I've personally saved more than 1/3rd of my _pretax_ income over the past 14 years. Does that count? People don't talk in public about their finances very much

I've personally saved more than 1/3rd of my _pretax_ income over the past 14 years. Does that count? People don't talk in public about their finances very much, so I don't know about other people. Especially because when people realize you have healthy savings they start asking for 'loans'. Perhaps that is another benefit of owning an expensive house: it's a way to stash away value that less thrifty friends and family won't mistake for free money that you can give them. The long term housing values are net positive, yes, but not relative e.g. to the broad stock market. The fact that housing can be a "great passive way for people to save for retirement." is largely because they already need housing, which was part of the article. I wasn't stating that the prior poster's figures were correct... just pointing out that the 1.5m figure isn't that impressive and that achieving that depended on historically atypical appreciation, and that it could have gone the other way.