Video Update: You Don’t Have to Hit the Lottery to Make a Fortune

With enough wealth, you have the freedom to pursue anything you want.

But you don’t have to gamble to reach that.

Making your financial dreams come true isn’t a matter of getting lucky. It’s about being intelligent.

And we have a strategy to build wealth, safely and rationally. Today, Chief Analyst Adam Galas shares why winning the lottery isn’t always a good thing.

So instead of betting to make quick money with little chance of winning… At Fortress, we use facts and historical evidence to grow your wealth and help you reach your financial dreams.

Click below to watch the video or scroll down to read the transcript.

Happy SWAN (sleep well at night) investing,

Brad Thomas Editor, Fortress Portfolio

Welcome Fortress Portfolio members to another weekly video update – special lottery-fever edition.

Today, of course, we’re talking about the $1.6 billion Mega Millions Jackpot.

Everyone’s talking about it.

People from around the world came to the United States to buy tickets.

Now, as you can see below, the reality is slightly less exciting than the headline numbers make it appear.

(Source: LotteryCalculator)

After taxes, the cash option is just under $500 million and even lower if you live in a state that taxes lottery winners (as most do).

But still, nearly half a billion dollars is a life changing amount of money.

But here’s the thing that most people forget about money.

Money is power.

It is concentrated human labor that allows you to bend time and space to your will.

Almost godlike is this power… You can do almost anything that doesn’t violate the laws of physics.

Just look at what Elon Musk is trying to do with his fortune – colonize Mars.

But as Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben teaches us “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Which brings me to the lottery curse.

70% of lottery winners end up going bankrupt within a few years.

And yes, that includes the Mega Million Jackpot winners.

There’s no amount of money that can cure stupid.

Now, as you can see below, I have succumbed to the lottery fever.

Whenever the jackpot is over a billion dollars my family and I buy exactly one ticket so that we can create this table.

(Source: Adam Galas Google Sheet)

It allows us to dream for a few days about what we could do to change the world with our fortune.

It is a highly disciplined and structured plan designed to prevent any of us from blowing all of our money.

But here’s the good news – I’m not going to win the lottery, and neither are you.

Thank God for that… Because the odds of actually winning the Mega Millions Jackpot is one in 302.5 million.

So how unlikely is that?

Well, you’re 431 times more likely to be struck by lightning.

But here’s the good news.

While you and I are not going to win the lottery, we don’t have to in order to make our financial dreams come true.

And to show you why, let’s consider another extreme example from the reverse side of the spectrum.

Bill Gates is the fourth richest person on earth, worth a $133 billion.

Now, of course, he co-founded Microsoft (MSFT) and that’s where most people assume he made his fortune.

When he left Microsoft in 2000, he was worth $63 billion.

But since then, he’s since grown that wealth by $70 billion. And impressively, he’s given away $70 billion to charity.

So he’s actually grown his net worth by $143 billion.

Now, Microsoft is worth about $2.5 trillion today so most people think that’s how Gates must have made his current fortune.

But in reality, Bill Gates only owns 1% of Microsoft, which is about $25 billion (less than 20% of his net worth today).

So how did he make $143 billion? It was not through Microsoft.

It was through dividend growth blue-chips.

He actually has all of his money invested in a trust fund called Cascade Asset Management Company, which is basically a private hedge fund that he owns. This hedge fund owns large shares in companies such as Canadian National Railway (CN), Waste Management (WM), United Parcel Service (UPS) and FedEx (FDX), just to name a few.

And these are famous companies or perhaps companies that you haven’t heard of but use every day.

The exciting thing about these companies is that they can generate 10% to 15% long term returns and very consistent dividend growth.

And that is the key to how Bill Gates has grown his wealth by $70 billion while donating $70 billion to charity at over $3 billion per year… All while still living in a house like this.

(Source: New York Times)

It is worth $150 million and comprised of 66,000 square feet on a lake.

The man lives like a king, donates more to charity than almost anyone, and still gets steadily richer over time because he’s doing it all off of dividends.

And while this is, of course, an extreme example… So is the lottery.

The point is that we don’t have to found Microsoft or win it big via the Mega Millions Jackpot to achieve our dreams.

All we have to do is harness the world’s best companies.

Now, let me share a secret with you.

My family has been struggling with some pretty bad medical conditions for my grandparents, who have had several heart attacks and several bouts of cancer over the years.

And yet my family manages to live in an almost blissful zen-like state.

We don’t have to live in worry and fear. We have the money to pay for the medical care of my grandparents and can provide what they need.

And it’s not because our lives are otherwise perfect.

I’m a small business owner, and of course, any entrepreneur knows something is always going wrong.

Any parent can tell you that even if you love your kids, often times you are quite miserable when they are not doing well.

And yet, even with everything going wrong in life, we manage to live a euphoric-like lifestyle because our life savings are invested in the world’s best companies.

And these are the kind of companies that you own as a Fortress Portfolio member.

Because the key is that while there’s always going to be problems in life, we are putting our money into companies with the best risk managers. These are management teams comprised of people making millions of dollars to figure out how to solve their company’s problems, and how to send that revenue to you via dividends.

Now, look, money’s not going to solve every problem, but it sure can make problems much easier to deal with and result in a happier life.

One that allows you to live your financial dreams no matter what the stock market economy is doing.

And that is ultimately what Fortress Portfolio is all about.

That’s why I spent eight years studying and building this system… So that I can help you achieve your financial dreams and coast to financial nirvana on an ocean of safe and exponentially growing dividends.

I want to thank you for joining us this week.

Remember to please send us your questions and feedback so I can respond to them in these videos and our monthly issues.

I hope you join us next week when we’ll talk about some of the incredible anti-bubble blue-chip opportunities that are all around us (even with the market near record highs).

Until then, this is Adam Galas, wishing you and your family safe investing and a healthy, relaxing week.