B. Lorenzo Buckinchere
Jul 20, 2025
Preface:
Do you remember when you were able to raise your first thousand? I do. It was about 12 years ago in New York. I earned it during the two months that I worked as a temp at the Port Authority Terminal over in Hell’s Kitchen, and poor me felt so rich at the time.
I had just turned 25, and barely coming out of years of unemployment, temping between jobs. If I was rich, I would have been able to invest the money as principal while comfortably living off the interest. I would have been way ahead of most New Yorkers at the time, and in fact most Americans. I just didn’t know any better.
But that is how they get you. They want you to feel rich off the very little that they pay you. The next thing you know, you find yourself taking out credit cards and auto loans you can’t afford. Or you start thinking about changing your zip code.
The feeling of being young and raising your first thousand is one of success and accomplishment. However, this is only the beginning and you cannot afford to lose track of reality, especially as a man, or you might just find yourself falling below stage one. Bet ya didn’t know there was even such a thing.
That is why I am here, to help put the varying levels of wealth building back into its proper context. Wealth building levels may vary based on currency, so for the sake of this article, I will be using the American dollar.
Negative:
This is an amount below zero. If you fall below zero, you are in the negatives, which means that you are in debt. Whether it’s overdraft on your checking account, or a credit card bill that’s past due, you have debt that you cannot afford to pay off. They made you feel so rich, but now they’re here to collect, and you just lost your job. They couldn’t have picked a worst possible time.
Peanuts:
This is an amount between 1 and 99 cents. This is how much they pay you to participate in online surveys. 34 cents, here, 25 cents there. You get the picture. They say it adds up if you do enough surveys over time. But who has time for that shit? We’ve got real bank to make.
Change:
This is an amount between 1 and 99 dollars. It’s literal change because it’s the paper notes you get back at the store whenever you break a solid hundred. A five, a ten, a couple of twenties and some singles.
America runs on change because if the poor man stops and buys a beer and a pack of cigarettes every night on his way home from work, and if every poor man does the same in every city across the country, then America runs on change.
Cash:
Cash is any amount between 100 and 1000 dollars. It is usually a bunch of Benjamins all rolled up, and is used to pay rent, bills, gas and groceries. The average employee has cash on hand. It makes you feel rich on a Friday night, but then you pay some bills and buy some weed over the weekend, and by Monday morning, you’re crying again. It doesn’t help if you have kids.
Savings:
This is an amount between 1000 and 10,000 dollars. This is where the climb goes a bit uphill. Very few Americans have $3000 to fall back on in case of an emergency. Even fewer Americans have $5000 or more in savings. This is very dangerous because one hospital visit, or car repair bill can wipe out your entire savings, and throw you back into poverty.
Surplus:
This is an amount between 10,000 and 100,000 dollars, where your net worth safely stays above $10,000. Here, the numbers dwindle even further. If you have a net worth within this range, you are ahead of most normies. You are on the right track, but you are not out of the woods yet.
Another reason why this is a danger zone is because most clout chasing normies love to act like they’re already there. And if you allow yourself to fall for it, then you are gullible enough to believe that pigs fly, especially when you consider that the only thing about the normies that is overflowing is their bathroom trash cans.
On the bright side, this is also a place where you can now afford to update your grocery list so as to include the proper nutrition. This is the “healthy foods that don’t suck” club. We’re talking salmon, tenderloin, shrimp and scallops as nightly dinner options. Nightly.
Capital:
Capital starts at $100K, the standard lot size of most investment portfolios. Capital is any amount between 100,000 and 1,000,000. You are now able to invest and grow the money, and the capital will be able to cover the shortfall of minor fluctuations in the market, but one hundred thousand is merely the beginning of capital. Either way, if you have capital, then you are way ahead of the average American.
Fortune:
This is an amount between 1,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 dollars. If you have a fortune, then you can talk about changing your zip code and splurging on that brand new 2026 Porsche and BMW convertible.
You can pull your kids out of public school and hire a governess to homeschool them, then send them backpacking through Europe at age 17 to teach them about life. Be forewarned however, that if you are in the millions, the money is rarely intergenerational, and may not exceed your lifetime if your net worth is below a hundred million.
Money is a joke:
This amount is only if your net worth is One Billion United States Dollars or greater. Think Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, etc. If you are in the hundreds of Billions, you have more money than you can afford to spend in 20 lifetimes if you were frugal with it, and as such you can afford to treat money as if it were a joke.
Once you are in the billions, you are now able to afford jets, yachts, private islands, golf courses, etc. Gambling away tens of millions in risky hedge funds may suddenly seem more exciting to you just for the sheer sport of it.
If you are second generation, you will likely not understand the value of hard work, and as such may be subjected to trust funds up until your 30th birthday. Third generation is even worse. You have never known a sick day where there isn’t a team of five doctors hovering over your bed at least twice an hour, trying to figure out what’s wrong with you. And hunger? That doesn’t exist on planet earth to you, it exists in a parallel dimension.
Conclusion:
In closing, where are you on this list? And where do you see yourself in five years? Above all else, what are you willing to do to get there, and do so in an honest and timely fashion?
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