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It doesn’t need to be this way! Billionaire level wealth aside, amassing a few million over the course of a lifetime isn’t as difficult as people think, it jus

It doesn’t need to be this way! Billionaire level wealth aside, amassing a few million over the course of a lifetime isn’t as difficult as people think, it just requires discipline. Live well within your means and invest your saved money in assets consistently, compounding and time will do the rest. Most rich people get there slowly, and don’t appear to live a rich person’s lifestyle. Conversely, a lot of people who appear rich have little accumulated wealth. If you’d like to know more, Have a read of “The millionaire next door” and “I will teach you to be rich”. They changed my outlook on what being wealthy meant, and I’m now putting thousands onto my net worth every month in a automated way.

closeparen 8y ago
A middle-class person with a retirement account is not in anywhere near the same league as a superyacht owner. Yes, you can and should achieve financial independence in old age by investing a reasonable percentage of your income over time, but that has nothing to do with the billionaire class.
foepys 8y ago
> and I’m now putting thousands onto my net worth every month Lucky you. A lot of people I know don't even make thousands per month. They make less than $2,000 after taxes. With this, accumulating millions isn't possible, not even slowly. And even these people are way better off than other's who barely make $1,000 or even less.
- retrac98 8y ago
  This is the beauty of it - you don’t need to make thousands per month to work towards making thousands per month. The money you do invest can generate a return, which when re-invested compounds. Yes, this happens very slowly at first, but over the course of many years gets you towards your thousands per month. I don’t have thousands left from my 9-5 job every month, but my assets (accumulated over years) work for me, and I just add what I can to that money making machine.
  - intended 8y ago
    True, but this is a huge misdirection. The difference between the top 1% and top 0.1% is in itself absurdly large. Your Existence or presence alone creates money making opportunities, and in some cases you are effectively beyond the law. Talking about millionaires is like talking about your friends who are rich lawyers in the same breath as Bill Gates. It’s the difference between the moon and Saturn.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- closeparen 8y ago
  Suppose you make $24k. Investing $2400/yr from age 22 and earning 5% returns, you investments pay $540/mo in today's dollars by age 65 [0]. Add in $1,110 in tdoay's dollars from Social Security [1] and you're at 85% income replacement. Of course there are big problems with saving 10% of so little, and your retirement account could be even more at risk in a financial emergency, but in principle retirement works up and down the income ladder. [0] https://retirementplans.vanguard.com/VGApp/pe/pubeducation/calculators/RetirementIncomeCalc.jsf https://retirementplans.vanguard.com/VGApp/pe/pubeducation/c... [1] https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/quickcalc/ https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/quickcalc/
  - lkrubner 8y ago
    "and earning 5% returns" This is basically impossible for reasons explained here: https://voxeu.org/article/suprasecular-stagnation https://voxeu.org/article/suprasecular-stagnation I'm old enough to recall the boom of the 1990s. Me and my professional friends were constantly invited to come to seminars about investing. All the mutual funds were trying to convince us to invest in the stock market. At that time, the stock market was booming, so it was easy to believe that investing in the stock market was a legitimate way to become wealthy. All of the pitches recited the same set of numbers: we could invest in low risk mutual funds and get 12% returns, or we could invest in high risk mutual funds and get 16% returns. It was explained that when we were young we should prefer high risk strategies, and as we got older we should prefer lower risk strategies. Then the crash of 2001 happened. Nasdaq took 10 years to come back to life. The stock market was flat for many, many years. Around 2003 we started getting invitations to seminars that taught us how important it was to invest in real estate. We were told that the value of homes had never gone down, in all of USA history. It was the safest investment, and had significant returns. Then the crash of 2008 happened. My friends who had bought homes were underwater. Even as recently as 2015, I still had friends who owed more on their homes than the homes were worth. These notions that it is easy to get stable long term returns has not been born out by my experience, or the experience of any of my professional peers. Our actual experience was very well described by the Bible: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." http://biblehub.com/ecclesiastes/9-11.htm http://biblehub.com/ecclesiastes/9-11.htm
lordnacho 8y ago
What people talk about is consuming a lot. Having an expensive yacht, for instance. If you save up like a squirrel, you don't get the benefits of being wealthy, even if you are. And how rich are you really if a bit of consumption would significantly reduce your future consumption capacity? I would argue you're not really rich if you can't just spunk money on whatever you feel like. And no, changing your desires to desire less might be just as satisfying (in fact I try to do that too), but it's not being rich, in the sense people ordinarily mean.
- misterman101 8y ago
  While the dictionary defines rich as "Possessing great material wealth" the real value of being rich is not having to worry about being poor (feeding yourself, affording rent, etc.). After a certain threshold, earning more does not increase happiness [0], and I would argue there is a big gap between being able to afford "a bit of consumption" vs spending money on whatever. [0] http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2018/Q1/money-only-buys-happiness-for-a-certain-amount.html http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2018/Q1/money-only-b...
jonhendry18 8y ago
"Billionaire level wealth aside, amassing a few million over the course of a lifetime isn’t as difficult as people think, it just requires discipline." And a lot of luck.
aninhumer 8y ago
This should be obviously false before you even start looking into the specifics. Do you think if everyone in the US just made different choices everyone would be millionaires in a generation? No? Then your advice doesn't work. Without a massive increase in productivity, the only way someone can be a millionaire is if other people are poor.

