What does money smell like?

This expression dates back to the 1st century AD, during the reign of the Roman emperor Vespasian, who, in search of new sources of income, came up with the idea of ​​​​taxing public toilets. And when his son Titus objected that it was not proper for emperors to earn money in such an unclean way, Vespasian allegedly uttered the famous aphorism: “Pecunia non olet”, they say, this money does not smell like anything, what is your problem?

It was not for nothing that Vespasian was the son of a tax collector - having come to power as a result of a coup, he brought order to the army and finances, and restored peace on the borders of the empire. But most people today know him as the author of this aphorism, which also shows the presence of a sense of humor, albeit a rather cynical one.

Whoever repeated this idea later, but all the repetitions were inferior to the original in terms of expressiveness and accuracy of metaphor.

For example, Stalin said that the Bolsheviks would not be able to build socialism “with white gloves,” meaning that they would have to replenish the budget through the sale of vodka.

It is curious that people who hold completely opposite views like to repeat the saying about money that doesn’t smell. Both cynics who affirm the principle “the end justifies the means” and critics who declare this approach immoral.

But this is about methods. What about the goal itself? How ethical and ethical is it to set such a goal for yourself - to get rich? And then, purely logically: if you have already decided to achieve such a task, then there is no time for zirlich-manirlich. And supporters of both points of view will probably agree with this. The first ones mean: “even you can and should make money out of crap, we are so cool and we are proud of it, and you, disgusting muslin young ladies, sit in your poverty and wretchedness, neat people.” Second: “these types, who have decided to get rich, will stop at nothing, will not disdain anything, their money may not smell, but it smells from them.”

Almost the same idea is expressed in an absurdly caricatured form by a modern joke. The new Russian, having heard that the Devil is offering unheard-of riches for a soul, says: “I just don’t understand: what’s the catch, what’s the trap?”

Really, what? For something ephemeral, the existence of which is not only unproven, but generally raises great doubts, real money is offered - purely concretely. Probably a scam!

Several years ago, a group of law students at the Higher School of Economics wrote a wonderful term paper entitled: “Legal and institutional-economic analysis of the sale of the soul to the devil.” Students - Anna Berger, Alexandra Soboleva, Konstantin Levin and Kirill Lipai stated that the analyzed contract is of a mixed nature: both hiring and sale take place.

And we came to certain conclusions in assessing it – from a legal point of view.

But before I give them the floor to conclude, I would like to draw attention to other - financial and economic - aspects of the contract.

It clearly fits the situation that economists call the funny word “monopsony.” That is, there is one single buyer among many sellers, who in this case know nothing about each other’s existence! This same “monopsony” can be “non-discriminatory”, but this is not the case. Discriminates, and how!

In full accordance with the classical definition of a monopsony, the buyer receives the maximum possible profit and incurs the minimum possible costs.

The inequality of exchange seems to be obvious - on the one hand, wealth is limited by a strict and, in general, very short period of time (how long does a person have left? Thirty to forty years, or even sixty). On the other hand, something intangible, but eternal, not subject to depreciation at all. If we assume that the use of the soul, with all its ephemeral nature, still has a monetary expression, even however small, then all the same, taking into account the length of the period of use, it turns out that its value is infinitely greater than any finite number. That’s how much money Satan “throws” at those who sell their souls – an infinite amount of it!

True, there is some devil's advocate who will remind you that in economics there is the concept of an indefinite lease and a formula that allows you to determine its completely finite price. It is associated with the temporary function of money, with the fact that a person always prefers the benefits of today even to the greater benefits of the day after tomorrow (“Stop, just a moment, you are wonderful!”). Beyond the horizon, perspective is lost, the idea of ​​future usefulness quickly decreases and even tends to zero!

But the indefinite and the eternal are not the same thing. And then - does the underworld obey the laws of diminishing returns and diminishing returns? And the devil knows!

There is one, most diabolical objection - that is what freedom of choice is, and that is what the market is for, that everyone has the right to decide what price he is willing to pay for anything.

But the problem is that one of the parties to the transaction is in a disadvantageous situation, lacking information about the market situation and demand for the product being offered. In a monopsony, the buyer has a monopoly on the purchase, and the complete absence of competition allows him to effectively dictate prices.

