Hacker News Reader

Comment by zhoujianfu | Hacker News Reader

I’m surprised that 1 in 4 people in the study lost more than 75% of their net worth at some point! I wonder if that was a housing crash or dotcom bubble or is just typical?

And that the median amount lost was 92% ($101K)... implying they went from about $109K net worth to $8K on median.

That would be pretty stressful for sure.

View on HN

The volatility goes the other way too - Also 60% of Americans will be in the top 20% of income earners for at least two years during their lives, and almost 40% will spend at least two years in the top 10%.

Can you provide a source for this?

Sure!

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/05/05/308380342/most...

What you say is accurate, but income and wealth volatility are different things. Do you have any numbers about the percentage of Americans who will spend time in the top 20% or 10% of the wealth spectrum?

I'd venture to guess wealth volatility is far lower.

Most people that I know that went from nothing to somewhere between 1 and 5 million managed to lose most of it again. The ones who ended up with 5 million plus tended to have done ok or much better than just 'ok'.

I suspect that it has to do with whether or not the original windfall was due to luck or if there was an actual strategy behind it.

I guess the difference is where you started as well? If you put in $100K and it tanks to $8k, that sure is a lot more stressful than having $8k go to $200k, and then back to $40k.

Divorce surely accounts for some of those.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com