My first job paid well for a young attorney. I was making over $50,000, which was more than either of my parents had ever made. I thought I was rich.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I made a small fortune. I made a lot of money and I made a lot of other people wealthy.
My dad was a bartender. My mom was a cashier, a maid and a stock clerk at K-Mart. They never made it big. They were never rich. And yet they were successful. Because just a few decades removed from hopelessness, they made possible for us all the things that had been impossible for them.
As a child, as far as I was concerned, my dad had an amazing job, and we had all the money we needed. My life was so fun and carefree that I didn't realize at all that we weren't rich - until I met someone rich. Still, I've never met a rich kid who grew up as happy as I did.
I didn't come from a wealthy family. My dad told us if we wanted spending money, we had to earn it. So I developed an early work ethic.
My dad was an autoworker, my mom was a clerk. Until I was thirty-five, I never made more than fifteen thousand dollars a year.
As a young kid, I really wanted to be rich.
My father and his brothers were all lawyers, so I think that the expectation was probably for me to grow up to be an attorney, but it never really fascinated me that much. I was more interested in building things.
I made my money turning around distressed or bankrupt companies. I did 50-some of them in my career... I started on a shoestring and eventually built up quite a fortune.
Although I grew up in very modest and challenging circumstances, I consider my life to be immeasurably rich.
I led a comfortable life, went to good schools and was privileged in many ways, but my father worked hard. We never considered ourselves rich.