Remember the theory of marginal utility (Farmer Bob's suffering and the water-diamond paradox)? So, the devil, according to available information, has practically unlimited reserves of gold, silver and all sorts of material goods, and therefore the marginal usefulness of these substances and substances for him is extremely small, he has no less of them than water at the disposal of humanity. Meanwhile, the soul has the highest utility for its owner; parting with one unit of this good, he reduces its quantity by 100 percent. How much water would it be fair to offer in exchange for the diamond? Not at all - no quantity is enough, you can have as much of it for free as you like, and therefore it cannot have exchange value. But this fully applies to the transaction: a soul in exchange for wealth.

In addition, Satan has access to detailed information about how many and what kind of souls are on the market, and can make well-thought-out choices. And the seller has no idea what price could be asked for.

This is the conclusion that students of the Higher School of Economics came to.

They reasoned that “the infernality of the goal is a motive that is not only clearly immoral, but also criminal.” Therefore, they declared the contract for the sale of the soul to the devil invalid in full accordance with Article 163 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, which states that “a transaction made for a purpose that is obviously contrary to the fundamentals of law and order and morality is void.”

That is, no matter what you throw at it, the new Russian from the joke is right: he scammed!

Please note: in the transaction we analyzed there was a very unusual factor - the lack of depreciation of the item being sold. This makes it fundamentally different from other goods, such as living organisms.

Several years ago, on the Internet, an attractive young woman put her hand and heart (and her body at the same time) up for sale. Having described in detail the attractive aspects of the product (a model figure, peach skin, magnificent hair and big eyes, plus good manners, a good education and a willingness to constantly compliment her husband), she also set a price - at least 500 thousand dollars in annual income for a potential applicant-buyer.

I don't know if she ended up getting a satisfactory deal, but at first it seemed like her marketing tactics weren't working. Perhaps because such a straightforward manner of advertising aroused some suspicions: might they be slipping in an unsuitable product?

A Wall Street banker gave the following analysis: “The commodity offered for exchange is subject to depreciation and will continually decline in value, while the commodity sought (the husband's earnings) is likely to increase in value. Conclusion: there’s no point in buying, but maybe in renting.”

Earnestly? Yes, if we are talking only about the body and pleasant company. But what about starting a family, having and raising children, and so on? Many people find great value in this. (I won’t even talk about finding a soul mate in this context.)

Kant, who saw the ‘Affektionpreis’ - “emotional price” - even in inanimate objects, apparently does not apply to Wall Street... Just as it probably does not apply to women looking for rich husbands on the Internet.

My favorite bank on the blessed island of Madeira is called Banco Espirito Santo - Bank of the Holy Spirit. Its main headquarters are in mainland Portugal and the name is said to have historically been derived from the surname of the founder. It doesn’t matter - today it is inevitably linked in the mind with biblical associations. So, can the Holy Spirit facilitate banking? Judging by the success of the bank, then quite.

And in general - Christ drove the money changers out of the temple, and not from life in general - unlike the Bolsheviks, he understood the inevitability and even the necessity of commodity-money relations and transfers - in this world, not in another, of course. You just can’t confuse the holy and the base, the eternal and the temporary, the soul and money, or confuse a temple with a currency exchange office.

And the famous saying from the Gospel of St. Matthew is often quoted incorrectly: not just “money is the root of all the world’s evil,” but precisely “the love of money” is this most evil root. Again, don't confuse love with respect.

Like almost everything in this world, money itself is neither moral nor immoral. It all depends on the person - what use he will find for them, what aspects of his soul will be reflected in them.

Aristotle saw two forms of money: in the so-called “economy”, where they do a good, necessary thing - they establish production and retail trade as a means of commodity exchange, while the ominous “chrematistics” reveals their supposedly rotten nature, when the accumulation of money becomes an end in itself, gives rise to usury, and so on. In all this Aristotle saw a perversion of nature, money, and man. In general, it was not for nothing that Marx called him “the greatest thinker of antiquity.”

But Aristotle should not be considered a Bolshevik: for all his genius, he was a staunch supporter of slavery and simply could not foresee the importance capital and credit would receive two thousand years later.

For all their unsympathetic nature, the Shylocks, Gobseks and Stingy Knights, without knowing it, performed an important social role - someone had to accumulate large free capital for the first time in order to bring economic development to a new stage, to move forward. The state could do this, but it tended to use the money for wars and violence and the glorification of kings, rather than for the long-term goals of the economy. Or it could have been done by half-crazy nasty curmudgeons who themselves did not know their historical destiny.

Note that the Industrial Revolution really took off almost a century later than many of the technical discoveries needed to bring it about were made. Thus, the principle of the steam engine was known long before James Watt and Matthew Boulton not only built the first working model of it, but also created their own thriving company, which received 33 percent of the savings achieved by the enterprises that used it. That is, technology is technology, but without sufficiently large free capital, nothing would have come of it either.

