...And even that is disappearing. Americans that became millionnaires by doing nothing other than chucking a bit of their paycheck into a 401K each month, are

...And even that is disappearing. Americans that became millionnaires by doing nothing other than chucking a bit of their paycheck into a 401K each month, are likely to have spent their working lives in a period when financial markets were growing as more and more Americans joined the labour force. The growth of your portfolio then wasn't entirely dependent on earnings and growth, like it is now. Portfolio values grew by a lot simply because more and more people were being added to pension plan contributions each month. Things were so good that pension plans used to be "defined benefit"-oriented, meaning a certain return % was guaranteed. The new generation of workers on the other hand get "Defined contribution" where the only thing guaranteed is how much of your paycheck they can take. There was an LA Times article about this that was discussed here: Article: https://archive.md/2EPal https://archive.md/2EPal HN Discussion:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28140362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28140362