• eg: you get to know someone owns a number of properties
• eg: you get to know that someone has a nonwork income of $5k
• eg: you get to know that someone made a killing (windfall) in the stock market or cryptocurrency
• eg (fantasy): you get to know that someone added 5 years to her life, so she would live 5Y longer as a result.
• eg (fantasy): you get to know that someone added 5 years of guaranteed family happiness

(I will use “her” by default, but may use “him” too.)

— The first common assumption and common over-reaction is a /wholly/ unreliable guesstimate of her new net worth. For example, I told my friend HF.Sun that I owned more than 6 properties, but no one should assume anything about their value.

She may have a huge loan.

A note on statistics. If the median net worth in your location at her age is $500k, below ffree, but this peer is now at $2m, then she’s probably in the 10th percentile.

— A neglected question is liquidity (also current income). A big pile of paper gain that’s inaccessible is worth very little now.

— A good question we often ask is “What_happened?” but more than half the time we don’t get any verifiable answer.
The most reassuring answer is “own effort” rather than luck or external factors. See locus@control: carefree high ground mostly due2effort. Those “bad” answers imply that the wealth is fleeting, temporary or hard to keep.

— A neglected question is “How carefree is she now?” I would think wellness and family harmony are harder to keep, more valuable than wealth, for 99% of us. I remember the billionaire businessman in [[pretty woman]] living with deep scar of childhood traumas… no family happiness 🙁

When we are already at some level of wealth, the “gap” between here and a carefree dreamland is measured not by additional wealth but other metrics such as sustainable wellness and long-term family happiness. The fantasy examples above would be more valuable than any windfall,.

MMM would question us “Why do you need sooo much more money?” You won’t need that much to maintain a comfortable livelihood.

— Jolt: By age 50, who is ahead? Who is luckier? Who is a role model?

• This middle-aged professional has 6 properties
• This middle-aged professional has 5+ workouts a week and runs marathons, has good BMI, sleep and appetite, without any serious health condition.

— I asked my friend Ash.S how he moved up so fast

• factor: he is now seen as a rock star lead developer, similar to Sun Lin in 2012 and ML.J in Year 200x. Very few candidates have this halo.
• .. factor: he is rather full stack — can develop web GUI to demonstrate his skills
• factor: the crypto players are currently /flush with cash/. This is a necessary but insufficient condition for the oversized offer
• factor: he killed the (weekend) coding tests. Coding test performance is a necessary but insufficient condition for oversized offer.
• .. for one test, he put in much higher effort than other candidates would.
• .. for another test, he has done something similar