Harry's $$$

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 166368

---  "Tandra" <tkjones9 at ...> wrote:
>
> Ok, so I've been thinking about this recently, is it
> ever mentioned what Harry's parents did? Why does he 
> have so much money? Do wizards have life insurance? I 
> mean since they were killed I could see that money 
> going into Gringots(sp) and growing interest for 11 
> years while he was not in the wizard world. But this 
> doesn't seem to be explained anywhere. So anyone have
> any theories?
> 
> tkjones
>

bboyminn:

Consider the old saying that 'it takes money to make 
money'.

What James did for a living is 'he was rich'. He made a 
fair living off investments and working whatever job 
appealed to him at the moment. Consider if you win the
Lottery, at a mere 5% interest, you can earn $50,000 a
year for every million dollars you have. A person can 
live quite nicely on %50,000 a year, and 5% is probably
the least you can earn in interest. With wise investing
you could earn $100,000/yr per million in assets.

So, now we must ask, where did James get all this money
he was investing. Answer: Just has Harry inherited it
from James, James inherited it from his father. It seems
that James parents were an old well-off wizarding couple.
They had many many decades to build their wealth, a 
potion of which they probably inherited. More accurately
James and his father were probably 'businessmen' or
investors. They earned money from the money they already 
had. Think of Mean Uncle Ralph in the novel 'Nicholas 
Nickleby'. People gave Mean Uncle Ralph money, he turned
it into more money and kept a share of the profits for
himself. 

JKR said that James was comfortably well-off from 
inheritance so that he didn't need a regular job. 

Just passing it along.

Steve/bboyminn