Remember the story of Johannes Gutenberg? We owe it not only to his clear, brilliant head, but also to his donkey’s tenacity, that printing and the well-known press were born so early, which had such a colossal influence on the development of finance, culture, and civilization as a whole. In theory, this should have happened much later, since in Europe in the mid-15th century there was practically nowhere to get money for the manufacture of such equipment. The nobility had the money, but she was not interested in it. The church had the money, but the clergy initially found Gutenberg's ideas suspicious. There weren't that many moneylenders; they took seven skins, and in addition, the amounts they offered were in any case small.

How Gutenberg turned himself inside out in search of funds, even invented some crazy mirrors that captured the holy celestial radiations, and sold them to the residents of Aachen. (Given his absolute engineering genius, it must have been an interesting little thing). Finally, I found some moneylender named Fust (at least not Mephistopheles), who lent the amount of 800 guilders. But in the end there was not enough money, Gutenberg had nothing to pay with, the court confiscated the machine... And we are talking about an invention, the colossal commercial potential of which did not seem to require proof - but not in Europe of the 15th century.

And how many more amazing inventions and inventors perished without ever coming to fruition, in the darkness of those centuries, when there was nowhere to find sources of even small funding.

The industrial revolution that began in the 18th century is so called because it turned the life of mankind upside down. If earlier the growth of labor productivity was so slow that for centuries the financial situation of most people practically did not change, now this growth has begun to accelerate exponentially. This made it possible to achieve much higher rates of both consumption and accumulation.

Like modern economists, Marx based his analysis on past experience and therefore insisted that the working class was doomed to “absolute impoverishment.” He did not notice that life around him had already begun to change dramatically, that a powerful middle class was being born, that the foundations of a social (but not socialist!) state were being laid, in which absurd wealth would be accumulated, but in which for the majority a previously unimaginable level of material well-being would be achieved . For the first time in history, providing a decent life for many millions of people.

In general, the capital accumulated by immoral gold lovers became the basis for a colossal breakthrough in social development. Almost according to Goethe: “part of that force that always wants evil and always does good.”

Adam Smith's main idea was that market participants, driven solely by their own selfish interests, unwittingly serve the interests of the entire society. But does this mean in this case that the fairly universal desire of people for wealth is always justified? And here’s another seemingly strange question: do people always know what they are dooming themselves to when achieving this goal?

I think I really know how. But he himself never applied these methods in practice. Therefore, knowledge remains purely theoretical, and distributing recipes without full confidence in their accuracy, without testing it on myself, would be irresponsible on my part.

But something can still be said. To begin with, however, it would be necessary to figure out who understands what by wealth. Is 500 thousand dollars wealth for you? And, if not, how much? Million? Ten millions? Or does real wealth start with a billion dollars for you?

Humorist Will Rogers put it this way: “When is there enough money? When there are a little more of them than now.” I don't understand what's funny about this. In my opinion, this is simply a very accurate psychological observation, almost universal. Surely you yourself have encountered this in your life. It seems, oh, if only I received not twenty thousand, but twenty-five! I would have enough for everything... Then, through hard work, you achieve a promotion, and here they are, not even 25, but all 30 thousand, so what? But nothing is enough again. The needs somehow grew imperceptibly. No, you don’t need thirty, but forty. And now forty was already behind us, and for some reason fifty was not enough, and then a hundred. Roman Abramovich is probably thinking: oh, I just need a couple of billion extra, if only I could turn around!

It is clear that wealth is not an objective matter at all, and each of us - in different circumstances and at different stages of our lives - puts a completely different meaning into this concept.

Therefore, such an approach, for example, is quite legal: true, real wealth does not lie in the fact that your property is valued at six, seven, eight-figure sums. The truly rich are those who have a rich life. And this means – varied, interesting, sufficiently well-fed and comfortable, that goes without saying. But getting money should not take up too much of your time, otherwise you are not a rich man, but a slave. What's the point of having a lot of money if you can't use it to provide yourself with a decent lifestyle? If you don’t have time for love, for family, for raising children, for hobbies, for walks by the seashore, for books, films, concerts?

My richest English friend - let's call him Mr. Williams - is a wonderful, intelligent and surprisingly subtle and delicate person. Perhaps precisely because he is not a “new Englishman”, but an “old one”. Not in the sense of age, but in the sense that he is a third or fourth generation multimillionaire, that his father and grandfather sat in the House of Lords, that he is “old money”, not new.

