Wednesday, November 24, 2010

How to Become a Billionaire?

Not long time ago if you made a six figure income you were considered rich. But that’s not the case anymore. Even millionaires are not satisfied with just being a millionaire since the cost of living has went up a lot. That’s why we ask the question what are the best ways to become a billionaire; it doesn’t have to overnight but fast enough that you have plenty of years to enjoy the wealth.

What Does It Take to Become a Billionaire? Research after research has shown that there are several things many self-made billionaires who started from scratch have in common.

Move to the right place. It is no coincident that almost all the young billionaires that we know of are from a particular state. Whether it is starting a new business or chasing a career, to make money in those two you have to choose the right location. Guys who made billions of dollars by creating Google and Facebook sites are from California. New York is the second best state where your chances of becoming rich is higher. It’s the vast amount of opportunities these regions offer for career fulfillment if anybody is willing to pursue; education and resources, both human and financial, localized more in these areas than any other parts of the country.

Go to Ivy League. Education is probably the most important thing besides perseverance that is needed to become a billionaire. Best education is obtained from best schools, such as Ivy League colleges. Nearly 20% of the billionaires went to Ivy League for their undergraduate degree. Harvard, Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, Yale and Sanford University are some good examples.

Be a man. It turns out that being a man gives you better chance to make billions of dollars than being a woman. Oprah Winfrey is one of the only few exceptions; otherwise women makes less than 3% of all the self made billionaires in the world. There are couple of ways men are able to dominate this list; they tend to take more risks and venture investments to raise funds, and women are underrepresented in the top executive seats in various companies. One thing that recent research study has shown is that women continue to earn less while working in the same job positions.

Stay humble. Not everybody can reach a success right away. A lot of people face challenges. What self made billionaires do differently is that they accept their weaknesses and persevere. Just work hard, accept the reality and made the right judgments. These decisions makes a big difference later on.

September is the lucky day. Most of the self made billionaires were born in the month of September, eve though October 5 is the most common birth day. We aren’t really able to think of ways how getting born in this particular time of the year helps to make fortune over a time period.

Make your company public in China. It doesn’t matter what the world and media says about China. We are somehow made to think that this country is a communist nation where you don’t have a freedom to make tons of money, that the government will take your money away. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case. After US, China is the country where entrepreneurs who took their company public became a first time billionaire. Hongkong, Taiwan and India stand right next to it as a powerhouse for generating wealth.

Baby Boomers have better odds. The average age of people made billions themselves range between early and mid 60s. That’s the time when the economic recovery was happenings, all the businesses were hiring new workers and American economy was starting to create surplus in the budget.

Financial business is still the best way. We know a lot of new young generation billionaires became rich from high tech industry, but the old fashioned financial field is still the top option. Many of them got a good earning returns from their sound stock investments, hedge funds, bonds, ETFs, and treasury note deals. That’s the easiest way and continues to be the most common one.

No comments: