> Second, if you invest that $8,000 at a conservative 6% annual growth for 30 years, you end up with $670,000. Point taken that a significant four-figure diffe

> Second, if you invest that $8,000 at a conservative 6% annual growth for 30 years, you end up with $670,000. Point taken that a significant four-figure difference is enough to make a substantial contribution to accumulated wealth when regularly contributed and compounded on over multiple decades. Nobody should sneer at the power of diligent saving and compound interest (or, for that matter, at college tuition to grow faster than either inflation or your 529 plan :). That said, the original sentence that kicked off this subthread was talking about a 10 year time frame: "A 30-year old engineer making $120,000 a year should become a millionaire easily by the time they are 40" And by the time we got to where I commented, someone seemed to be believe that $88k vs $80k post-tax might make the difference in whether or not it's true that one could be a millionaire "easily" in a 10 year time frame. The answer, as far as I can tell, is no... uless you can live on $16k and invest the rest. It seems to me it takes roughly $72k invested annually at 6% to make you a million in 10 years. (I'm aware that it's possible to live on $16k per year. I've done so in the last five years. But not while working full-time in metro California.) > First, it was a 20% difference So, a person with $4,000 left over at the end of the year instead of $3,200 should be just as excited as someone with $40,000 instead of $32,000, I suppose. :)