He could, of course, portray aristocratic arrogance, but his parents did not raise him that way. They inspired him that it was shameful to boast about wealth and birth. If there is hidden snobbery in him, then it manifests itself precisely in the deliberate carelessness of clothing, in contempt for fashion, in the preference for old, battered cars to new ones. Sometimes, in my opinion, he goes too far with this when he wears sweaters with frayed sleeves or worn-down socks, even though they are spotlessly clean.

I first met him in Moscow, when, by the will of fate, he ended up with an assistant in my ten-meter square kitchen in a 16-story block cooperative in Novye Cheryomushki.

Oh, this kitchen was a source of special pride in our family in the 80s. Even if the rooms are small and the ceilings are not very high, even if the house is built not from prestigious bricks, but from block panels, there is still a place to sit at the table with friends. And after having a good snack and a little drink, you can then go dance in the living room - even though it wasn’t that much larger than the kitchen, it didn’t need to be cluttered with a table, which is why there was room to spread out.

How can we explain our almost instantaneous mutual sympathy? After all, we came from different not only worlds, but universes.

But we were both already free and rich people. Yes, yes - rich! He, with the millions he inherited (which, however, I had no idea about at the time we met) and I, with my 400 rubles a month official salary. Plus, there were also fees earned “from the left,” including a hundred or two dollars a month in foreign currency—a fortune at that time. I almost had enough money until payday! I loved my job very much, and for some reason I was also paid for it. I worked a lot, willingly, but at the same time there was time to travel with my wife, go to Gagra or the Moscow region, or even to Budapest. And books, and films, and endless heated arguments with colleagues - it was a life full to the brim. Neither I nor Mr. Williams had time or anyone to envy. But this thing, envy, most often pushes people to fight for big money.

Of course, if I had even the slightest idea about his condition and origin, it might confuse and constrain me. And so - he was, of course, some kind of big shot representing our London potential partners, I knew that. That evening my boss was supposed to please him, but something happened at the last minute and I had to replace him. There were very few decent restaurants in Moscow at that time and it was difficult to get into them unless you booked a table in advance, and out of grief I decided to invite him to my place in New Cheryomushki. True, I took a black Chaika from the boss to meet a guest at Sheremetyevo.

Mr. Williams examined the car with a cheerful curiosity that was not entirely clear to me at that moment, and said: I have never had the opportunity to travel in such huge cars!

And then, when the “Seagull” slowly made its way with great difficulty along the narrow, snow-covered paths between the houses of Novy Cheryomushki, a determined old woman in a down scarf and felt boots ran up to us and loudly kicked the wheel. “Uh-oh, servants of the people!” – she growled angrily. She had probably dreamed of such an opportunity for a long time, but the opportunity to get so close to the nomenclature’s machine never presented itself. And now they have arrived themselves - with home delivery.

"What was it?" – Mr. Williams was surprised. And when I explained everything to him as best I could (“servants of the people” is not the easiest idiom to translate), I was completely delighted. I did not yet understand what topic my guest had received for stories in the aristocratic salons of London!

He liked our apartment and especially the kitchen (he had certainly never been received like this before). He ate with taste, tried Russian dishes and drinks with sincere curiosity, in which, however, like me, he was very moderate. But much more united us. I was from a theatrical family, his aunt was a famous English actress, we both appreciated Chekhov more than other writers. And both could not stand showing off, what is now called “show-off.” And we liked the same jokes.

Thanks to Mr. Williams, I actually ended up in England. First, on a short business trip to implement some Anglo-Russian project, not planning to stay here for a long time, and then life turned out in such a way that I was “stuck” in Albion almost forever. Perhaps Mr. Williams was slowly leading things towards this from the very beginning, after we met.

Of course, being in his four-story mansion in the center of London after Novye Cheryomushki was somewhat... in general, my wife and I experienced something akin to shock. To soften the shock, Mr. Williams decided to receive us for the first time in the basement, in the kitchen.

Mr. Williams is quite happy in his family life, but he is the richest, but also the saddest among my English friends. A constant, inescapable sadness hides in his eyes. As soon as he relaxes, forgets himself a little, she crawls out.

And so I think: how much can this be connected with the fact that he was born very rich right away? There was nothing in the world that his parents or, later, he himself could not afford. What is it like to grow up knowing that in the material world, at least, there is nothing left to fight for? If he wants a steamship, there will be a steamboat, an airplane, then an airplane... At least five Rolls-Royces, at least ten... And what does it matter?

