you know you’re not just doing it for yourself, but for your family as well.

You don’t have to be ashamed for not being the dumb ass in high school who thought it was cool to skip class every week to smoke weed. You shouldn’t feel bad that you worked summer internships during college while your buddies went off to play. And you should certainly not feel embarrassed by your frugal habits and smart investments once you found a job.

If you’re getting up at 5am every morning to make extra income before work, good on you! Feel proud of working more than 40 hours a week and not complaining why you can’t get ahead.

It’s OK To Be Secretly Proud Of Your Achievements

Unfortunately, society has a fantastic way of discrediting your achievements. “Nobody is self made,” and “You didn’t build that,” are my two favorite retorts. Just try taking yourself completely out of the equation and see where that logic goes when there’s nobody to think, dream, and execute. When you are outnumbered, resistance is futile. You must blend in and rage with the rest of them.

With the below suggestions you’ll be able to better walk amongst the shadows without fear of retribution any longer. Your family will be more guarded from bullies lurking to recondition your children every chance they get.

Once you finish reading this post, never speak of its matters beyond your immediate family and friends again. We’ve got to protect our own little community on the web.



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A Stealth Wealth Solution For Real Estate Investors With Kids

Updated: 07/02/2020 by Financial Samurai 60 Comments

A Stealth Wealth Solution For Real Estate Investors With Kids

If you want to raise better adjusted kids, you probably want to practice some level of stealth wealth. Stealth wealth helps so that they don’t grow up spoiled and unable to recognize prosperity. This article provides a stealth wealth solution for real estate investors with kids.

A couple readers have pointed out that I was raised rich given I had two parents with stable jobs. Instead of having to walk, I got to ride a bicycle to school. I even got a 486 desktop computer my junior year.

Yet, I wasn’t unable to recognize I grew up rich because my parents drove an 8-year old Toyota Camry and we lived in a modest townhouse for the four of us.

Thanks to my parent’s frugal ways, I was highly motivated NOT to mess up my life by slacking off in high school and college. My parents simply did not have a large enough financial buffer to overcome a deadbeat son.

Being unable to recognize their wealth also pushed me to attend a public university, which turned out to be a financially sound choice. If I had attended a private university, I would have felt too much guilt and pressure to prove the expense was worth it.

I still wonder to this day whether my parents are actually much richer than they’ve led me to believe.

My dad still drives a Toyota he bought in 1997. My parents still live in the same old house since 1980. They also never buy any new clothes or luxury items. If there is an early bird special at 4:30pm, my parents are first to get in line!



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The Stealth Wealth Compendium Of Useful Phrases To Deflect Attention

Updated: 07/02/2020 by Financial Samurai 45 Comments

The Rise of Stealth Wealth is here to stay as long as there’s an ever growing government and widening income inequality. This article provides a stealth wealth compendium of useful phrases to help you get through life easier.

It’s only a matter of time before enormous social unrest wipes the country clean of the wealthy like a tsunami. “Be rich, act poor,” is a mantra to protect our families and our finances.

The people who are ruining it for the rest of us with their “look at me” attitudes all have one thing in common: insecurity.

Psychiatrists point to the need for people to overcompensate in order to prove they are not failures based on educational or socioeconomic “deficiencies.” There’s always a story behind each target-basking person. We should reach out to help, which in turn helps others survive.

I’ve provided specific reasons for why you want to join the Stealth Wealth movement along with 15 suggestions on how to blend in better. Now I’d like to propose some common phrases we can use in every day conversation to help deflect attention away from the curious and envious.

There’s a fine line between being modest, and being obsequiously modest. If people can tell your false modesty, you’re no better off than telling them you are the bomb shit.



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Combine Stealth Action With Stealth Wealth To Be Richer, Happier, & Free

Updated: 01/14/2021 by Financial Samurai 92 Comments

Practice Stealth Action If You Want To Be Happier, Richer, And Free

Given the bull market has exacerbated the wealth gap, practicing stealth wealth is a strategically wise move. You don’t want to attract haters just because you decided to diligently save and invest all these years. Instead, you want to blend into the crowd so you can live a carefree life.

The global pandemic has also exacerbated the wealth gap. One the one end is the investor class who has experienced robust asset price appreciation. On the other end is the working class without much investments at all. They’ve been hit hard by pandemic with big unemployment.

What I’ve come to also realize is that it’s important to practice Stealth Action as well. Stealth Action is where you keep what you’re doing private so as to not attract any attention, criticism, and unnecessary stress.

I’m in a funny situation where I publicly write about some things I want to do. As a result, I get a lot of criticism from people who either don’t believe what I’m doing is right or know they probably should be doing what I’m doing, but are unwilling.

But in real life, I always keep mum about my plans. The only person I share everything with is my best friend, my wife.

Let me share with you four examples that demonstrate why Stealth Action is important.



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When Is It OK To Forsake Stealth Wealth And Spend Up?

