“He sold his patent for $82 million. At 31.”

As a Senior Staff Writer at BuzzFeed, I cover real-life stories that explore relationships, lifestyle (including travel and beauty), and the internet's most fascinating trends.

"He knew he wasn’t retiring early, etc., on that, but with no mortgage and plenty of savings/investments, his life is very lax. He works part-time on jobs he likes the look of and enjoys life. That’s the dream for most of us."

"He also developed a drinking problem and possibly a drug problem. Most recently, I heard he got fired from his job, his rich wife divorced him, but he's doing okay financially because he had a kid with her, and that entitled him to some amount of money per his prenup."

"He also started dabbling in real estate and started rehabbing old commercial buildings and storage units. To top it all off, he's just a great guy. Super friendly, gets along with everyone. On Fridays, he sends his crews out to do charity work, helping out older people, those in poverty, or down-on-their-luck people and families."

"Now, he's taking three months of holidays abroad per year, including regular trips to the house he has on a small island. He was even proposed as mayor of his small city (but cannot, as he is still banned from running for public office). Also, he is barely literate."

"He had paid memberships to specific sections of the forums. The dude went from making, like, $20,000 a year to making $25,000 a day. For two years, he was the only guy working on the site, so aside from operating costs, he pocketed all the cash. He started to make other websites that were the same for other tech products, the companies, and then specific car brands and stuff like that. ... I remember him saying he was making about $100M a year in income personally over the cost of paying a dozen employees and the costs to run the company.

However, as time went on, some companies sued him to take down his sites for leaking tech secrets, and then social media came around, and forums and stuff slowly faded away. I'm sure he is still very wealthy, though, and I hope he's happy and doing his best in life."

"Backfired on me because when I got divorced, the annoying friend funded my ex-wife's lawyers."

"He went from being a mechanic to being retired in the span of a month."

"Great guy and super happy for him. He poured tons of effort into that company over the years, and it paid off. He collects vintage Porsches now."

Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.