Nite

Money lessons from people who actually made it | Stories, numbers, no fluff

[Nite @NitePov]

@thedrbryte Two of the richest men in America and neither of them moved. That tells you more about wealth than any portfolio

[Nite @NitePov]

@vladuah He almost walked away. The sellers wanted $30 million and he refused to go above $25 million. Five million nearly cost him the best deal he ever made

[Nite @NitePov]

@vexmindhq This is the same idea as markets. You do not need to be right more often, you need to be right where nobody else is standing.

[Nite @NitePov]

@recketino That is what makes it hard to watch. He was not careless, he was 19 and broke, and it still cost him everything.

[Nite @NitePov]

Jeff Bezos' biological father gave up custody of him after a teenage marriage fell apart. Decades later a TV crew filmed Ted Jorgensen at 69, repairing bicycles in Phoenix.

His son was worth an estimated $27 billion by then. Jorgensen had never even heard of Amazon.

Asked whether he regretted the decision, he answered: "Big mistake. But at the time I thought it was the best."

He and Jackie married as teenagers in 1963. He was a poor circus performer. Jeff was born in 1964. After the split, Jackie married Mike Bezos, who adopted the boy and raised him as his own.

Jorgensen opened a bike shop and worked in obscurity for 40 years. A biographer walked in and asked if he knew who Jeff Bezos was. The name only sounded kind of familiar.

Bezos had said one thing about him in public. He thinks about it only when a doctor asks him to fill out a form.

Jorgensen told the crew in 2014 that he did not want a penny from his son. He wanted to apologize and shake his hand. He died in 2015.

Most exits look cheap on the day they are signed. The only cost anyone can see is the cost of staying. Traders who sold early to get their calm back know this one: the relief comes first, the bill comes years later.

Almost fifty years after that choice he finally saw what it had cost, and his answer is in the video below.

[Nite @NitePov]

@GuntherWrite And he found out from a writer who walked into his bike shop. He had been fixing bikes a few hours from his son's world for 40 years.

[Nite @NitePov]

@OxSJenny @promptdog_ai Yes. The only person who can really put a price on it is the one who paid it, and he did in that interview

[Nite @NitePov]

@promptdog_ai That is the part that makes it hard to call a mistake. He lost a son, and the son got the two people who made him who he is

[Nite @NitePov]

@mrcsxbt $650,100 looked expensive in 2007. The last one of these lunches sold for $19 million in 2022. He got the cheapest tuition in the history of that auction

[Nite @NitePov]

@0xFiner The 4 percent loan to his own son is the detail that answers it for me. You do not charge interest if you are only protecting the family

[Nite @NitePov]

@promptdog_ai The line about pensions and index funds is the part most people will skip. You can avoid AI stocks and still be funding this through the debt your fund holds

[Nite @NitePov]

@vontrixai He also said once that you should never underestimate a man who overestimates himself. I think both things were true for him at the same time

[Nite @NitePov]

@vexmindhq Which is probably why he never went looking. He already had a father

[Nite @NitePov]

@TheEpTic @KatieMiller Probably the smartest move in the whole interview. Anything he said there would have been the headline

[Nite @NitePov]

The other half of the story is Mike Bezos. He came from Cuba alone at 16, with no English, and adopted Jeff when the boy was four. Bezos has always called him his real dad.

[Nite @NitePov]

Jeff Bezos' biological father gave up custody of him after a teenage marriage fell apart. Decades later a TV crew filmed Ted Jorgensen at 69, repairing bicycles in Phoenix.

His son was worth an estimated $27 billion by then. Jorgensen had never even heard of Amazon.

Asked whether he regretted the decision, he answered: "Big mistake. But at the time I thought it was the best."

He and Jackie married as teenagers in 1963. He was a poor circus performer. Jeff was born in 1964. After the split, Jackie married Mike Bezos, who adopted the boy and raised him as his own.

Jorgensen opened a bike shop and worked in obscurity for 40 years. A biographer walked in and asked if he knew who Jeff Bezos was. The name only sounded kind of familiar.

Bezos had said one thing about him in public. He thinks about it only when a doctor asks him to fill out a form.

Jorgensen told the crew in 2014 that he did not want a penny from his son. He wanted to apologize and shake his hand. He died in 2015.

Most exits look cheap on the day they are signed. The only cost anyone can see is the cost of staying. Traders who sold early to get their calm back know this one: the relief comes first, the bill comes years later.

Almost fifty years after that choice he finally saw what it had cost, and his answer is in the video below.

[Nite @NitePov]

@GuntherWrite The warrants are the real story. He exercised them in 2017 when the stock was around $24. That was a profit of about $12 billion on paper

[Nite @NitePov]

@sterlingwallst He bought Bear for $10 a share and then paid billions in fines for things Bear did before he owned it. No wonder he would not pick up again.

[Nite @NitePov]

@watoulsky He lost almost everything at 31 and still said this decades later. That is what makes it worth listening to.