Mr. Williams' family created one of the world's renowned publishing companies. When the time came after university, he went to work for this company and after short internships in its various departments and a couple of business schools, he became one of its executive directors. Not the main one, but the key, supervising eye of the family - the owners of the blocking stake.

And what was it like again, I thought, to come and know that if you do not show signs of clinical idiocy (precisely in the medical sense of the word), then you will certainly become a director - not because you are talented, but because it is the way it is. You can be as smart as you want and work incredibly hard, but no one will appreciate it anyway; that’s not why you’re put in the command chair.

And it was, of course, somewhat sad, or at least boring. And therefore, Mr. Will was a little burdened by his work, maybe even very burdened, but he carefully hid it, only his friends could notice something at close range. But what could be done: no one else could replace him, and someone needed to represent the interests of the family in business. Since Mr. Williams's older brother, who, by the way, is also a nice, capable and intelligent person, immediately declared that business was not for him and he intended to divide his time between raising children and sawing with a jigsaw, in which he had achieved considerable perfection...

And yet, how relieved my friend was to resign when the family decided to sell his shares and step away from running the company entirely! Now he devotes himself to his wife and two wonderful, modest and serious children, and also, so that the accumulated knowledge and experience does not go to waste, he works on a purely voluntary basis as a consultant in several charitable societies.

He is a wonderful family man and a loyal friend, but wealth did not make him happy.

Fate also brought me into contact with a couple of Russian “oligarchs”. They, of course, are “self-made men”, they created themselves from scratch. It turned out to be difficult, even impossible, to be friends with them! But I managed to see that they are generally happy people, but they are not happy at all when they spend their crazy money. This is just boring for them, even sad. Although they throw sums here and there because the social conventions of their circle require it. A matter of prestige. But they do it rather with poorly concealed disgust. They are truly happy only when they make money in frenzied excitement and approach the next billion.

They are smart, tough, strong-willed people. Probably, in addition, they were very lucky - they were in the right place at the right time. But I repeat, they are happy not because they are rich, but because the passion for making money, the process itself makes them happy. Not for long, though, because when the goal is achieved, it becomes somewhat sad. But you have to set up a new one and sink your teeth into it, fight to achieve it and spin like a crazy squirrel in a crazy wheel.

Unfortunately, I am not familiar with the richest man on the planet, the “Oracle of Omaha” Warren Buffett. But it is known about him that, living far from big cities, he does without the obligatory attributes of wealth - they are not at all interesting to him. He lives in a very modest and small house in Omaha, Nebraska, which he bought for thirty-odd thousand dollars in 1958, drives a modest car... All his time, all his energy and colossal talents are spent on the process of creating money. He has elevated investing in the stock market to the level of a high art, and people travel to Omaha for the so-called “Woodstocks of capitalism” to be able to see and hear Buffett from all corners of the earth. His investment fund (since 1965 it has been called Berkshire Hathaway) has achieved cult status. Still would! He, almost alone among his kind, is growing and growing, starting from the 50s, he has already grown tens of thousands of times! This pocket doesn't change!

Buffett did not grow up in a poor, but not too rich family, but already in junior school he made money by speculating on cans of Coca-Cola and chewing gum. At 13, he filed his first tax return, writing off $35 as a capital equipment expense: a bicycle. But even then, apparently, money was not a means for him to obtain earthly goods, but an end in itself. That is, according to Marx and Aristotle, perversion, chrematistics.

Today this man is engaged in extensive charitable and social activities. By the way, he is seeking the introduction of a prohibitive inheritance tax. (“You can’t give the 2020 Olympic medals to the children of the 2000 Olympic champions,” he says.) And he himself is not going to bequeath almost anything to his children - from his point of view, everyone should achieve everything in life themselves. The money of the rich must eventually return to society.

Warren Buffett loves to share his experience and is happy to reveal the secrets of how to make money. And there are no secrets - mainly the intense work of the brain. Of course, an extraordinary brain that can manage powerful information flows, and therefore cash flows. He thoroughly studies the market and looks for stocks with growth potential. It uses the same well-known criteria - return to capital ratio, transparency, financial flows, determines whether overhead costs and debt are high, what is the state of competition and whether the company can withstand the attack of inflation. He constantly adds to his list of highly efficient companies, and then waits for the moment when they turn out to be undervalued by the stock exchange - often this happens at moments of a general drop in stock market indices, when panic kills everyone indiscriminately. And then he appears on stage.

