What these 3 movies taught me about money, finance, success
Wether we want to or not, during this time we’re at home. A lot. The perfect time to watch some movies. Turns out some of my favorite movies are incredible helpful and inspiring for my own life. Here’s why.
1. The Wolf of Wallstreet
Sure, what can you learn from The Wolf of Wallstreet for life? Everything we get told in school or at least in my family is: You don’t want to be someone like this. A degenerate, who fucks whores all day, burns enormous sums of money and does drugs so hard it’s impossible to follow up in the movie. And then there’s the thing where this guys simply made money off of his clients by selling crappy penny stocks knowing they blow off in value. And of course — spoiler alert — at the end of the day my family gets its prejudice: Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street, has to go to jail.
The rich, again.
But it’s not that easy. The movie is more. There is also this young Jordan, 22 years old, starting out on Wall Street. Finally a broker, he gets screwed on his first day of work in October 1987, where a big crash happened.
But instead of sticking his had in the sand he went on with his life, eventually landing a job at a penny stock brokerage firm, working his way up. On his first day is clear: This man can sell basically anything. So he goes on on his own, starting Stratton Oakmont, a big and successful brokerage firm (which later gets closed down cause of fraud). And he gets a lot of money which he burns quickly due to his party all weekend lifestyle.
He buys a yacht, a Ferrari, a big mansion and everything. This man enjoys life.
What I’ve learned: Dream big, work hard, but also enjoy your life — and at least try to obey the law…
(EDIT: As a reader — thank you Josh — pointed out, you can watch this movie right now for free with Amazon Prime.)
2. The Big Short
This is probably the best movie about the financial crisis 2008 ever shown. It tells the story of Michael Burry and some other investors. Among very few Burry saw the housing market bubble and was betting big that it’ll pop.
At the end of the day Burry — and some others — were able to make huge amounts of money. But it took time. „I may be early but I’m not wrong“ sums the Burry trade perfectly up. He had to handle angry investors, withdrawals over and over again. Big banks where at the other side of his trade.
Bonus: I’ve learned about an investor otherwise I would’ve never heard of. Michale Burry runs a (new) Hedge Fund. His moves are interesting to follow. For example he’s betting on Gamestop or Tailored Brands to date.
What I’ve learned: Sometimes it takes time before you get proven right.
3. The Founder
In The Founder John Lee Hancrock tells the story of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc. However, he’s not really the founder but the one who brought one single location store with the fast system (get a burger in 30 seconds not 30 minutes) to the whole big world. It tells the story of a 50 something year old men who sells milkshake mixers for a living, listens to motivational vinyls in a hotel room and is the guy who tries out a bunch of things but nothing really works out — until he meets Dick and Mac Mcdonald, who run a burger restaurant.
He sees the potential and builds one McDonald’s after another and brings it to tens, hundreds, thousands other locations, building one of the greatest franchise the world has seen. Everyone knows what McDonald’s is, what you get there and how it tastes.
This movie shows: Life is not over in your 50s. You can still start something completely new when others think about retirement. This was so helpful to me. I am 19 but I am definitely not good at handling getting older (as dumb as it sounds). With every week, month, year passing by I am often thinking I could do so much more, even though I am going forward. My business gets bigger, my programming skills improve and even my English writing gets better (at least some telling me; this is my second language after German).
What I’ve learned: Persistence is everything. Don’t give up. Ever.