It could happen to you
There are myriad reasons to go into finance; some do so out of love, some do it out of spite, some do it for the prestige, while some, the vast majority for that matter, do it for the money.
Thousands of monkeys head down to Wall Street every year, not for the hundreds of thousands they’ll be making slaving it out in FiDi or in Midtown, but for the fucking billions they could potentially earn in the future.
But what if the money didn’t matter?
I was joking around with some of my friends from college the other day, ragging on one for being such a poof when he mentioned he bought lottery tickets…
“This is MY mbs trade bro, low risk–huge reward.”
He said with a fat grin.
“Man, was that a fucking crazy jackpot for Paulson or what? Jeez...”
He added, trying to hide his disbelief.
Out of curiosity, I looked up what was the biggest lotto payout ever and it was a whopping $315,000,000. It went to a businessman from West Virginia named Jack Whittaker. He ended up bouncing checks in Vegas a few years later but that's beside the point.
He took home $114,000,000.
One Hundred and Fourteen Fucking Million.
If that happened to you, would you still be doing the break into banking hustle?
I can easily imagine what the older bankers and traders here would do, that kind of dinero opens a lot of opportunities for them.
But what I want to know is what the undergrads here would do; particularly those who've spent their weekends studying and have dedicated their college lives to the BB M&A to Megafund route.
What will you do?
Will you play Back-Door Mark and make up for all the hedonistic conquests you've missed?
Or will you pull a Paulson and hold your course?
God forbid you Whittaker and lose it within years.
I would probably continue going to school... probably still finance/accounting but I would probably take some other courses for the hell of it (dealing with electronics, maybe some piano lessons, take formal guitar lessons again) if they wouldn't affect my gpa. I don't know if I would try to go for IB as much, I would probably try trading or investing some of the money I got once I have any idea what I was doing (which I don't right now). Maybe if I got a degree in finance I would try goin straight to PE by using my time n money by joining yacht clubs n becoming friends/drinking buddies/hooker pals/cocaine cowboys with people that could hook me up lol... hell I dunno
One of the main reasons I'm goin back to school n trying to get into IB is because I would like to send my son to some of the greatest schools in the country and not have to worry about finances (regarding school or not) that much...
$114,000,000 would probably be enough lol
I'll definitely try an get a buy side job, just to see the inner workings and idea generation process, before setting up my own place managing just my own money. There are a lot of things that are learnt on the job through experience and can't be read up on in a Ben Graham book.
People who win the lottery usually end up doing very very badly. All of a sudden you're richer than all your friends so you end up losing them or the majority of them, either through how they treat you differently or how the money goes to your head. You have all this money that you don't know how to properly manage and people often feel richer than they really are (it doesn't matter that most lotter players are below average in the brains area) so you end up spending it waaaayyyyy to quick. Of course, by this time you've quit you're job and have nothing and nobody to fall back on by the time you inevitably bankrupt yourself.
Fuck that.
I'd probably do some learning based initiative or non profit start up an do school and travel.. I wonder if people who choose the non lump sum payout and get the annuity do any better Long term. And I'd back door mark cuz I basically am him with tons of luck
Used to think about this all the time.
i LOVE 3
i would definitely throw a $114,000,000 party.
I'd still "work" although I'd probably not work that hard. Probably open some small business or invest/trade.
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