Everyone seems to know this technology, but the rest either lack patience or are greedy... One of the latest examples: Buffett noted that in small American cities a pronounced trend has emerged - newspapers are closing and there is only one left. But this is the only one remaining, as a result of the disappearance of competitors, sharply increasing its advertising sales and, accordingly, income. And so Buffett, together with his main business partner Charles Munger, began to find successful leading newspapers in such cities and invest money in them. The injection of fresh capital tended to speed up this process, competitors were quickly defeated, and Berkshire Hathaway earned hundreds of millions of dollars from it. It seemed like a simple idea, but no one else thought of it.

There are so many books in the world that describe in detail what you need to do to get rich. There are no numbers for them. For example, Horst Mechler’s book “Money Doesn’t Smell.” In fact, in the original German edition it is called completely differently - “Self-Made Millionaires”, but Russian publishers thought that this did not sound cynical enough, because in Russia society still believes that you can earn big money only if you are infinitely immoral , chrematic, so to speak.

And if something else is said, then it is so, fairy tales for the naive. So, Horst Mechler, having interviewed a cloud of “self-made” rich people, discovered that all of them, as one, listed, albeit in different words, 14 of the same principles necessary to create a fortune. I will not bother listing them, they are quite predictable and, probably, it is useful to take them into account. But if they contained the real secret of how to become rich, then, probably, the question would be resolved by itself - everyone who read the book would automatically join the ranks of the oligarchs and the rich. And if it were only a matter of cruelty and the absence of moral restrictions, then, one must think, there would be a lot of rich people in Russia. And not only in Russia, of course.

So that's not the point. The secret is the same - that there is no secret. One way to get rich is to receive an inheritance or win the lottery, well, or accidentally come across some gold (or oil) vein, get rich without understanding what you are doing, without much difficulty.

Such wealth not only requires supernatural luck, when there is one chance in millions, but it also rarely brings happiness. According to observations, random millionaires do not know what to do with the money that unexpectedly fell on them. They quickly waste these states, losing friends and loved ones in the process, losing their inherent way of life and not adapting to the new. They drink too much, shoot themselves, become drug addicts. Or they simply live out their lives in dreary loneliness.

So the case of my friend Williams is still successful - he was taught money from childhood, so it was not a burden to him, but it did not bring him happiness either.

But you understand: it’s hardly worth counting on such an inheritance or winning the lottery. Then the second way remains - this is hard, selfless labor.

One of the Americans who wrote on these topics noted that, in principle, anyone who complains about their poverty and miserable dependence on an unloved, boring job can change their fate overnight - if only they have the desire. For example, take a loan from a bank, buy a farm and work there tirelessly, from dawn to dusk. The system in American agriculture is now such that this practically guarantees you not just a well-fed, but also a very prosperous life. In addition, you will become your own boss - a wonderful thing, by the way! True, you have to work hard, God forbid - but what do you want, get wealth while lying on the sofa? It doesn't happen like that!

There are other ways to almost certainly and quickly become a wealthy person. For example, if you, as they say, have your hands on each side, you can buy apartments and houses that are in a deplorable condition, but in good, promising areas. Again, take out a loan for this business if there is no other way to acquire capital. And, having repaired them properly, resell them for a considerable profit. At the same time, you need to carefully consider whether the bank is imposing murderous interest rates on you and what will happen if they suddenly increase significantly? And before you buy real estate, you need to do a lot of careful research - how much houses cost here and what kind of margin a good renovation can give.

If you are a quick-witted person and can also handle basic accounting, then before you know it, you will be at the head of an entire business. And then a lot will depend on your ability to get along with people, guide them, make the most of their strengths and neutralize their weaknesses. If you are strong in this, you can soon find yourself the owner of an entire real estate agency.

But in any case, this is the most reliable type of city business. But there are others.

All of them imply, of course, a painstaking study of the markets, a deep understanding of the mechanisms that you are going to use to create money. And, of course, in the end, love for the work itself. And business, by the way, in English is business.

But first you need determination and patience. Because in financial matters, as in all others, Hemingway’s formula applies: “Sluggish curiosity has neither the right nor the strength to own anything.”

On the other hand, if behind your desire to get rich is only sick pride and complexes, the desire to quickly assert yourself at any cost, then this alone may also not be enough. If you dream only about the result, without thoroughly understanding the process, without learning to enjoy hard work, then big troubles may await you. Such, for example, as recently befell the Frenchman Jerome Kerviel. Those who do not take risks, as we know, do not drink champagne, but those who risk senselessly and recklessly will also most likely remain on beer and water, or even end up in prison gruel.