"Significant wealth" can mean many different things. I've seen Derek Sivers speaking at multiple conferences. He has a very interesting question that I since as

"Significant wealth" can mean many different things. I've seen Derek Sivers speaking at multiple conferences. He has a very interesting question that I since ask myself and others: "What do you optimize your life for?". When you find the answer to that question, it gets easier to go from there. Robert Kiyosaki and other wealthy people state that wealth is measured in time. Can you not work for x weeks, months, years and still make money or at least maintain status quo? If you can, you're probably already wealthy and doing better than the vast majority of people out there. We all love to read success stories of startup founders where it escalated quickly and they got out with a huge amount of money. These people however are not a good representation of what's out there. Most wealthy people I've met over the course of my life do things that not a lot of people think about and take for granted. They're sometimes rather boring, not glamorous, not innovative things like selling sausages, web hosting, web development services, selling plain white shirts, toilet paper, pipe fittings, cleaning businesses, restaurants and so on. These people then invest their proceeds in other "boring" assets like real estate, other businesses, fonds etc. with a long term view. A lot of these people moved from being a specialist (consultants, chefs, programmers, contractors) to business owners. Not working in but on the business. Hiring other specialists, people who do the grunt work, the sales, the programming and so on. They then invest their proceeds into assets that will continue to generate money at different percentages even after they completely stop working. In your particular case that could mean that you could start with very specialized consulting work. Then slowly transition into providing tooling for a monthly fee. Then slowly removing yourself from the business as much as you can. The beauty of it is that monthly recurring revenue is compounding. Also have a look into SWaS (Software With a Service) http://www.tropicalmba.com/swas/ http://www.tropicalmba.com/swas/. Investing/saving $5K a month for 15 years with an expected rate of return of 7% and an expected inflation rate of 3% will bring you to a place where you end up with a balance of ~$1.5MM (or $1MM after inflation) to your name. Would that make you wealthy in your books?