How to earn money without investment

[02/08, 10:52 pm] Himanshu Kumar: INTRODUCTION : The Greatest Show On Earth SPENT MY COLLEGE years working as a valet at a nice hotel in Los Angeles. One frequent guest was a technology executive. He was a genius, having designed and patented a key component in WI - FI routers in his 20s. He had started and sold several companies. He was wildly successful. He also had a relationship with money I'd describe as a mix of insecurity and childish stupidity. He carried a stack of hundred dollar bills several inches thick. He showed it to everyone who wanted to see it, and many who didn't. He bragged openly and loudly about his wealth, often while drunk and always apropos of nothing. One day he handed one of my colleagues several thousand dollars of cash and said"Go to the jewelry store down the street and get me a few $1,000 gold coins. " An hour later, gold coins in hand, the tech executive and his buddies gathered around by a dock overlooking the Pacific Ocean. They then proceeded to throw the coins into the sea, skipping them like rocks, cackling as they argued whose went furthest. Just for fun. Days later, he shattered a lamp in the hotel's restaurant. A manager told him it was a $500 Lampard he'd have to replace it.[02/08, 10:54 pm] Himanshu Kumar: My favorite Wikipedia entry begins :"Ronald James Read was an American philanthropist, investor, janitor and gas station attendant. " Ronald Read was born in rural Vermont. He was the first person in his family to graduate high school, made all the more impressive by the fact that he hitchhiked to campus each day. For those who knew Ronald Read, there wasn't much else worth mentioning. His life was about as low-key as they come. Read fixed cars at a gas station for 25 years and swept floors at JCPenney for 17 years. He bought a two - bedroom house for $12,000 at age 38 and lived there for the rest of his life. He was widowed at age 50 and never remarried. A friend recalled that his main hobby was chopping firewood. Read died in 2014, age 92. Which is when the humble rural janitor made international headlines. 2,813,503 Americans died in 2014. Fewer than 4,000 of them had a net worth of over $8 million when they passed away. Ronald Read was one of them. In his will, the former janitor left $2 million to his step kids and more than $6 million to his local hospital and library. Those who knew Read were baffled. Where did he[02/08, 10:55 pm] Himanshu Kumar: Then the 2008 financial crisis hit? The crisis hurt virtually everyone's finances. It apparently turned Fusion into dust. High debt and illiquid assets left him bankrupt. " I currently have no income,"he allegedly told a bankruptcy judge in 2008. First, his Palm Beach house was foreclosed. In 2014, it was the Greenwich mansion's turn. Five months before Ronald Read left his fortune to charity, Richard Fusion home - where guests recalled the"thrill of dining and dancing atop a see - through covering on the home's indoor swimming pool"-was sold in a foreclosure auction for 75% less than an insurance company figured it was worth.³ Ronald Read was patient ; Richard Fusion was greedy. That's all it took to eclipse the massive education and experience gap between the two. The lesson here is not to be more like Ronald and less like Richard - though that's not bad.