closeparen 8y ago

A middle-class person with a retirement account is not in anywhere near the same league as a superyacht owner. Yes, you can and should achieve financial independence in old age by investing a reasonable percentage of your income over time, but that has nothing to do with the billionaire class.

foepys 8y ago

> and I’m now putting thousands onto my net worth every month Lucky you. A lot of people I know don't even make thousands per month. They make less than $2,000 after taxes. With this, accumulating millions isn't possible, not even slowly. And even these people are way better off than other's who barely make $1,000 or even less.

retrac98 8y ago
This is the beauty of it - you don’t need to make thousands per month to work towards making thousands per month. The money you do invest can generate a return, which when re-invested compounds. Yes, this happens very slowly at first, but over the course of many years gets you towards your thousands per month. I don’t have thousands left from my 9-5 job every month, but my assets (accumulated over years) work for me, and I just add what I can to that money making machine.
- intended 8y ago
  True, but this is a huge misdirection. The difference between the top 1% and top 0.1% is in itself absurdly large. Your Existence or presence alone creates money making opportunities, and in some cases you are effectively beyond the law. Talking about millionaires is like talking about your friends who are rich lawyers in the same breath as Bill Gates. It’s the difference between the moon and Saturn.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
closeparen 8y ago
Suppose you make $24k. Investing $2400/yr from age 22 and earning 5% returns, you investments pay $540/mo in today's dollars by age 65 [0]. Add in $1,110 in tdoay's dollars from Social Security [1] and you're at 85% income replacement. Of course there are big problems with saving 10% of so little, and your retirement account could be even more at risk in a financial emergency, but in principle retirement works up and down the income ladder. [0] https://retirementplans.vanguard.com/VGApp/pe/pubeducation/calculators/RetirementIncomeCalc.jsf https://retirementplans.vanguard.com/VGApp/pe/pubeducation/c... [1] https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/quickcalc/ https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/quickcalc/
- lkrubner 8y ago
  "and earning 5% returns" This is basically impossible for reasons explained here: https://voxeu.org/article/suprasecular-stagnation https://voxeu.org/article/suprasecular-stagnation I'm old enough to recall the boom of the 1990s. Me and my professional friends were constantly invited to come to seminars about investing. All the mutual funds were trying to convince us to invest in the stock market. At that time, the stock market was booming, so it was easy to believe that investing in the stock market was a legitimate way to become wealthy. All of the pitches recited the same set of numbers: we could invest in low risk mutual funds and get 12% returns, or we could invest in high risk mutual funds and get 16% returns. It was explained that when we were young we should prefer high risk strategies, and as we got older we should prefer lower risk strategies. Then the crash of 2001 happened. Nasdaq took 10 years to come back to life. The stock market was flat for many, many years. Around 2003 we started getting invitations to seminars that taught us how important it was to invest in real estate. We were told that the value of homes had never gone down, in all of USA history. It was the safest investment, and had significant returns. Then the crash of 2008 happened. My friends who had bought homes were underwater. Even as recently as 2015, I still had friends who owed more on their homes than the homes were worth. These notions that it is easy to get stable long term returns has not been born out by my experience, or the experience of any of my professional peers. Our actual experience was very well described by the Bible: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." http://biblehub.com/ecclesiastes/9-11.htm http://biblehub.com/ecclesiastes/9-11.htm

lordnacho 8y ago

What people talk about is consuming a lot. Having an expensive yacht, for instance. If you save up like a squirrel, you don't get the benefits of being wealthy, even if you are. And how rich are you really if a bit of consumption would significantly reduce your future consumption capacity? I would argue you're not really rich if you can't just spunk money on whatever you feel like. And no, changing your desires to desire less might be just as satisfying (in fact I try to do that too), but it's not being rich, in the sense people ordinarily mean.

misterman101 8y ago
While the dictionary defines rich as "Possessing great material wealth" the real value of being rich is not having to worry about being poor (feeding yourself, affording rent, etc.). After a certain threshold, earning more does not increase happiness [0], and I would argue there is a big gap between being able to afford "a bit of consumption" vs spending money on whatever. [0] http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2018/Q1/money-only-buys-happiness-for-a-certain-amount.html http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2018/Q1/money-only-b...

jonhendry18 8y ago

"Billionaire level wealth aside, amassing a few million over the course of a lifetime isn’t as difficult as people think, it just requires discipline." And a lot of luck.

aninhumer 8y ago

This should be obviously false before you even start looking into the specifics. Do you think if everyone in the US just made different choices everyone would be millionaires in a generation? No? Then your advice doesn't work. Without a massive increase in productivity, the only way someone can be a millionaire is if other people are poor.