Getting rich requires optimism and risk-taking. Staying rich requires the opposite: pessimism and paranoia. Most people can't master both mindsets at once, which is why wealth rarely survives across generations.
Getting rich and staying rich are two completely different skills. And that is what is so often overlooked because we want to think of just money as one skill, like getting rich as one skill, but the skill to make a lot of money versus holding onto it for a generation or more is totally different. And I think the best way to explain it is like getting rich requires being an optimist and taking a chance and being optimistic in yourself, swinging for the fences. Staying rich is also is the opposite. It's a completely contradictory skill where you need to be like pessimistic and paranoid. Being optimistic and pessimistic at the same time and getting those to coexist is so difficult and not a lot of people can do it.
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