Felix Dennis, a 1990s magazine magnate, wrote an excellent book on how to accumulate a lot of wealth, quickly. How to Get Rich: One of the World’s Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets
Here are a few choice quotes from the book:
How rich are you, anyway? I don’t know. Neither does any rich person know.
In the words of the art collector and oil billionaire John Paul Getty: “If you can actually count your money, you are not really a rich man.”
Drives home the point that at a certain level of wealth, the dollars become meaningless.
The jets are always rented. If it flies, floats or fornicates, always rent it— it’s cheaper in the long run.
Good lesson in not buying depreciating assets.
Rich people always have a certain degree of debt. Apparently it helps to reduce taxes— but I’m not so hot on the bean- counting side.
It’s funny to me how many wealthy people don’t understand the details of why they do certain things.
The follow- through, the execution, is a thousand times more important than a “great idea.” In fact, if the execution is perfect, it sometimes barely matters what the idea is. If you want to get rich, don’t sit around waiting for inspiration to strike. Just get busy getting rich.
This quote was about how to build a company. People have built fantastic wealth in delivering dumpsters, building apps, plumbing, and many other boring or very unsexy professions.
And just what is the most precious thing in life that riches can supply? Easy. For me, it’s Time.
Time. Time to read and write poetry if I want to. Or to write a book if it takes my fancy. Time to travel on the slightest whim, to walk in the woods, to think, to commission art, to read, to drink, to hang out with friends and loved ones... to do just about anything really, as long as it does not involve day after grinding day making money in an office or a factory for somebody else.
No, this book is about becoming one of the common or garden rich— world- class footballer rich; or J. K. Rowling rich; or rich enough to stop looking at the price of almost anything that takes your fancy. Rich enough to retire, or to work eighteen hours a day, or drink yourself into oblivion every night— if that’s what you want.
Rich enough to live where you want, to go where you want, to do what you want, to meet who you want. Rich enough to buy the only two things apart from health and love worth fussing about in life. Time. And the option of not having to be in any particular place on any particular day doing any particular thing in order to pay the rent or the mortgage.
A recurring theme for many wealthy people. Morgan Housel has a similar quote that I concluded my book with:
"The highest form of wealth is the ability to wake up every morning and say, 'I can do whatever I want totday...' The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as along as you want, is priceless. It is the highest dividend money pays."
And rich enough to begin to worry about taxes. To begin the process of employing that vast army of lawyers, accountants, advisors and estate planners who will descend upon you like uninvited vultures after a battle. A group to whom, even though you pay them tens and tens of thousands of pounds a year, you will be forever in thrall.
Delegating to experts is a good skill to develop as you build wealth.
Still, let me repeat it one more time. Becoming rich does not guarantee happiness. In fact, it is almost certain to impose the opposite condition— if not from the stresses and strains of protecting wealth, then from the guilt that inevitably accompanies its arrival.
If I had my time again, knowing what I know today, I would dedicate myself to making just enough to live comfortably (say $ 60 or $ 80 million), as quickly as I could— hopefully by the time I was thirty- five years old. I would then cash out immediately and retire to write poetry and plant trees.
Up to just seven years ago I was still working twelve to sixteen hours a day making money. With hundreds of millions of dollars in assets I just could not let go. Like I said, it was pathetic. Because whoever dies with the most toys doesn’t win. Real winners are people who know their limits and respect them.
Retirement will kill you. It’s official! Retirement kills the kind of people who make their own pile. I do know one couple, old friends called Don and Sue, who squirreled away a million bucks or two (plus a house) and travel quite happily, and very modestly, for most of the year. They go to India and Indonesia and other such places. Or else stay with friends, like me. They love their life, and are content to live on the interest from their investments. But they are the only ones I know who ever really retired contented. Interestingly, Don always predicted he would retire early; long before he made any money. Still, for most men and women who have made a lot of money, retirement is usually a living death sentence.
About $100 to $130 million in 2026 dollars, updated from the 2007 publication date. Interesting that you don’t need $60 to $80 million to write poetry and plant trees. Many people can do it for far less.
A standard 4% safe withdrawal rate from that pile of cash would yield $2.4 million to $3.2 million per year or $200,000 per month to $266,000 per month.
It’s always so interesting that rich people can’t think of anything else to do other than make money.
But he makes the point that retirement will kill you. You can’t stop doing things once you start doing things.
As soon as you’ve spent it, gifted it, loaned it or invested it, forget it. More angst and worry comes into the world from concern over past investments, loans or gifts than can be imagined. It’s gone. Forget it. If any of it returns to you, fine.
This is a great sentiment. Let it go. A very zen and Stoic practice. You can’t control it. If it comes back to you, great. If it doesn’t, you already wrote it off.
Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex. You thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it, and thought of other things if you did.
I spent a hell of a lot of what I made on sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll. The rest— as the footballer Georgie Best joked just before he died recently— I wasted.
Get “first flush” barminess out of your system as fast as possible. You’re going to do it if you get rich. Yes, you are. You are going to buy a sodding great big house, then more houses abroad, then servants by any other name, then you are going to start misbehaving. Gambling. Credit- card abuse. Expensive clothes. Whores. Drugs. Drink. Fast cars. Private jets. Big parties. Interior designers. Gold taps. The lot. This probably can’t be avoided. But the sooner you can work through this “barmy” phase, the better your health will stand up, and the sooner you will get your second wind.
Develop a passion outside of making money. Fast. If I had made the time earlier to discover that I could write poetry that thousands of people would be kind enough to purchase and enjoy, I would have saved myself many torments of the pit. People who can make money are often easily bored. That is true of me. So when the day’s work was finally done, I used to make my own entertainment. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with orgies, parties, narcotics and booze— but they will kill you in the end. If I had spent the thousands of nights writing poetry that I spent playing the fool to keep boredom at bay, I would be a happier, healthier man today. And a better poet to boot!
In a single decade I got through more than a hundred million dollars living high on the hog. At one time, there were no less than fourteen “mistresses” depending on a regular stipend from my personal bank account. A single evening’s entertainment could come to thirty or forty thousand in the Big Apple, London or Hong Kong. There was nothing I could not do— I was king of the world. Acting big.