Updated: 07/02/2020 by Financial Samurai 114 Comments

When is it OK to forsake Stealth Wealth?
Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird – Ultimate Stealth

One of the biggest peculiarities for hard working folks who want to achieve financial freedom is that we often don’t know when to stop grinding. In other words, when is it OK to forsake Stealth Wealth and start spending more on a better life? After all, you don’t want to die with too much money.

Even if we get to our target net worth amount or passive income figure, we keep on going out of habit. After a lifetime of wealth accumulation, to start drawing down principal feels sinful!

Since first writing about The Rise Of Stealth Wealth, I’m proud to see a strong adoption from successful people who’ve decided to keep things low key.

Society was angry during the 2008-2009 recession, and Stealth Wealth became a way of life for those who wanted to survive. Now that we’re going through another great depression in 2020-2021, it’s very important to continue practicing Stealth Wealth.

Recently, however, I’ve started to get questions from long-time practitioners regarding when it’s OK to forsake Stealth Wealth and ball out a little. After all, most Stealth Wealth practitioners have seen their net worths more than triple since 2009.

Here are my thoughts for those of you who want to risk the wrath of a jealous society. As usual, I’ve set up some stringent conditions so that you’ll actually feel OK wasting money when the time comes! 



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The Negatives Of Being Wealthy And Everybody Knowing

Being wealthy is absolutely one of the best feelings on Earth! When you just look like the average Joe or Jane, nobody bothers you. When you’re wealthy, everybody comes out of the woodwork for favors. I highly advise everybody follow the mantra of Stealth Wealth to stay invisible from society’s rage.

Three Examples Of What Happens When People Know You Are Wealthy

1) Folks expect you to pick up the dining check. I saw a friend I hadn’t seen in eight years one evening. She brought her 10 year old boy and her boyfriend to dinner. When it was time to get the check, none of them budged. It was only several seconds since the water left, but not wanting to create awkwardness, I pulled out my wallet and dropped my credit card. Did she or her boyfriend throw in their card as well? Nope! Instead, they said, “Are you sure? Thank you!”

I don’t mind paying for dinner, even if it’s paying for three to my one, but at least pretend to make an attempt. After I paid for dinner, they then then asked if they could stay at my place in Lake Tahoe one weekend. Their requests went on and on.

2) Folks ask you for non-stop financial advice. If you have money, it’s natural for people to ask you how to get richer. One time in the hot tub at a club in downtown SF, my buddy blew me up by asking publicly while others were also soaking, “How is Financial Samurai going? I remember you telling me about the site back in 2009 when you first started.”

I told him it was going well when a women next to me said, “Wait, are you Sam from Financial Samurai?!” I didn’t want to lie, so I told her yes, and then she proceeded to ask me about 15 questions regarding career advice at her startup, investing in real estate crowdfunding since she knew I had just invested $250,000 in the space at the time, my economic world view, and many more questions! It kinda felt like answering questions on Quora and getting bombarded with question requests in my inbox!

Meanwhile, all I wanted to do was soak in peace in the hot tub after a nice two hour tennis match with my buddies. Hence, not only should you keep your wealth discreet, you should keep your identity discreet if you want to relax more.

3) Folks directly ask you for money for things you don’t care about. Once you donate money to an organization, they will e-mail and call you forever to keep on donating. That’s normal business practice. But sometimes, you just don’t want to donate more to the cause because you find out the organization is inefficient with their money, or spent it on something you didn’t think was worthwhile. So the constant follow up can get tiring.

But what really starts getting annoying is when your friends start asking you to donate for causes or people you know nothing about. One friend, who is worth $250M+ wanted me to donate $5,000 to a dinner he was sponsoring for a politician at his house. I truly dislike politicians, and would MUCH rather donate the $5,000 to a foster home I’m currently volunteering at each week.

Given my normal donation amount is $1,000 per event or cause, $5,000 felt a little too rich for me. But it felt super expensive to me because I couldn’t give two licks about this politician who won’t become President during the next race. Having to say “no,” but still offer $1,000 instead became an awkward moment. Awkward moments due to money suck.

Don’t Let Your Ego Get In The Way Of Happiness

The only reason why you want others to know you are wealthy is due to ego. The desire for prestige and attention is ruining your life! If you can practice Stealth Wealth, I promise you will be much happier. You can always “move up” or “move down” the wealth curve when discussing activities with folks of all different wealth classes. But if you are pegged as a wealthy person, you will often be hated on by folks who have much less.

Here is a classic case of folks hating on a household making $300,000 a year in an expensive city like SF or NYC. The purpose of the post was to encourage people to move to a lower cost area because they can, thanks to technology and the growth of freelancing. But the amount of furor in the comments of the post was nuts even though I created a detailed spreadsheet highlighting all their expenses here.

Middle class lifestyle on $300,000 a year

Build your fortune so you can be free and happy. Just don’t tell anybody how much you exactly have or make.

Long live Stealth Wealth! I recommend managing your finances for free with Personal Capital’s award winning financial tools. I’ve been using them to plan for my retirement since 2013 and have seen my net worth skyrocket since.

There is no rewind button in life. Make sure you get your finances down the first time around!

