You can certainly become well off from a poor background. Whether you can be well off and retire early is a completely different matter. It also depends massiv

You can certainly become well off from a poor background. Whether you can be well off and retire early is a completely different matter. It also depends massively on your definition of well off. It tends to mean "at least as good as my parents". People don't really even acknowledge lifestyles at a level significantly below that of their parents. The right combination is probably poor/frugal parents/upbringing and a gift for something like programming: a "new" field that pays well but doesn't require the "gift of the gab" and connections that are found in long-standing well-off families and valued in "traditional" fields. The worst combination would be ending up in a "traditional" field with parents who are well off from a "new" field but have neither the bullshit nor the connections, and who live their lives to the absolute fullest, leaving nothing behind when they go. It's not fair. Perhaps the people campaigning for equality will one day realise it's not really about race or sex or much else, it's about inheritance. But it's not all gloom. You only really need to see positive change in your life to be happy. Absolute standing in society doesn't mean much above a certain level (see the hedonic treadmill).