About the Author: Sam began investing his own money ever since he opened an online brokerage account in 1995. Sam loved investing so much that he decided to make a career out of investing by spending the next 13 years after college working at two of the leading financial service firms in the world. During this time, Sam received his MBA from UC Berkeley with a focus on finance and real estate. 

FinancialSamurai.com was started in 2009 and is one of the most trusted personal finance sites today with over 1.5 million organic pageviews a month. Financial Samurai has been featured in top publications such as the LA Times, The Chicago Tribune, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. 

How To Profit From The Wealthy Mainland Chinese

Updated: 11/06/2018 by Financial Samurai 108 Comments

I’ve been “Chinesed” and I’m not sure how I feel about the situation. On the one hand, I benefit as an asset owner. On the other hand, the American Dream gets harder to achieve for those who aren’t prepared.

Being “Chinesed” is a term I’m introducing to describe a situation where a wealthy mainland Chinese person buys an asset (usually a house) for a ridiculous price and crowds out existing domestic buyers. The term is not derogatory, so stop your bad thoughts right there. I’ve always heard stories about rich mainland Chinese people buying up America, but I never experienced the situation until recently.

A home nearby had been languishing on the market for three months during the winter holidays, November – January. The agent priced the property at $2.1M, and I was absolutely positive it would go for closer to $1.9M. To my great surprise, the house ended up selling for $150,000 over asking! I was baffled, and wondered what type of donkey would bid up a stalefish listing.

It turns out, probably a very rich donkey because the selling agent told me the new owner is a 20-something year old English + Art student from China. She visited the place in between classes one day and told her parents this was the one. Her parents paid all cash. 

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Maybe It’s Your Fault Why Wealth Inequality Continues To Worsen

Updated: 11/11/2018 by Financial Samurai 186 Comments

wealth-inquality-chart

The biggest problem I see in society is the widening gap between the rich and the poor. When CEOs make 300X their average worker’s salary and the top 5% own roughly 74% of all the assets, we’ve got some serious wealth inequality here!

I was just at this political fund raiser party which consisted of a couple hedge fund partners, a pre-IPO Chairman (host), and a CEO of a major food company and I realized then and there equality for our children is but a pipe dream.

It’s vexing to read about a 55 year old distraught over losing her job when she’s had 30 years to save and invest. She should be close to millionaire status by now and ecstatic with a going away severance!

I’m doing my best to help empower people to build their own wealth and narrow this ridiculously wide gap. But I think I’m failing miserably, despite the millions of visitors a year on Financial Samurai. Some days I feel it might be better to just kick back on the beach all day long instead of spend over a hundred hours a year writing content for five almost 10 years in a row now.

Collectively, I think we all have a responsibility to help others if we have the capability to do so. So the question is: What are you doing to help reduce the wealth gap?

The other side of the equation is people who are purposefully widening the wealth gap through financial self-destruction. We know we need to work harder and longer than the average person to make more money. We know we need to spend within our means and invest in order to build our wealth. Unfortunately, we often don’t do the logical, even if a logical proposal is laid out right before our eyes.

Below are some sharp comments from my 1/10th Rule For Car Buying post to give you some examples of financial self-sabotage. The post’s goal is to help limit people’s spending on one of the most destructive expenditures to wealth around. If you are easily offended or feel bad that I receive such vitriol on a constant basis, you may want to skip to the conclusion instead. I love it, but I’m masochistic!

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How To Convince People You Are Middle Class When You’re Actually Rich

Published: 04/08/2021 by Financial Samurai 58 Comments

As the wealth gap continues to widen, it may be beneficial to learn how to convince people you are middle class when you’re actually rich. Otherwise, you might become target enemy number one when the revolution comes!

To get things out of the way, I feel rich. Not only do I feel rich, but I also have enough passive income to be time rich. Being time rich is my favorite form of wealth. After chronicling my journey to financial independence since 2009, there’s really nowhere for me to hide. Hopefully, people will give me some credit for all the years of hustle since graduating from college in 1999.

To avoid the guillotine, my hope is that consistently writing free content 3X a week to help everyone achieve financial independence will be appreciated. After all, I’ve got nothing to sell, except for a severance negotiation book, which many readers have said gave them the courage to change their lives for the better.

Even when many large media sites put up a paywall during a global pandemic, Financial Samurai stayed free. My goal has always been, no matter your level of wealth, to provide access to anybody looking to improve their personal finances.

Besides, as a minority, there should be more leniency as well when the uprising comes. It’s cool to be a minority nowadays. That is, unless Asians are considered not enough of a minority worth fighting for. In which case, please have mercy!



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Use Bad Pricing Estimates By Zillow And Redfin To Your Advantage

Updated: 04/09/2021 by Financial Samurai 40 Comments

Bad pricing estimates by Zillow and Redfin are commonplace. Despite starting in 2004, Zillow’s estimates are especially unreliable for some reason. However, you can use bad pricing estimates to your advantage when buying or selling property today.

Over years of comparing the two, I’ve noticed Redfin’s pricing estimates are more accurate. Further, Redfin is much quicker to update the final sales price of a home after it goes pending. But even Redfin has some pricing issues as well.



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