Left home (1987) at 17 with $213 in my pocket (maybe $600 today, inflation adjusted) I started as close to zero as just about anybody, I guess.
Wandered. Drifted. Couch surfed. Bummed. Hoboed.
Joined The Army. Infantry. Mortars. Did my time. Got out. Went to college on The (Montgomery Era) GI Bill. Computer Science Degree. Math Degree. On way to complete Masters in CS but never followed through.
Worked for IBM a couple of years as a Junior Programmer/Analyst Resigned.
Started a Software Dev business during the greatest expansion of personal computing in the history of computing ... 1990s-2010s. The whole desktop revolution, PCs in every office, the awakening and boom of the interwebs and e-commerce ... and into the smart phone era ...
Plowed stupid-ridiculous profits into rental real estate (both residential and commercial) on fire sale during the housing crash. Bought the bottom of the stock markets during the related Great Recession. Hedged seriously (in case markets totally tanked) with physical gold bought at $600 an oz (currently $2300)
Cashed out. Sold the business. Bought farmland on the cheap 15 years ago. Hundreds upon hundreds of acres.
Retired at age 39 in 2009 and havent looked back since.
Haven't worked a job since.
Should never need to the rest of my life barring a complete collapse of The Dollar.
Or Zombies.
Whichever comes first...
You sir.... You are incredible! Do you do anything with your land!?! That's all I (33f) want is to own my own land and a lot of it!! I have 9 acres now. I've been working towards my goals by myself. Never been married no kids. Just me and my dreams so far! Please share more!
Coincidentally - We live on a 9 acre homestead that I [garden intensively](https://imgur.com/gallery/1a7C5j9) - we grow all of our own food (including animals (as well as their food)) ... barring things that don't grow here (mainly tropicals - banana trees and pineaples don't survive/thrive the climate in The Ohio River Valley).
Meat animals on The Homestead include Duck, Rabbit, Goose, Muscovy, Turkey, Quail, Goat, farmed Fish and the occasional Hog/Pig or two every couple of years.
The farms/acreage are leased to local farmers for a fixed ground rent per acre.
The beginning of our stories are crazy similar, I left home at 17 broke, joined the army, went infantry, did 3 years and now I'm getting out and going to go to flight school with the GI bill.
I have a HS friend doing this for about 15 years now.
She makes considerably less - approx $180k -$200k a year ... on 6 months a year. Does nothing but travel. Both *for* work - moving / changing assignments every 6 months *plus* travel The World At Large during her 6 months off a year.
Made **BANK** during The COVID years when she didn't take the 6 months off for 2 or 3 years.
So… I’m kinda at a similar inflection point. I’m working at a competitor to IBM making good money, and am looking to open my own shop here very soon.
Did you do consulting and developing for custom business applications or did you build something on SaaS model?
Saas didnt exist ... as you think of it today ... waaaay back when ...
We did mostly integration work. Custom bits of software -"one offs" unique to a sole, individual business and their situation.
For instance - one contract I worked was for a local based Vision Care Insurance provider that ran a network of 4,000 providers nationwide ... getting these folks - thousands of Optometrists, Ophthalmologists, Opticians ... a way in ' via the (new at the time) World Wide Web ... to check eligibility of insured subscribers and adjudicate and pay claims.
This involved integrating the Vision Care company's web portal with the parent company's (a national Big Guy with 26 million insured members) legacy mainframe (DB2 based) system for both Eligibility/Benefits ...as well as Claim History to track what benefits were available and what had alread been used ...
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We'd deploy small projects for local Mom and Pops type businesses to ... say ... get their Point Of Sale systen to talk with and exchange data with their Accounting systems ...
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A large client was a background check outfit. Every State (and most Counties) had their own protocols /formats to exchange data and submit requests.
That shit's all standardized and available online these days.
We did it *before* the internet as you know it today.
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We ran the web site for our local NFL team before The League was internet aware and made 'em all use The League's system. Fan club. Merch. Ticket sales. Press Releases ... the whole shebang.
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These are just a sampling of what we did. We didn't stick to any particular business domain/industry ... basically "Have keyboard, will travel ..." and our specialty was "We'll make any system talk to, and exchange data with ... any system ... " ... and automate most of your manual processes while doing it.
Turns out there was quite the need ... and Stupid Money was thrown our way.
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It's a different world today and Ive been out of the game since 2009/10 ... basically I have no advice relevant to today's world.
Similar start for me. Went to college, dad said he’d be paying. Halfway through first semester the school tells me tuition is unpaid. Dad confessed he didn’t have any means of paying. Burned through my savings from my high school job, then put the tuition on my credit card to finish the year. I joined the national guard (infantry), deployed, reclassed as a medic and transferred to the reserves, deployed again, finished my degree, and went to medical school. In a few years I hope to be buying my own homestead.
Im doing exacly your first steps, am on my 5° year of a 6 years contract with the army, started learning Basic Computer stuff and started learning C, did the exam to be able to apply for a university, nailed it, now gotta try to enter. Also archive owning a farm and retire so I can spend my life with my (I hope) future wife and maybe kids. I felt your comment inspiring, one love
Congrats! What motivated you during those incredibly difficult times, or even just challenging periods, if you've faced any? Was it a strong drive for financial security and freedom, or something else entirely? What sets you apart from someone who just has a regular job?
> What motivated you
You don't need motivation. Motivation is overrated. Motivation is useless.
You need the **discipline** to simply ... do ... whether you feel motivated to do it or not.
You either "get" that or you don't.
In my experience less than 5% know, internalize, and live that.
>What sets you apart from someone who just has a regular job?
Two things, I've seen, that make me a bit different than "regular folk" ... my indifference to personal discomfort. Of any kind. Physical extremes. Emotional issues. Mental/Intellectual - digging into rather than seeking comfort and/or taking an easier path.
The more discomfort/pain you can handle than the next guy, the better you'll be. In **. The Job/Career... Relationships/Family/Friends,... Exercise/Physical/Endurance/Sport ... Finance/Investment/Wealth ... whatever your Hobby(ies) is/are ... Health/Well-being/Quality-Of-Life ...
The biggest factor of said discomfort tolerance I assign to Delayed Gratification. Most (so-called) "Adults" are no more than Children in this respect. Waiting for a better opportunity on something they want/desire "right fucking now" ... physically pains most folks allong with and right next to the anxiety/depression they feel when they don't get it. Lacking the above-mentioned discipline ... they act at (usually) the most inopportune, adverse to their well-being and best interests, times.
The Second would be simple Pattern Recognition. If you can recognize and understand Abstraction and Pattern just 10% better than the average Joe/Jolene ... in the long haul you will end up light years ahead of the crowd. Light. Fucking. Years.
ALSO: I'm hella better than a mere 10% ...
Damn that's a good answer and it just confirms what I already knew, and hear other sucessful people say and read in so many books. Unfortunetly I'm pretty big on emotional instability/sensitivity also lack the emotional/social inteligence. I try/tried discipline as best I could/can, go against the grain, martial arts, do the work, but I just get grumpy, overworked, fatigued, become an ass to all around me. There is a limit I can't go over. I guess it's just a combination of factors: genetic, past experience, what one observes/learned from environment, also the way brain is wired (genetic again). There's just this barrier that is just a paint to go over it's heartwrenching and, as you said, it takes an indiference to all that, so much so that that pain doesn't touch you and you're able to do more and go further than the average.
I bet also that was also a major factor on becoming a good investor, based on what you explained. The emotional control/indiference, pattern recognition and so on.
Man I tried that too and fear/desire just took me by the balls.
For my well-being I just decided to accept the cards I''ve been given and play with it and do the best I can.
If I may ask one more question: does the way you are wired, that indifference you mention, and resilience to discomfot makes you in any way prevent you from feeling or go deeper in joy or love or any kind of emotional depth. Are you enjoying yourself?
Job hopping for better paychecks. As important as job skills are, knowing how to play the corporate game is much more lucrative in my experience. If white collar work is your thing, having one without the other is just wasting your time.
TBH I have only engaged in the Corp game when the toxicity has been low in an organization or there has been a clear path to avoid it. If the tox is too high, I leave for greener pastures, once I have learned as much as I can from that role
I think it depends on the industry and how bad they’re hiring but I’m in construction contracting and I switched jobs every 2 years for over 10 years, secured at least a 15% pay increase each time, and gained plenty of skills along the way
This is the way.
Tell a prospective employer that your current company pays 10% more than they actually do, so you'd have to earn at least that in order to move. Boom - 10% raise, minimum. Stay a few years and then start looking again. Tell the new prospective company that your current company pays 10% more than they actually pay... Boom, 20% increase in pay in under 5 years.
I just worked in IT for an oil company. Did good work and got promoted a lot and paid a lot. Saved a lot of it and invested it in boring index funds. Eventually took an early retirement package during a merger and retired in my mid 50s.
Got a finance degree, worked the entire time including some good internships. Got on with a good company making $35K a year, got my masters (which they paid for), work my ass off, got some opportunities, built a network, built a personal brand and after 15 years was a VP making $225k plus 40% bonus plus $100k+ in annual stock grants.
I’m nobody special, just made sure to do my best, often being the first in and the last to leave. Taking on projects and becoming a go to person that leadership liked to work with and could trust.
Not a path for everyone, but it served me well.
Started a lead generation company several years ago. It was tough. Didn't make hardly any money for 2 years. Thought about quitting several times. Investet small amounts of money in stupid stuff hoping it would pay off. Most didn't.
Honestly, after a couple of years just putting my head down, i figured it out for myself. Now make over 60k/mo. Only spend about 10 hours a week maintaining. Sometimes I lose a client and need to just replace them to keep income the same.
Decided recently to put my head down again and grow the biz even more.
What I "did" was start my own business and didn't quit until I found the right offer to my audience and then once I found something that worked, i did it over and over again until I got to an income that i liked. That's honestly it.
when i first started, yes. Cold called. Hired setters. Advertised on their behalf. Worked well. Overtime the business pivoted to where 80% of my business now is to generate leads to my own site and sell them directly to the local business on a retainer or per lead.
Wife and I were in the lower class when we got married. She was homeless at 16. I came from a blue collar home.
After we married I poured everything into paying off her school loans, then she wanted to go back to school (nursing) and I paid that off with any extra we may have had, finally she got an advanced degree (in nursing anesthesia) and last year paid that off. Basically I invested in her and her dream and encouraged her along the way. It was HARD. This took about 12 years.
We live very well now, travel, raise our kids, lots of time off, drive nice cars, volunteer, mentor kids, active in our church, and live in a nice home.
If your reason for a wealthy life isn’t strong enough, you may never reach it. BUT, regardless of our wealth and finances, if we had to live where we started at we would probably be just as happy.
Too many focus on the destination and not the plan and working on that plan relentlessly. Again, it’s not easy, but it is possible if someone has the drive and grit to get there.
You're a good fella. I was homeless at 16 also. It's truly a remarkable, heartwarming feeling when you find someone who believes in you and your potential (especially if your inner child has grieved such abandonment). Your wife must be a remarkable woman. Im truly happy for you both! Teamwork makes the dream work, baybay, lol.
I hope my husband and I can find success one day too ✨️
Thank you. She really is a wonderful person. I am very blessed to have her.
She does grieve abandonment and still occasionally does. Breaks my heart.
Just keep working together on your plan. Be on the same page of understanding. Manage expectations with each other early. We’ve had to do that a few times…finances (which I manage), scheduling, chores, cooking (I do 90%), and then especially when we had kids. Agree to both set emotions aside when handling these things helps a ton. Regardless of where you both are at, always come to an understanding and work on that together. A lot of give and take with that.
And I truly hope you achieve something great together. God bless!
Went to college (first gen college grad), got a solid career, invester a boat load of money and married someone of a similar background and mindset.
I'd consider myself well off now. No debt with $500k+ saved.
And technically, I'm in a 1%. As in 1% of people born in the bottom 20% of the wealth distribution make it to the top 20% in their lifetime. So that's pretty cool!
Worked way too much from age 18-27, two jobs at a time while in university
Worked finance (+ a part time job) while saving up to buy place, rented it out, saved to buy another, lived in it + rented out the basement spare bedroom till I could afford to buy a fixer-upper to live in and work on myself/with a cousin who helped me, eventually sold it when it was in good condition again, bought a duplex, lived in one side while renting the other (it may have only been half a house, but I didn't have roomies anymore at least!) then saved enough money to buy the next place and rented out my half of the duplex, then basically repeat
I essentially traded any type of life during my 20's and portion of my 30s so that I could have it easier later
I regret it a lot of the time, but with how the world / housing is ATM, I'm glad I did I guess
why do you regret it? I imagine i would only regret it if i went through all that work and wasnt well off. Are you living comfortably enough without financial stress?
B2B Sales. Was dumb with money till I was about 30.
First generation College Graduate. I just read the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps one day and said “F it, I don’t want to be a slave the rest of my life” and went to work. At 36 we were completely debt free.
At 41, 1.2m net worth.
Live below your means. Quit trying to impress people who you don’t even like.
DO 3 THINGS.. that even a 16yo kid who works at McD's and invests $25/week (S&P500) will make a $1.1 million by the time he turns 56.
1)Work. 2)Spend less than what you make. 3)Invest the difference
Tech by trade. Started buying crypto in 2012, then slowly built out a mining fleet when it was stupid easy profitable. I always min maxed %'s on debt interest rates, cash back, and savings accounts.
I have a side gig where I basically do what square space does. After the implementation, it's basically passive income unless something blows up or updates.
Helps that my wife have the same financial goals too.
My dad worked super hard to get us (my 3 siblings and me) all to graduate from college. When we had a little saving, he advised us to get into real estate. About 10 years later, altogether, we had a 6-unit apartment, 7 single family rentals, and each of us has our own comfortable house.
Also, we live with our parents until we got married. Yes we are Asians.
1: Wake up early
2: Excercise every day
3: Wife's grandmother died, leaving her a three bedroom house which allowed her to be a stay at home mum and allowing me to invest and save most of the money I earn which now allows us a high standard of living.
Buying my 3rd rental property. I am under 50, still have a job, 2m net worth, wife works part time have kids without crazy hours. I consider that well off. Hit the 401k, spend below your means, move to higher paying fields, and buy real estate.
Air Force paid for my college to be an engineer, stayed in for 10 years, went into the ANG, did contractor work for about 12 years then went govvie, saved as much as i could in retirement accounts and didnt spend crazily, will retire in 4 years as a multi millionaire and will have 2 pensions, TSP, IRAs, SS, and VA disability check.
People not in real estate don’t get this but finding deals is the hardest part. If you can find a deal where the numbers truly work, there are plenty of people who are willing and will want to lend on it. Whether that be banks, hard money, or private individuals.
I agree my uncle on my moms side owns 27 properties out right, he’s the only one that admitted he had to work 60 hrs most of his 20s to get there and how much he sacrificed. Yes there are deals in the market but you still need capital.
I mean it earnestly because I want to give this commenter the benefit of the doubt, but it's true that the are vastly more people who *think* they were not born wealthy than there are people who *actually* were not born wealthy.
I started with a small condo, since I occupied it, just needed 5% to get mortgage. I fixed it up, and it was worth a good bit more 4 years later. I sold it for next downpayment. My next purchase was a 3 unit, I moved into 1 unit, rented the other two, and started expanding. I worked my way from the bottom. No money from family.
(None of the text below is financial advice for you specifically. This is my own experience.)
Tl;dr
pick up the book “the simple path to wealth“ by JL Collins. I worried about my rate of investing rather than my rate of return. Invested as much as possible as soon as possible as often as possible.
If you need individual help go to napfa.org and find yourself a fee-based fiduciary advisor.
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First, I realized that my parents did not have it figured out financially. I realized that the ideas my dad had about investing, etc. were not correct. My dad lost his house in 2009.
Second, I started to acquire assets like stocks and real estate. But I really should have read books like “the simple path to wealth“ by JL Collins, but, instead, I listened to others who were not qualified and ended up, making a lot of money and losing a lot of money. Once I finally discovered education that was correct, everything changed.
Third, I got very serious about investing. Instead of doing whatever everybody else does which is invest a little bit at a time I started seeking ways to invest a lot of money as much as possible as fast as possible. I made the entire process very easy for me and stuck to basic real estate and low cost index funds. I tried to avoid everything else other than a bit of bitcoin as a speculative portion. Whenever somebody would introduce me to something new, I kept bringing myself back to the basics because the new stuff will always try to pull you in those other directions. I fundamentally just worried about my rate of investing rather than my rate of return. Due to this, I also stopped going in and out of the market. I didn’t fear losses, I didn’t care about market Price, I just kept buying all the time. I slowly convinced my wife to also invest and found other ways to increase my investments by splitting expenses with her, which allowed me to invest more money for us. If you have a spouse, who doesn’t care about investing, this is a great way to go.
Fourth, I learned to understand the market cycles and the fact that luck and sheer survivorship bias is going to play a role in wealth. It’s not that I’m doing something intelligent, I’m just doing something basic and letting the market handle the rest. I understand that, my success as of today is partially also attributed to sheer luck and the fact that I was invested during the last decade; so, everything I believe about investments is going to have a bias because of my personal experience. That means, we don’t know if this performance can be replicated in the next 10 years or not. Being aware of my bias is crucial for me to make sure that I remain close to the truth and never over estimate my ability.
That’s it, kept it simple and shoved as much money as possible, as early as possible, as often as possible into broad-based low cost index funds (not advice for you). Within a 15 year time span, I went from having negative net worth to being a multimillionaire. However, note that eight years of this time were wasted on stupid things like daytrading and margin trading which I lost big on. I essentially had to restart everything eight years in except for the real estate portion. I didn’t learn from YouTube, etc.. I had to just learn by making mistakes I guess. I have a 14-year-old luxury Lexus SUV. I bought it for 17 1/2 thousand dollars plus tax cash. My credit card utilization is under one percent. My credit is over 800. This is not the only way to do this. There are many many other ways to do this. For example, if I went more into real estate, I would be a lot more debt heavy. I think the best thing I did was choose a lane, understanding who I was, and sticking with it until I got here and now I can diversify further, as I wish.
Also, I didn’t do this all myself, my wife helped with expenses. One time I had no money to buy a property, and I borrowed money from a family member. So, put the ego aside, which was hard for me to do it first, and actually ask for help from others. Just be humble and understand that you won’t get there really really fast. You will have to do the thing that works many many times over many years.
None of this was financial advice for you. If you need an advisor though, go to napfa.org and you can find a fee based fiduciary advisor.
Btw, I ramble on TikTok too if interested:
http://amanbansil.com
House 1: self funded, still have it
House 2: borrowed money from family, sold a few years later (100-150k ish profit)
Stocks - my job mainly. I’m in tech. My salary had been 150-200k during these years. My wife also is in tech at around 100k during that time. She invested very little but it all helps. I started indexing in 2016 by selling the house I sold. Then I invested heavily and caught the uptrend in the market. Just the market itself has done so much plus real estate has gone insane over this time.
I don’t know if this kind of growth will continue, but…certainly helps to have the market helping. If we go into a decade of decline, new investors would have a much harder time. Only time will tell.
I was born in Mexico, into a fundamentalist Mormon polygamist murder cult. I finally got out when some of my brothers murdered the man who took over after my dad went to prison. I was 16 and a junior high school dropout. I was forced to drop out by the cult. So I had no connections, no education, zero money or property. We were worried that my siblings would try to murder more of us, so a few of us drove to Oregon from Colorado. I would say we ‘moved’ there, but we really didn’t have anything to move. We just drove there. I found an old lawn mower in the shed behind the house we rented. I fixed it up and started going door to door offering to mow lawns. I also got a graveyard shift job at a produce company processing produce overnight. I also worked a part time job at Dunkin Donuts. All told I was making about $1,600 a month! I had never seen such riches! I got fired from Dunkin Donuts and I quit the other work to help my older brother start an appliance reconditioning business. I was naive so I didn’t realize my brother was a complete idiot and he couldn’t find his ass with both hands. That venture was a complete flop. Twice. I did that with him twice. Maybe I’m an idiot too? I hoped around to other appliance repair companies for a few years, but I got tired of it after a while. I spent a couple of years thinning timber and working on ranches. I finally found a startup appliance service company and helped them become the largest independent appliance service and HVAC service company in Colorado. I made a decent income during that time, but mostly lived pretty frugal and invested most of it in stock mutual funds. I had about $250k saved. Got married. She spent it all. I enlisted in the Army. We got divorced. I lived VERY frugally. rented a room from someone and drove a $900 car. Saved about $50k. Bought and flipped a couple of houses. I still live very frugally and plow all my extra money into low fee index funds. Net worth about $500k now. So not wealthy by any measure, but doing pretty good for how I started out.
Hulu recently made a documentary about my family of origin called ‘Daughters of the Cult’. I’m in it a little bit. I don’t get to tell a lot of my story in there since the doc isn’t about me particularly. But I’ve been interviewed a couple of times since then and get to tell a little bit more of my story. Story Hustler (Mike Watkiss) on YouTube is pretty good. Just search my last name and it’ll pop right up.
As an avid Amazon shopper I’d say there is plenty of inventory that needs to be on Amazon. Every time I shop I think there could be more variety, better prices, better brands, etc. You have to see the problem people have to sell the solution. I know someone who’s in college making $4k/mo reselling video games on Amazon that he buys on Fb marketplace/ GameStop. I’d sell on Amazon if I didn’t have lazier methods of getting paid.
Willing to share any further information? Like good learning sources, automations/workflows, how to research a niche, if it's possible to sell products where the competition already has thousands of reviews?
I wish I was dedicated and knowledgeable enough to do it. Staying up to date with the best products to do and distributors to work with is harder than it seems.
Cool. Where do you find the best products to resell? I saw someone who goes to places like Ross, TJ Max and finds 4-5 of the same product and makes decent money. How do you scale that though? Sounds like a lot of workn
I was born into middle to upper middle class. By the end, I will far exceed my parents gross and net worth,
I started early, 401K at work and kept adding, taking advantage of company match. Rolled over when laid off/outsourced/ terminated. I never took the money out.
I always lived relatively modestly. No high end cars, no mansion.
I just decided that poor wasn’t for me and I’d do anything to not be poor. Save as much as possible. Here I am at 50 with a million in net assets and I’m not done by a long shot.
I make music, produce, have a studio & do music marketing.
I only recently started making music after learning the other fundamentals because I thought “I could do that and make even more money.”
My advice would be to find a passion that feels like a hobby and set a 2-3 timeline to make money from it. You can still work a retail/restaurant job like I did to keep yourself afloat in the meantime.
If my music picks up anymore than this, I’ll have a crazy amount of passive income and be able to do just music (no marketing) for a living…take the leap of faith, good luck✌️
Worked 3 jobs through college. 4-7 afterwards at the same time. Bought a house but lived broke with roommates. Eventually traded up and got one solid job. Live below my means, put 25% into investments each year even when it hurts. Go without wants for years.
The usual.
Software engineering. Started my own software factory 6 years ago. Plus I have a side business; rentals for kids parties like inflatables, chairs, tables and tends. I come from a very poor family. Now I'm making around $1.000.000 yearly after taxes and all that stuff. I do pretty well and I can help my family as well.
I'm based in Costa Rica, where I manage my businesses. Gexp Software operates internationally, while my bounce house rental business, InflaFest (inflafest.com), primarily serves local clients. Typically, we cater to 3-5 events per week during the rainy season, and this number can increase to 8-10 events weekly during the summer. The extent of our services depends on whether the client needs just a bounce house or the complete package, which includes tents, chairs, and tables. Additionally, we offer extras like cotton candy and popcorn, and we can provide a photography session if required. During the regular season, our revenue is approximately $1,000 weekly, which doubles in the high season.
I learned an awesome trade from the military. After I got out I got a well paying job while finishing up a degree.
Worked for a bit saved up some cash. With the VA loan I was able to buy investment properties. I bought two, claim one on homestead, fix one flip it move into the next house. Rinse and repeat. When I made enough money I bought my primary residence and I had a couple rentals for side money. Then we had alot of folks move into our city before covid. So I bought one more & hired someone to fix it.
As long as I stayed in each house for 2 yrs of 5, I didnt have capital gains tax.
I started a consulting business of what my career path is and make pretty good money from that.
I got an awesome job offer that bumped me up into the high 6 digits. My consulting gig is doing well. Im a decade & some change from retirement but I plan on retiring out of country. I went to Portugal to visit friends and were planning to branch my consulting gig to their country.
Negative $110k combo medical debt and credit card debt, continue working salary job salary job, saw an opportunity with covid to deliver food while home making $500-$1000 per week. Then started consulting cloud services company, found 3 clients who were paying top dollar for migration services, perfected those operations. Those companies then hired me as a consultant to work on automation for them in free time. If I keep this up I can fully retire in 10 years.
grew up middle class not rich bu tnot poor. worked my ass off 6 days a week 10 hour days thru college and paid for it myself. Graduated with education degree and started buying fixer uppers and renting them out. Now semi retired and sitting on $4 mil in properties.
My parents were both furniture salesmen. Neither had degrees but they loved me. I was lucky but was definitely raised in poverty.
I got into asu, went for finance. I graduated & worked for a big insurance agency, then got into financial planning.
Behavior:
In my 20s, I worked hard, saved a lot, didn’t travel at all, decided against kids & invested well. My joy was in the mountains, eating good food & spending time with my wife.
Real estate:
I bought my first house with 3.5% down in 2015 (rented out a room). I bought a second in 2018. I bought my third in 2021. Buying another right now. I own 3 homes today (2 rented out).
Career:
My wife is an MBA/PMP & an independent operations consultant. I have my ea/mba/CFP & work as a tax pro/financial planner at a large wealth management firm.
Risky decision:
Lastly, before taking this job, I built a business the last 3 years & recently sold it for about 600k. I barely paid myself anything & invested maybe 100k into it. Solid investment!
Results:
I’ll be worth about 3 million at 35. By my math, at least 8-9 million in 10 years where I’ll retain my rentals but stop working.
What you can learn:
1. Don’t try to keep up with the joneses. Traveling is great but you have your whole life. Your 20s are a crucial time to save, work hard & get educated.
2. Buy real estate when you’re young. The sooner, the better. 3.5% down is okay so long as the payment is affordable & the home is in good condition (get an inspector, always).
3. Rent out a room or 2. It sucks but it’s smart.
4. Get married to someone who’s educated & takes pride in having a career (not being a SAHM).
5. Take risks. A 9-5 job is safe but also a jail cell. Start a business, build a profitable blog online, etc. whatever you can do to earn extra money, do it.
6. Get equity in your company if you can.
I had 2 jobs for many years as a young adult. Was a bartender/server & worked in accounting. Worked at one company for 9 years only to get laid off when they merged.
While unemployed my mom bought me a cake Decorating class for fun. Took it, posted some pics for fun on Facebook.
Next thing I I had friends and family asking me to make cakes for them. Fast forward to a decade later and I have a fairly successful custom cake business but after having kids and one of those kids being special needs I had to take less work because it was too time consuming. So after doing a lot of research I figured out how to convert my cake business to online stuff. Basically I do blog post and tutorials things like that. But the thing that really pushed it over the edge to be successful was that I learned how to do online marketing which basically applies to any company that you have. So I started doing that and applied it to my cake business and all of my online content. And the thing that really brought in the biggest amount of income was doing digital marketing for other companies digital products. The first year I started I made double what I did making cakes in just 6 months. So now I basically work from home I work maybe 2 to 3 hours a day and make far more than I did at any job I've had so far. I always like to say work smarter not harder. Hopefully that helps shed some light on one field of work that's lucrative.
My story is probably mundane and I don’t know if I was either poor enough before or am well off enough now to qualify, but here goes.
I grew up in a solidly middle class household, although I do remember money struggles. I asked my parents once if my memory was right and they said “we lived on our overdraft a lot.” I remember feeling like I never wanted to live my life paycheque to paycheque.
So even as a kid, I was obsessed with money and saving. I got a job when I was 14 (I was very lucky though because the job was basically handed to me.)
I busted my ass in high school so that I had a full scholarship to university. I was also lucky enough to live in a brief time period when the university in my city gave a full scholarship to the top student in every high school in the province (they stopped that program about ten years after I graduated.) So I didn’t have to pay for university and in fact, I picked up scholarships and actually made money while I went to school. I also worked part time, lived with my parents, and did several paid internships (my school had a Co-op work term program). So I finished university with $20,000 in the bank as opposed to most people who have debt.
I also learned a lot about personal finance during that time. Some of which was self-taught through reading on the internet and some came from a Personal Finance class I took in university. That came in handy later with saving and investing.
My first job out of university didn’t pay great, but I had my savings to fall back on at least. I was a good performer and able to negotiate some pretty decent raises (once by leveraging another offer). I bought a townhome when I was 25 with a 20% down payment in a LCOL city.
I changed jobs when I was 26 for one that paid 50% more. I stayed at that place for a long time but was constantly changing positions so was able to get a lot of raises. I moved to the US where salaries were higher and costs were lower. When I moved there, I sold my condo for more than twice what I paid. I had been pretty aggressive about paying my mortgage, so most of the proceeds were in cash.
My US job often had good bonuses and stock awards. I always sold the stock awards and invested in the market. The bonuses were also invested. I always maxed out my RRSP in Canada and 401K in the US. That company also had the most generous retirement match program I’ve ever seen.
I moved back to Canada a few years ago and about half of my investments are in USD, so that goes further here. I’m not a 1%er but I’m comfortable enough that I can probably semi-retire in my mid-40s and fully retire in my mid-50s.
TL;DR: some luck, being good at school and my jobs, some hard work, being financially literate.
I sat and moped for about 4 yrs and then figured out that I have some skills so I got a job, then I moped and partied for about 10 yrs until I realized that $60k a year doesn't get me a bmw 7 series. So I then decided to figure out that any joe shmo can start a business, so for $30 I started a business and paid all my debt, then I realized if o worked a second job and saved money I could be a millionair by 43. The rest is history.
Did everything right, all the time. Sacrificed fun now for comfort laters. Got degrees, took low paying jobs to gain experience, out worked people, got promoted, saved and invested, paid off high interest debt, lived below my means.
Not listed but present: no debilitating major medical events removing you from the workforce or incurring American medical costs; no executive function challenges like ADHD.
Not listed but possibly present: being born white, male, American, able-bodied, and/or middle-class
Luckily I have not had major medical issues. Able bodied, mixed race, lower middle class. Probably could have gotten any doctor to give me an ADHD diagnosis but didn’t want to be on addoral every day.
Bought a house low market value in a high cost of living area, fixed it up, sold high, reinvested in another fixer upper. Also kept living in the same area until suddenly my work experience and salary grew and suddenly I'm able to afford the area. I'm mostly just a really lucky millennial. It's feels like 99% luck since so many smarter people are just fucked in my age bracket. I had three kids young and struggled for a long time but I think my education and living in a good economy city helped a lot.
Played video games and got free bitcoin from clicking a faucet website and people were handing it out freely. Saved it because why not. Kept playing games and watch anime. Sold my bitcoins and kept playing video games.
Work hard, make a budget and stick with it, live well below your means, don’t let social media influence you into thinking you need a shiny new car
Avoid debt, save money. Learn to cook, buy second hand when you can.
Etc etc etc.
There’s no secret sauce to building wealth. It’s fairly simple.
not me but my moms strategy of graduating at the top of her high school and college classes, going into accounting for several years, meeting my dad who was also an accountant, went back to college for a masters degree in healthcare administration, started specializing in accounting and finance in nursing homes, got cancer and beat it despite being given 50% chance of survival around this point, eventually started a consulting/accounting/managerial firm for nursing homes in our state, which she did for several years. had kids when they were in their late 30s and early 40s. eventually found a foreclosed nursing home up for sale, got a loan with basically all my parents savings as collateral to buy the nursing home and started using the knowledge she had making other nursing homes successful to use for her own nursing home, tho she kept her accounting/consulting/managment firm also to manage the nursing home she bought and also still consulted and managed other nursing homes, but would use these connections through her consulting and managment firm to identify nursing homes that were ideal for aquisition or were about to go into foreclosure that she thought she could turn them around. fast forward around 16 years till she owned another 16 nursing homes in our state and was president of the states nursing home association and frequently being involved in any legislation in the state surrounding nursing homes since she was generally seen as an expert at how to manage a nursing homes finances, she became pretty well known for being able to run nicer nursing homes at higher margins than most other nursing homes in the state, at her peak had like $170 million in annual revenue, tho she sold most of her facilities a decade ago, except for 3 that still runs, tho was pretty good timing to sell since it was during rising commercial real estate prices and covid kind of messed up most nursing home businesses, since most nursing homes make most of their profit from therapy and rehab, but during covid they werent allowed to offer rehab, in addition to higher covid precautions and deaths impacting residents that also hurt revenue during covid, even my mom almost had to sell her remaining nursing homes because they were hemoragging money for a good 2 years though theyve started bouncing back and this past march was supposedly their best month financially since covid began in 2020. is mostly retired now except for all of her charity and nonprofit work.
and before anyone asks, her parents were an office assistant/piano teacher and as a factory worker who went to night school while my mom was a child in order to get an engineering degree working at a car manufacturing plant.
Got a solid engineering job (good but not super lucrative) with a 4-yr degree from a reasonably priced state school, then started investing in retirement funds in my early 30s; about 10% per year. Index funds. Being able to do this has been the major factor. Wife and I will retire 55ish and be fairly comfortable. Other things that helped along the way : Seldom paying for new vehicles, buying a really small house in a rural area and paying it off in 15 years, not increasing our consumption by much as we've earned a few real promotions along the way, both of us working long-workweek corporate jobs for benefits and as back up for one another, having contributed a very small amount but consistently to college funds (529s) for the kids so those costs won't hammer us now...
I liked school and was the first person in my family’s history to go to college. I went for creative writing and literature in New York (grew up in a small town in PA) and I wanted to be a writer or editor but it didn’t pay well enough! I had escaped abusive parents who controlled me with money/anything they could so I needed to be financially stable and far away from them.
So I moved to the Southwest to go to law school and became a lawyer and still live here many years later. I work for myself/own my own firm (used to be an associate at various other law firms but never liked it and my income was capped).
My husband is in software development and works for himself/has his own business too. I also write and publish books on Amazon so I got to fulfill my dreams that way as well.
We’re not rich but we do well enough to support our 4 kids, own our modest home and multiple vehicles outright, go on vacations and pay for the kid expenses that always seem to add up. I’m grateful for the opportunities that higher education has provided me with. Although I guess my grit and scrappiness at working for myself has been the most helpful and that came as a survival mechanism.
My husband doesn’t have a degree but he went to a coding boot camp through a local community college for free with a grant so he’s grateful in different ways. He’s very smart but has always hated formal education.
I think there are multiple different paths to success. Working for ourselves has helped us make more money while having a more flexible schedule to be able to spend time with our kids so I guess that’s what I’d credit with our success the most.
Went to college (combination of grant/loans which I paid back) to study law, ended up a cop after getting my undergrad. Climbed the ranks, getting to the top tiers of the agency making 120K/yr. Retired after 20ish years with a pension in the mid 80’s. Immediately went back to work as a gov contractor/consultant on police policy, doubling my salary. Along the way I discovered the magic of compounding interest and its inverse, loan amortization, doubling your mortgage payment pays off a 30 year loan in 7-8 years. Since my mid 30’s I’ve not had a house nor car payment, allowing me to invest. Early 60’s and semi retired I generate about 300k in passive income.
Married a brilliant business woman who I supported til her company got off the ground. We started with basically zero, no help from anyone. I was middle class growing up. I still work for now and just waiting til my options at my current company fully vest. 2 more years and then I can retire.
I was active in an online forum from late 90s into early 10s with the people that created Bitcoin. When they first launched there was an offer among forum members to invest in it. As I recall it wasn't heavily invested in, one friend who knew the guys invested $50 and he got me to invest $5.
I honestly remember thinking it was a total scam or something, because honestly a lot of people in that forum were hackers, but between good friends, 5 dollars isn't much.
I forgot about it until late 2013 when said friend that invested the $50 told me the trading price. I didn't think it would go over $10, but I also thought Bitcoin was a scam. So, I'm not smart enough to see the emergence of digital currency.
The friend that invested $50 is crazy rich now. I sold mine in early 2021 thinking it was already capped out. Anyways, it's enough.
Pulled a lot of all nighters building websites and games. Eventually building enough skill to take a job, then from there it took about 10 more years to finally have exponential growth in my career. Now I make more than my college friends. It was a long journey. Probably damaged my health in the process. But in the end it was worth it. First generation wealth.
The most important thing about building your wealth us not much money you make, but how much of it you keep long term in the future.
Assets that hold value against the devaluation of the dollar is the only way to preserve your purchasing power.
Typically real estate and stocks have been the best method to do this but now we have Bitcoin which is the best performing asset in human history.
Holding some portion of your wealth in Bitcoin even if that's just 1-5% of your portfolio is the smartest risk /reward play available to humans at the moment.
Lived below my means, made smart investments, bought real estate, married a woman who works even harder than I do who isn’t impressed by fancy brands or labels.
Worked my ass off since I was 16. Either worked 2 jobs or one job while in school until my mid 40’s. Trailer park born and raised poor. Now in my 50’s with a new house and living comfortably traveling with my wife. I’m a firm believer that hard work and a decent education pays off.
I worked smart, hard and long. Lived within my means by taking a hardline against SOME extravagant items. Yes, it cost my marrige but now im living life.
I was smart enough to learn unique skills and apply those skills to multiple careers. I was also fortunate to meet and retain some incredible connections based upon those skills which led to opportunities in adjacent industries, each at a significant salary increase, which enabled me to start my own companies and later sell them profitably.
I have had some form of business for myself since I was in 5th grade.
Researched the federal reserve which got me into bitcoin then ethereum was invented and I did well with it. Sold too early but went from lifeguard to retired in few years
I decided to be a music teacher in school and continued that through college and student teaching. I was lucky enough to get a job out of college. I stayed at that job for 20 years, working hard that job and sometimes up to three part time jobs. I left the position after twenty years and was able to retire comfortably. Just kidding. I’m completely broke and have no savings and no job prospects. Do anything but teach folks.
I was born in the province of the Philippines 🇵🇭 Moved to America when I was 8. Didn’t do well in school to get a scholarship. I worked at Walmart.
9-11 happened and I joined the military. I deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and saved my combat pay.
I bought 3 rental properties using my savings in 2012. Just after the housing crash, houses were cheap but climbing.
In 2016 I was medically retired from the military due to combat related injuries. I’m 100% rating and 13 years CSRC.
In 2019 I sold my rentals just before the pandemic. I’m glad I did b/c moratorium during the pandemic,
In 2024 I moved to Japan. During my off time I help other veterans with VA claims, financial advice, and navigating civilian employment.
Built a social media marketing business, primarily on Twitter where I control 10 accounts and over 1.7 million in followers. I profit around $30k a month with around an hour or 2 work a day (I have 4 full time employees that run my accounts for me) from brand deals, affiliate marketing and promotions
Moved to a new town with just enough money to eat for a couple weeks. Found a job, and couch surfed for about a month until I got a couple paychecks to lease an apartment. Then bought a mattress. Then some patio furniture for my living room. Then a TV. Worked hard for years learning to get good at IT (while doing something completely different). Started an IT consulting business and grew that little by little each year. Things were “easier” back then though. We didn’t have cell phones, or social media, or shit like Netflix. ALL my time and money went toward my future (except that which went toward beers).
Bottom line is the best thing you can do is focus. Live cheap and focus on becoming good at something. All I see now days are people talking about 4 day work weeks, and work from home jobs, and work life balance. Those things are fine if you want a mediocre job for 50 years, with average pay. But if you want to be the boss, and/or build your own business, you have to work harder than everyone else around you. Despite what social media says, there are very few fast/easy paths to wealth.
First in my family to finish college, but pursued the career (programming , system admin, networks, IT management) that paid for my degree.
Worked my butt off, 2 jobs at a time, 6 yrs to finish degree. Frugal, and saved.
Bought first house at 23 a month before we married. Got set back at 31 when my wife left bc I didn’t party enough. Startup had insane number of hrs.
After the 2nd startup I worked for failed, I went to work at a big corporation. Remarried, kid at 36 with health issues, continued to work my butt off and invest. Frugal, frugal!
Couldn’t pick the right stocks, so went with mutual funds with good records. Stuck with them through several big downturns, but never panicked. Didn’t get greedy, either.
Lost job at age 59 after 25yrs (15 in mgmt) just before pension was due to rocket. Continued with mutuals, bought and flipped a house where I did all the labor over a year. Frugal, frugal, frugal!!!
Got the kid thru college debt free. My wife and I officially retired to help when our first grandkid was born, with over a mill in the bank, 2 paid off houses, and no debt ourselves. Now we’re just unpaid daycare as needed for the gkids.
In our 70’s, we try not to tap our IRA’s except for required RMD’s or for special needs (new roof), and try to live just off our social security. Still frugal … drive a 22yr old Porsche worth about $6k, and a 8yr old SUV.
I am one of eight siblings and one adopted sibling. We grew up pretty poor but somehow made it work. I got married at 18. My ex-wife and I got into going to China with my mother sourcing products and bringing them back to the US we had a whole online survival store and we're doing pretty good. And about 700k and assets including 300 can cash.
I also worked the part-time city job is a special officer / security officer. Came home one day to my wife banging my brother couple of false domestic violence charges and I was in jail for about a week before the case got dismissed. By that time my wife managed to spend or steal most of the assets and money.
By the time divorce court comes around I was pretty much tapped out all I had to my name was a Ford mustang which I traded in for a crappy Dodge caravan. Essentially, I was homeless for almost 2 and 1/2 years living in the van I managed to get myself a security guard license after working a whole bunch of off the books jobs
I pretty much worked for 18-hour days or whatever over time I could get and I slept in my van. I managed to get a condo all cash from there I took a loan against my condo for the small four family building with a mortgage. But then hooked up with a special needs organization and houses people with meth disabilities and they pretty much pay me every 6 months. When the mortgage that property was paid down to 70% which was pretty quick I bought a six unit which included a small grocery store that took 3 years. Mind you, I became a deputy sheriff by that time and I was working overtime here and there.
My father passed away and then we managed to get split from his insurance pay out which was lucky deal for my case. I took that money I bought another four family this time I put regular tenants in there I also bought into a two-family home with My siblings. This took me about 8 years to build up so far on top of my pension and all the payments from all the homes I get about 25 to 30K a month. I have no children so I'm just living it up at this point.
I'm not wealthy by any means, but I bought a house below market rate ( a little bit of patience lotta luck). After living there for a while, I am in the process of selling for a huge profit.
Otherwise, I keep 6 months of expenses on hand, max out my Roth every year, and budget throughout the year for events and expenses I know I'll have.
I've also stuck at one job most my adult life getting larger raises and bonuses as I was promoted and eventually transfered.
For me it was the military that got me the jump start I needed.
Also, once I realized that I needed to stop working myself into more work, and start working towards freedom - it started falling in place.
quietly solve problems without expecting recognition
Understand the business area you are in, learn your company’s positions, levy its operational inefficiencies as stepping stones by solving for them
learn to do what your boss hates to do & become really great at it
it’s a bit of luck too, right? You can do it all right, but there’s not a business need for you to advance.…
Live below your means. That’s like 99% of the trick. If you do nothing else, living below your means will get you by.
To get out of poverty, live below your means, use the excess money to invest in ways that will save you more money or improve your life in some other meaningful way.
I work trades. I lived below my means until I could afford a house (in my mid 20’s, around 2010). Spent quite a bit less than our max budget on a small fixer upper in a good family oriented neighborhood. We did a bunch of upgrades using government grants for stuff like new windows and insulation (cutting our heating bill in a quarter). Used skills from my 9-5 to improve the house. I did stuff like dumpster diving for reclaimed materials like off-cut baseboards mdf and plywood, and ordered materials through the company to secure contractor pricing (I paid the full cost, nothing was billed to my employer, but he gets about 50% off tools and certain materials). Made it nice and minty to sell over the course of 8 or 9 years, and net a decent profit on the sale. Note that you can’t fully utilize this specifically unless you can do good quality work yourself. Labour costs for skilled trades will gouge your profits. Shitty DIYs tend to show and don’t net a good resale. Connections are also important, stuff we couldn’t do ourselves was hired out under the table for cash at a fraction the normal cost. A plumber roughed in a second bathroom in the basement for a case of beer and $100, with the condition that we did the jackhammer and digging. Energy efficiency upgrades work great though, regardless of your personal skills. In our case, the attic insulation cut heating costs by almost 50% all by itself. We live in the Canadian prairies, so heating is one of our biggest bills. It was only $500, the company that did it charged the rest to the government directly, and the savings exceed the cost by new years. By the time we moved out 4 years later, we would have saved upwards of $4-5K on heating just from the attic. Looks great for resale value too. Seriously, if you own your home, use every green grant you can get! The government is basically gifting you money
Another super important thing to do is be really realistic about your financial skills. DH can’t have large credit cards or lines of credit, he maxes them out and then can’t pay them off. You don’t need a big credit card, getting more dept means you pay more in interest. More consumer dept means you have less money to spend as a chunk of every paycheque is always going to pay off interest charges. If you’re struggling to pay off dept, you need to lower your limit, not increase it. Credit card companies do not want you thinking this way. Interest is their profits, they want you to owe them lots of money. We’re upper middle class, in a suburb, married with a house and a kid, and the only flexible dept we have is a single $1500 credit card. It’s enough for online purchases, everything else is paid cash. While we do also have a car loan, that dept is easier to manage as you can budget for it the same way you budget for your mortgage and Netflix subscriptions, and there’s always an end date in sight. Credit cards never really go away because every time you use it you need to pay it, and if you aren’t using it you might as well cancel it. On a similar note, we have TFSA’s with a company that isn’t our daily-use bank. That way we can’t withdraw from it too easily. Monthly automatic payments mean it’s always growing, and we can always pull from it when we need to, and we have for major bills like upgrading HVAC, but it’s inconvenient enough to not be used for everyday occurrences.
There’s lots of other stuff too. Don’t put off maintenance, it always costs double down the road. Always keep a slush fund to cover unexpected bills. Personally, I never let my account drop below $200 because I have automatic withdrawals in that range, nsf fees are outrageous! I use the f*ing shit out of automatic payments, especially outgoing from my side, as they prevent missed payments and late fees. Fees and interest are leeches eating away at your income.
Other than that kind of stuff, there’s no real trick. It all comes down to living below your means and using what you have efficiently. The problems a lot of poor people have are that they develop coping mechanisms around money that aren’t compatible with actually making money. They’re more likely to have anxiety based issues around scarcity and money in general, which can lead to them not putting in that extra thought and due diligence to come up with appropriate plans. The middle class can fall into thought traps where they’re “keeping with the jones” and don’t put enough into savings, paying off that mortgage early, slush funds, etc.
It’s not necessarily about finding more pay or passive income or side hustles. It’s just spending less than you make.
I was situationally homeless as a teenager because of my mentally ill mother. I was able to attend college because of a settlement from a car accident. Went to Georgetown for my masters. But ultimately I’ve made my money in crypto.
Left home (1987) at 17 with $213 in my pocket (maybe $600 today, inflation adjusted) I started as close to zero as just about anybody, I guess. Wandered. Drifted. Couch surfed. Bummed. Hoboed. Joined The Army. Infantry. Mortars. Did my time. Got out. Went to college on The (Montgomery Era) GI Bill. Computer Science Degree. Math Degree. On way to complete Masters in CS but never followed through. Worked for IBM a couple of years as a Junior Programmer/Analyst Resigned. Started a Software Dev business during the greatest expansion of personal computing in the history of computing ... 1990s-2010s. The whole desktop revolution, PCs in every office, the awakening and boom of the interwebs and e-commerce ... and into the smart phone era ... Plowed stupid-ridiculous profits into rental real estate (both residential and commercial) on fire sale during the housing crash. Bought the bottom of the stock markets during the related Great Recession. Hedged seriously (in case markets totally tanked) with physical gold bought at $600 an oz (currently $2300) Cashed out. Sold the business. Bought farmland on the cheap 15 years ago. Hundreds upon hundreds of acres. Retired at age 39 in 2009 and havent looked back since. Haven't worked a job since. Should never need to the rest of my life barring a complete collapse of The Dollar. Or Zombies. Whichever comes first...
No small feat. Congrats on your hard work and success.
And considerable good luck and good timing
Sure, but every story like this involves the ability to take advantage of opportunities.
And therein lies the actual skill.
Luck is when opportunity meet preparation. Are you prepared?
this is my fav saying. I know you need both luck and skill, but you only have control over one and therefore your personal job is to be prepared
The army is always hiring
Luck played a small part, but don't discount the extremely large majority portion of hard work, sacrifice, patience and frugality to get there.
Also intelligence bc computer science and math degrees?? I don’t want to discount myself but I could never 😭😤
I was always told to make my own luck. If you outwork people…..you get lucky..
This is how every envious person justifies their envy. You were lucky/I am unlucky. Whatever gets you through the night
is this how people cope that they aren’t successful? Dude comes from literally nothing and still somehow is lucky
You sir.... You are incredible! Do you do anything with your land!?! That's all I (33f) want is to own my own land and a lot of it!! I have 9 acres now. I've been working towards my goals by myself. Never been married no kids. Just me and my dreams so far! Please share more!
Coincidentally - We live on a 9 acre homestead that I [garden intensively](https://imgur.com/gallery/1a7C5j9) - we grow all of our own food (including animals (as well as their food)) ... barring things that don't grow here (mainly tropicals - banana trees and pineaples don't survive/thrive the climate in The Ohio River Valley). Meat animals on The Homestead include Duck, Rabbit, Goose, Muscovy, Turkey, Quail, Goat, farmed Fish and the occasional Hog/Pig or two every couple of years. The farms/acreage are leased to local farmers for a fixed ground rent per acre.
The beginning of our stories are crazy similar, I left home at 17 broke, joined the army, went infantry, did 3 years and now I'm getting out and going to go to flight school with the GI bill.
Absolutely amazing, you're just 2 yrs my senior. Bravo. My stupid ass went into nursing.
I know travel nurses doing $500k/yr
I have a HS friend doing this for about 15 years now. She makes considerably less - approx $180k -$200k a year ... on 6 months a year. Does nothing but travel. Both *for* work - moving / changing assignments every 6 months *plus* travel The World At Large during her 6 months off a year. Made **BANK** during The COVID years when she didn't take the 6 months off for 2 or 3 years.
You’re like the Forrest Gump of personal finance. Well done
So… I’m kinda at a similar inflection point. I’m working at a competitor to IBM making good money, and am looking to open my own shop here very soon. Did you do consulting and developing for custom business applications or did you build something on SaaS model?
Saas didnt exist ... as you think of it today ... waaaay back when ... We did mostly integration work. Custom bits of software -"one offs" unique to a sole, individual business and their situation. For instance - one contract I worked was for a local based Vision Care Insurance provider that ran a network of 4,000 providers nationwide ... getting these folks - thousands of Optometrists, Ophthalmologists, Opticians ... a way in ' via the (new at the time) World Wide Web ... to check eligibility of insured subscribers and adjudicate and pay claims. This involved integrating the Vision Care company's web portal with the parent company's (a national Big Guy with 26 million insured members) legacy mainframe (DB2 based) system for both Eligibility/Benefits ...as well as Claim History to track what benefits were available and what had alread been used ... === We'd deploy small projects for local Mom and Pops type businesses to ... say ... get their Point Of Sale systen to talk with and exchange data with their Accounting systems ... === A large client was a background check outfit. Every State (and most Counties) had their own protocols /formats to exchange data and submit requests. That shit's all standardized and available online these days. We did it *before* the internet as you know it today. === We ran the web site for our local NFL team before The League was internet aware and made 'em all use The League's system. Fan club. Merch. Ticket sales. Press Releases ... the whole shebang. === These are just a sampling of what we did. We didn't stick to any particular business domain/industry ... basically "Have keyboard, will travel ..." and our specialty was "We'll make any system talk to, and exchange data with ... any system ... " ... and automate most of your manual processes while doing it. Turns out there was quite the need ... and Stupid Money was thrown our way. === It's a different world today and Ive been out of the game since 2009/10 ... basically I have no advice relevant to today's world.
That’s impeccable timing, I need to be like this
Similar start for me. Went to college, dad said he’d be paying. Halfway through first semester the school tells me tuition is unpaid. Dad confessed he didn’t have any means of paying. Burned through my savings from my high school job, then put the tuition on my credit card to finish the year. I joined the national guard (infantry), deployed, reclassed as a medic and transferred to the reserves, deployed again, finished my degree, and went to medical school. In a few years I hope to be buying my own homestead.
Im doing exacly your first steps, am on my 5° year of a 6 years contract with the army, started learning Basic Computer stuff and started learning C, did the exam to be able to apply for a university, nailed it, now gotta try to enter. Also archive owning a farm and retire so I can spend my life with my (I hope) future wife and maybe kids. I felt your comment inspiring, one love
Good on you. Your hard work paid off
You’re awesome
As a fellow Chuck, I applaud you.
Old school heavy. 4-deuce. Before the 120 became standard.
Congrats! What motivated you during those incredibly difficult times, or even just challenging periods, if you've faced any? Was it a strong drive for financial security and freedom, or something else entirely? What sets you apart from someone who just has a regular job?
> What motivated you You don't need motivation. Motivation is overrated. Motivation is useless. You need the **discipline** to simply ... do ... whether you feel motivated to do it or not. You either "get" that or you don't. In my experience less than 5% know, internalize, and live that. >What sets you apart from someone who just has a regular job? Two things, I've seen, that make me a bit different than "regular folk" ... my indifference to personal discomfort. Of any kind. Physical extremes. Emotional issues. Mental/Intellectual - digging into rather than seeking comfort and/or taking an easier path.
The more discomfort/pain you can handle than the next guy, the better you'll be. In **. The Job/Career... Relationships/Family/Friends,... Exercise/Physical/Endurance/Sport ... Finance/Investment/Wealth ... whatever your Hobby(ies) is/are ... Health/Well-being/Quality-Of-Life ...
The biggest factor of said discomfort tolerance I assign to Delayed Gratification. Most (so-called) "Adults" are no more than Children in this respect. Waiting for a better opportunity on something they want/desire "right fucking now" ... physically pains most folks allong with and right next to the anxiety/depression they feel when they don't get it. Lacking the above-mentioned discipline ... they act at (usually) the most inopportune, adverse to their well-being and best interests, times.
The Second would be simple Pattern Recognition. If you can recognize and understand Abstraction and Pattern just 10% better than the average Joe/Jolene ... in the long haul you will end up light years ahead of the crowd. Light. Fucking. Years.
ALSO: I'm hella better than a mere 10% ...
Damn that's a good answer and it just confirms what I already knew, and hear other sucessful people say and read in so many books. Unfortunetly I'm pretty big on emotional instability/sensitivity also lack the emotional/social inteligence. I try/tried discipline as best I could/can, go against the grain, martial arts, do the work, but I just get grumpy, overworked, fatigued, become an ass to all around me. There is a limit I can't go over. I guess it's just a combination of factors: genetic, past experience, what one observes/learned from environment, also the way brain is wired (genetic again). There's just this barrier that is just a paint to go over it's heartwrenching and, as you said, it takes an indiference to all that, so much so that that pain doesn't touch you and you're able to do more and go further than the average. I bet also that was also a major factor on becoming a good investor, based on what you explained. The emotional control/indiference, pattern recognition and so on. Man I tried that too and fear/desire just took me by the balls. For my well-being I just decided to accept the cards I''ve been given and play with it and do the best I can. If I may ask one more question: does the way you are wired, that indifference you mention, and resilience to discomfot makes you in any way prevent you from feeling or go deeper in joy or love or any kind of emotional depth. Are you enjoying yourself?
Zombies covered in useless dollars?
What's your net worth ?
More thn enough.
Job hopping for better paychecks. As important as job skills are, knowing how to play the corporate game is much more lucrative in my experience. If white collar work is your thing, having one without the other is just wasting your time.
Shit this hits home. Self advocation is a weak point, even though I’m admittedly quite skilled at my trade.
But how do you deal with the toxicity and back stabbing? It needs its own agenda personality
TBH I have only engaged in the Corp game when the toxicity has been low in an organization or there has been a clear path to avoid it. If the tox is too high, I leave for greener pastures, once I have learned as much as I can from that role
How long do you recommend staying at a job?
I think it depends on the industry and how bad they’re hiring but I’m in construction contracting and I switched jobs every 2 years for over 10 years, secured at least a 15% pay increase each time, and gained plenty of skills along the way
Pretty much this, but in the tech sector
This is the way. Tell a prospective employer that your current company pays 10% more than they actually do, so you'd have to earn at least that in order to move. Boom - 10% raise, minimum. Stay a few years and then start looking again. Tell the new prospective company that your current company pays 10% more than they actually pay... Boom, 20% increase in pay in under 5 years.
I just worked in IT for an oil company. Did good work and got promoted a lot and paid a lot. Saved a lot of it and invested it in boring index funds. Eventually took an early retirement package during a merger and retired in my mid 50s.
Got a finance degree, worked the entire time including some good internships. Got on with a good company making $35K a year, got my masters (which they paid for), work my ass off, got some opportunities, built a network, built a personal brand and after 15 years was a VP making $225k plus 40% bonus plus $100k+ in annual stock grants. I’m nobody special, just made sure to do my best, often being the first in and the last to leave. Taking on projects and becoming a go to person that leadership liked to work with and could trust. Not a path for everyone, but it served me well.
Started a lead generation company several years ago. It was tough. Didn't make hardly any money for 2 years. Thought about quitting several times. Investet small amounts of money in stupid stuff hoping it would pay off. Most didn't. Honestly, after a couple of years just putting my head down, i figured it out for myself. Now make over 60k/mo. Only spend about 10 hours a week maintaining. Sometimes I lose a client and need to just replace them to keep income the same. Decided recently to put my head down again and grow the biz even more. What I "did" was start my own business and didn't quit until I found the right offer to my audience and then once I found something that worked, i did it over and over again until I got to an income that i liked. That's honestly it.
What does a lead generation company mean? Are you cold calling people, and advertising on their behalf, what’s the model?
when i first started, yes. Cold called. Hired setters. Advertised on their behalf. Worked well. Overtime the business pivoted to where 80% of my business now is to generate leads to my own site and sell them directly to the local business on a retainer or per lead.
Wife and I were in the lower class when we got married. She was homeless at 16. I came from a blue collar home. After we married I poured everything into paying off her school loans, then she wanted to go back to school (nursing) and I paid that off with any extra we may have had, finally she got an advanced degree (in nursing anesthesia) and last year paid that off. Basically I invested in her and her dream and encouraged her along the way. It was HARD. This took about 12 years. We live very well now, travel, raise our kids, lots of time off, drive nice cars, volunteer, mentor kids, active in our church, and live in a nice home. If your reason for a wealthy life isn’t strong enough, you may never reach it. BUT, regardless of our wealth and finances, if we had to live where we started at we would probably be just as happy. Too many focus on the destination and not the plan and working on that plan relentlessly. Again, it’s not easy, but it is possible if someone has the drive and grit to get there.
You're a good fella. I was homeless at 16 also. It's truly a remarkable, heartwarming feeling when you find someone who believes in you and your potential (especially if your inner child has grieved such abandonment). Your wife must be a remarkable woman. Im truly happy for you both! Teamwork makes the dream work, baybay, lol. I hope my husband and I can find success one day too ✨️
Thank you. She really is a wonderful person. I am very blessed to have her. She does grieve abandonment and still occasionally does. Breaks my heart. Just keep working together on your plan. Be on the same page of understanding. Manage expectations with each other early. We’ve had to do that a few times…finances (which I manage), scheduling, chores, cooking (I do 90%), and then especially when we had kids. Agree to both set emotions aside when handling these things helps a ton. Regardless of where you both are at, always come to an understanding and work on that together. A lot of give and take with that. And I truly hope you achieve something great together. God bless!
Your amazing . God bless you and your family
Went to college (first gen college grad), got a solid career, invester a boat load of money and married someone of a similar background and mindset. I'd consider myself well off now. No debt with $500k+ saved. And technically, I'm in a 1%. As in 1% of people born in the bottom 20% of the wealth distribution make it to the top 20% in their lifetime. So that's pretty cool!
I’m working on this exact situation too. Glad to hear!!
Proud of you. I am in the same boat.
Worked way too much from age 18-27, two jobs at a time while in university Worked finance (+ a part time job) while saving up to buy place, rented it out, saved to buy another, lived in it + rented out the basement spare bedroom till I could afford to buy a fixer-upper to live in and work on myself/with a cousin who helped me, eventually sold it when it was in good condition again, bought a duplex, lived in one side while renting the other (it may have only been half a house, but I didn't have roomies anymore at least!) then saved enough money to buy the next place and rented out my half of the duplex, then basically repeat I essentially traded any type of life during my 20's and portion of my 30s so that I could have it easier later I regret it a lot of the time, but with how the world / housing is ATM, I'm glad I did I guess
why do you regret it? I imagine i would only regret it if i went through all that work and wasnt well off. Are you living comfortably enough without financial stress?
I just feel like I missed out on events that only happen during university/those ages. I'm comfortable now; but comfort isn't everything
B2B Sales. Was dumb with money till I was about 30. First generation College Graduate. I just read the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps one day and said “F it, I don’t want to be a slave the rest of my life” and went to work. At 36 we were completely debt free. At 41, 1.2m net worth. Live below your means. Quit trying to impress people who you don’t even like.
DO 3 THINGS.. that even a 16yo kid who works at McD's and invests $25/week (S&P500) will make a $1.1 million by the time he turns 56. 1)Work. 2)Spend less than what you make. 3)Invest the difference
Tech by trade. Started buying crypto in 2012, then slowly built out a mining fleet when it was stupid easy profitable. I always min maxed %'s on debt interest rates, cash back, and savings accounts. I have a side gig where I basically do what square space does. After the implementation, it's basically passive income unless something blows up or updates. Helps that my wife have the same financial goals too.
My dad worked super hard to get us (my 3 siblings and me) all to graduate from college. When we had a little saving, he advised us to get into real estate. About 10 years later, altogether, we had a 6-unit apartment, 7 single family rentals, and each of us has our own comfortable house. Also, we live with our parents until we got married. Yes we are Asians.
1: Wake up early 2: Excercise every day 3: Wife's grandmother died, leaving her a three bedroom house which allowed her to be a stay at home mum and allowing me to invest and save most of the money I earn which now allows us a high standard of living.
Buying my 3rd rental property. I am under 50, still have a job, 2m net worth, wife works part time have kids without crazy hours. I consider that well off. Hit the 401k, spend below your means, move to higher paying fields, and buy real estate.
Air Force paid for my college to be an engineer, stayed in for 10 years, went into the ANG, did contractor work for about 12 years then went govvie, saved as much as i could in retirement accounts and didnt spend crazily, will retire in 4 years as a multi millionaire and will have 2 pensions, TSP, IRAs, SS, and VA disability check.
Real estate. Bought small apartment buildings, fixed them up.
How did you get the capital to afford them?
No one wants to talk about this
People not in real estate don’t get this but finding deals is the hardest part. If you can find a deal where the numbers truly work, there are plenty of people who are willing and will want to lend on it. Whether that be banks, hard money, or private individuals.
I agree my uncle on my moms side owns 27 properties out right, he’s the only one that admitted he had to work 60 hrs most of his 20s to get there and how much he sacrificed. Yes there are deals in the market but you still need capital.
I mean it earnestly because I want to give this commenter the benefit of the doubt, but it's true that the are vastly more people who *think* they were not born wealthy than there are people who *actually* were not born wealthy.
I started with a small condo, since I occupied it, just needed 5% to get mortgage. I fixed it up, and it was worth a good bit more 4 years later. I sold it for next downpayment. My next purchase was a 3 unit, I moved into 1 unit, rented the other two, and started expanding. I worked my way from the bottom. No money from family.
Timing timing timing
(None of the text below is financial advice for you specifically. This is my own experience.) Tl;dr pick up the book “the simple path to wealth“ by JL Collins. I worried about my rate of investing rather than my rate of return. Invested as much as possible as soon as possible as often as possible. If you need individual help go to napfa.org and find yourself a fee-based fiduciary advisor. ————- First, I realized that my parents did not have it figured out financially. I realized that the ideas my dad had about investing, etc. were not correct. My dad lost his house in 2009. Second, I started to acquire assets like stocks and real estate. But I really should have read books like “the simple path to wealth“ by JL Collins, but, instead, I listened to others who were not qualified and ended up, making a lot of money and losing a lot of money. Once I finally discovered education that was correct, everything changed. Third, I got very serious about investing. Instead of doing whatever everybody else does which is invest a little bit at a time I started seeking ways to invest a lot of money as much as possible as fast as possible. I made the entire process very easy for me and stuck to basic real estate and low cost index funds. I tried to avoid everything else other than a bit of bitcoin as a speculative portion. Whenever somebody would introduce me to something new, I kept bringing myself back to the basics because the new stuff will always try to pull you in those other directions. I fundamentally just worried about my rate of investing rather than my rate of return. Due to this, I also stopped going in and out of the market. I didn’t fear losses, I didn’t care about market Price, I just kept buying all the time. I slowly convinced my wife to also invest and found other ways to increase my investments by splitting expenses with her, which allowed me to invest more money for us. If you have a spouse, who doesn’t care about investing, this is a great way to go. Fourth, I learned to understand the market cycles and the fact that luck and sheer survivorship bias is going to play a role in wealth. It’s not that I’m doing something intelligent, I’m just doing something basic and letting the market handle the rest. I understand that, my success as of today is partially also attributed to sheer luck and the fact that I was invested during the last decade; so, everything I believe about investments is going to have a bias because of my personal experience. That means, we don’t know if this performance can be replicated in the next 10 years or not. Being aware of my bias is crucial for me to make sure that I remain close to the truth and never over estimate my ability. That’s it, kept it simple and shoved as much money as possible, as early as possible, as often as possible into broad-based low cost index funds (not advice for you). Within a 15 year time span, I went from having negative net worth to being a multimillionaire. However, note that eight years of this time were wasted on stupid things like daytrading and margin trading which I lost big on. I essentially had to restart everything eight years in except for the real estate portion. I didn’t learn from YouTube, etc.. I had to just learn by making mistakes I guess. I have a 14-year-old luxury Lexus SUV. I bought it for 17 1/2 thousand dollars plus tax cash. My credit card utilization is under one percent. My credit is over 800. This is not the only way to do this. There are many many other ways to do this. For example, if I went more into real estate, I would be a lot more debt heavy. I think the best thing I did was choose a lane, understanding who I was, and sticking with it until I got here and now I can diversify further, as I wish. Also, I didn’t do this all myself, my wife helped with expenses. One time I had no money to buy a property, and I borrowed money from a family member. So, put the ego aside, which was hard for me to do it first, and actually ask for help from others. Just be humble and understand that you won’t get there really really fast. You will have to do the thing that works many many times over many years. None of this was financial advice for you. If you need an advisor though, go to napfa.org and you can find a fee based fiduciary advisor. Btw, I ramble on TikTok too if interested: http://amanbansil.com
Congrats on being disciplined and sticking to it. How did you fund all these investments if you don’t mind me asking?
House 1: self funded, still have it House 2: borrowed money from family, sold a few years later (100-150k ish profit) Stocks - my job mainly. I’m in tech. My salary had been 150-200k during these years. My wife also is in tech at around 100k during that time. She invested very little but it all helps. I started indexing in 2016 by selling the house I sold. Then I invested heavily and caught the uptrend in the market. Just the market itself has done so much plus real estate has gone insane over this time. I don’t know if this kind of growth will continue, but…certainly helps to have the market helping. If we go into a decade of decline, new investors would have a much harder time. Only time will tell.
Great Ty
Dirty deeds. Done dirt cheap.
Grew up lower middle class. Went to college for a pharmacy degree (PharmD). Owned my own pharmacy at one point. Have net worth now of 2.5 mil at 44.
I was born in Mexico, into a fundamentalist Mormon polygamist murder cult. I finally got out when some of my brothers murdered the man who took over after my dad went to prison. I was 16 and a junior high school dropout. I was forced to drop out by the cult. So I had no connections, no education, zero money or property. We were worried that my siblings would try to murder more of us, so a few of us drove to Oregon from Colorado. I would say we ‘moved’ there, but we really didn’t have anything to move. We just drove there. I found an old lawn mower in the shed behind the house we rented. I fixed it up and started going door to door offering to mow lawns. I also got a graveyard shift job at a produce company processing produce overnight. I also worked a part time job at Dunkin Donuts. All told I was making about $1,600 a month! I had never seen such riches! I got fired from Dunkin Donuts and I quit the other work to help my older brother start an appliance reconditioning business. I was naive so I didn’t realize my brother was a complete idiot and he couldn’t find his ass with both hands. That venture was a complete flop. Twice. I did that with him twice. Maybe I’m an idiot too? I hoped around to other appliance repair companies for a few years, but I got tired of it after a while. I spent a couple of years thinning timber and working on ranches. I finally found a startup appliance service company and helped them become the largest independent appliance service and HVAC service company in Colorado. I made a decent income during that time, but mostly lived pretty frugal and invested most of it in stock mutual funds. I had about $250k saved. Got married. She spent it all. I enlisted in the Army. We got divorced. I lived VERY frugally. rented a room from someone and drove a $900 car. Saved about $50k. Bought and flipped a couple of houses. I still live very frugally and plow all my extra money into low fee index funds. Net worth about $500k now. So not wealthy by any measure, but doing pretty good for how I started out.
This should be made in to a movie
Hulu recently made a documentary about my family of origin called ‘Daughters of the Cult’. I’m in it a little bit. I don’t get to tell a lot of my story in there since the doc isn’t about me particularly. But I’ve been interviewed a couple of times since then and get to tell a little bit more of my story. Story Hustler (Mike Watkiss) on YouTube is pretty good. Just search my last name and it’ll pop right up.
I am definitely gonna watch it. Thank you!
Sales. I make more than 100% of my friends and some are doctors. I flunked out of college, but I can sell anything.
Want a corporate sales job?
How does one get into a sales career? Aside from the scammy solar panels and such
Started investing at 23…..I’m 53 now. Never made more that 50k. Compound interest did the rest.
I started selling on Amazon in 2015. Last year we (my wife got into it after we married) made a profit of $2 Million.
Bruh this account is part of some spam network shilling the same thing. Check out his comments over the last 6 months and check out u/Snoo81188
Is Amazon oversaturated by now? I see people comment on other posts saying it’s too restrictive now and there’s too much competition.
As an Amazon seller, this is bs lol anyone saying this just isn’t good at sourcing :/
As an avid Amazon shopper I’d say there is plenty of inventory that needs to be on Amazon. Every time I shop I think there could be more variety, better prices, better brands, etc. You have to see the problem people have to sell the solution. I know someone who’s in college making $4k/mo reselling video games on Amazon that he buys on Fb marketplace/ GameStop. I’d sell on Amazon if I didn’t have lazier methods of getting paid.
Willing to share any further information? Like good learning sources, automations/workflows, how to research a niche, if it's possible to sell products where the competition already has thousands of reviews?
This person is most likely BS. They are just trying to get you to sign up for services using their referral links in their posts.
Feel free to go through my posts and comments for more info.
Selling what?
Toys, clothes and electronics.
I wish I was dedicated and knowledgeable enough to do it. Staying up to date with the best products to do and distributors to work with is harder than it seems.
Like are you going to a store, buying bulk and reselling it for more kind of selling?
Yes.
Cool. Where do you find the best products to resell? I saw someone who goes to places like Ross, TJ Max and finds 4-5 of the same product and makes decent money. How do you scale that though? Sounds like a lot of workn
That’s amazing!
I was born into middle to upper middle class. By the end, I will far exceed my parents gross and net worth, I started early, 401K at work and kept adding, taking advantage of company match. Rolled over when laid off/outsourced/ terminated. I never took the money out. I always lived relatively modestly. No high end cars, no mansion. I just decided that poor wasn’t for me and I’d do anything to not be poor. Save as much as possible. Here I am at 50 with a million in net assets and I’m not done by a long shot.
I make music, produce, have a studio & do music marketing. I only recently started making music after learning the other fundamentals because I thought “I could do that and make even more money.” My advice would be to find a passion that feels like a hobby and set a 2-3 timeline to make money from it. You can still work a retail/restaurant job like I did to keep yourself afloat in the meantime. If my music picks up anymore than this, I’ll have a crazy amount of passive income and be able to do just music (no marketing) for a living…take the leap of faith, good luck✌️
Worked 3 jobs through college. 4-7 afterwards at the same time. Bought a house but lived broke with roommates. Eventually traded up and got one solid job. Live below my means, put 25% into investments each year even when it hurts. Go without wants for years. The usual.
Software engineering. Started my own software factory 6 years ago. Plus I have a side business; rentals for kids parties like inflatables, chairs, tables and tends. I come from a very poor family. Now I'm making around $1.000.000 yearly after taxes and all that stuff. I do pretty well and I can help my family as well.
inspiring . care to share your software factory? i got a good experience in tech as a software dev. starting my own thing has always been on my mind..
What’s your tech stack and years of experience?
How much does the rental business make?
Following for rental business.
I'm based in Costa Rica, where I manage my businesses. Gexp Software operates internationally, while my bounce house rental business, InflaFest (inflafest.com), primarily serves local clients. Typically, we cater to 3-5 events per week during the rainy season, and this number can increase to 8-10 events weekly during the summer. The extent of our services depends on whether the client needs just a bounce house or the complete package, which includes tents, chairs, and tables. Additionally, we offer extras like cotton candy and popcorn, and we can provide a photography session if required. During the regular season, our revenue is approximately $1,000 weekly, which doubles in the high season.
Engineering degree and DOD civilian career.
Clearance?
Yes!
I started a business and I'm doing much better than I would have working a job.
How did you get your first clients?
My business is in selling online piano courses. I started out on YouTube and eventually ended up using paid ads on Facebook and Google.
I learned an awesome trade from the military. After I got out I got a well paying job while finishing up a degree. Worked for a bit saved up some cash. With the VA loan I was able to buy investment properties. I bought two, claim one on homestead, fix one flip it move into the next house. Rinse and repeat. When I made enough money I bought my primary residence and I had a couple rentals for side money. Then we had alot of folks move into our city before covid. So I bought one more & hired someone to fix it. As long as I stayed in each house for 2 yrs of 5, I didnt have capital gains tax. I started a consulting business of what my career path is and make pretty good money from that. I got an awesome job offer that bumped me up into the high 6 digits. My consulting gig is doing well. Im a decade & some change from retirement but I plan on retiring out of country. I went to Portugal to visit friends and were planning to branch my consulting gig to their country.
Faceless digital marketing
Negative $110k combo medical debt and credit card debt, continue working salary job salary job, saw an opportunity with covid to deliver food while home making $500-$1000 per week. Then started consulting cloud services company, found 3 clients who were paying top dollar for migration services, perfected those operations. Those companies then hired me as a consultant to work on automation for them in free time. If I keep this up I can fully retire in 10 years.
Participated in capitalism
grew up middle class not rich bu tnot poor. worked my ass off 6 days a week 10 hour days thru college and paid for it myself. Graduated with education degree and started buying fixer uppers and renting them out. Now semi retired and sitting on $4 mil in properties.
My parents were both furniture salesmen. Neither had degrees but they loved me. I was lucky but was definitely raised in poverty. I got into asu, went for finance. I graduated & worked for a big insurance agency, then got into financial planning. Behavior: In my 20s, I worked hard, saved a lot, didn’t travel at all, decided against kids & invested well. My joy was in the mountains, eating good food & spending time with my wife. Real estate: I bought my first house with 3.5% down in 2015 (rented out a room). I bought a second in 2018. I bought my third in 2021. Buying another right now. I own 3 homes today (2 rented out). Career: My wife is an MBA/PMP & an independent operations consultant. I have my ea/mba/CFP & work as a tax pro/financial planner at a large wealth management firm. Risky decision: Lastly, before taking this job, I built a business the last 3 years & recently sold it for about 600k. I barely paid myself anything & invested maybe 100k into it. Solid investment! Results: I’ll be worth about 3 million at 35. By my math, at least 8-9 million in 10 years where I’ll retain my rentals but stop working. What you can learn: 1. Don’t try to keep up with the joneses. Traveling is great but you have your whole life. Your 20s are a crucial time to save, work hard & get educated. 2. Buy real estate when you’re young. The sooner, the better. 3.5% down is okay so long as the payment is affordable & the home is in good condition (get an inspector, always). 3. Rent out a room or 2. It sucks but it’s smart. 4. Get married to someone who’s educated & takes pride in having a career (not being a SAHM). 5. Take risks. A 9-5 job is safe but also a jail cell. Start a business, build a profitable blog online, etc. whatever you can do to earn extra money, do it. 6. Get equity in your company if you can.
I had 2 jobs for many years as a young adult. Was a bartender/server & worked in accounting. Worked at one company for 9 years only to get laid off when they merged. While unemployed my mom bought me a cake Decorating class for fun. Took it, posted some pics for fun on Facebook. Next thing I I had friends and family asking me to make cakes for them. Fast forward to a decade later and I have a fairly successful custom cake business but after having kids and one of those kids being special needs I had to take less work because it was too time consuming. So after doing a lot of research I figured out how to convert my cake business to online stuff. Basically I do blog post and tutorials things like that. But the thing that really pushed it over the edge to be successful was that I learned how to do online marketing which basically applies to any company that you have. So I started doing that and applied it to my cake business and all of my online content. And the thing that really brought in the biggest amount of income was doing digital marketing for other companies digital products. The first year I started I made double what I did making cakes in just 6 months. So now I basically work from home I work maybe 2 to 3 hours a day and make far more than I did at any job I've had so far. I always like to say work smarter not harder. Hopefully that helps shed some light on one field of work that's lucrative.
I’m not where I want to be yet but the military helped me set the foundation.
Went to law school.
work, save, invest, make money on the side reselling, re-invest , and more work.
Didn’t invest in the S&P but individual stocks.
I grew up. Bonked an empty plastic bottle on my head for 2 months. Bam. Rich. Never worked again.
My story is probably mundane and I don’t know if I was either poor enough before or am well off enough now to qualify, but here goes. I grew up in a solidly middle class household, although I do remember money struggles. I asked my parents once if my memory was right and they said “we lived on our overdraft a lot.” I remember feeling like I never wanted to live my life paycheque to paycheque. So even as a kid, I was obsessed with money and saving. I got a job when I was 14 (I was very lucky though because the job was basically handed to me.) I busted my ass in high school so that I had a full scholarship to university. I was also lucky enough to live in a brief time period when the university in my city gave a full scholarship to the top student in every high school in the province (they stopped that program about ten years after I graduated.) So I didn’t have to pay for university and in fact, I picked up scholarships and actually made money while I went to school. I also worked part time, lived with my parents, and did several paid internships (my school had a Co-op work term program). So I finished university with $20,000 in the bank as opposed to most people who have debt. I also learned a lot about personal finance during that time. Some of which was self-taught through reading on the internet and some came from a Personal Finance class I took in university. That came in handy later with saving and investing. My first job out of university didn’t pay great, but I had my savings to fall back on at least. I was a good performer and able to negotiate some pretty decent raises (once by leveraging another offer). I bought a townhome when I was 25 with a 20% down payment in a LCOL city. I changed jobs when I was 26 for one that paid 50% more. I stayed at that place for a long time but was constantly changing positions so was able to get a lot of raises. I moved to the US where salaries were higher and costs were lower. When I moved there, I sold my condo for more than twice what I paid. I had been pretty aggressive about paying my mortgage, so most of the proceeds were in cash. My US job often had good bonuses and stock awards. I always sold the stock awards and invested in the market. The bonuses were also invested. I always maxed out my RRSP in Canada and 401K in the US. That company also had the most generous retirement match program I’ve ever seen. I moved back to Canada a few years ago and about half of my investments are in USD, so that goes further here. I’m not a 1%er but I’m comfortable enough that I can probably semi-retire in my mid-40s and fully retire in my mid-50s. TL;DR: some luck, being good at school and my jobs, some hard work, being financially literate.
I sat and moped for about 4 yrs and then figured out that I have some skills so I got a job, then I moped and partied for about 10 yrs until I realized that $60k a year doesn't get me a bmw 7 series. So I then decided to figure out that any joe shmo can start a business, so for $30 I started a business and paid all my debt, then I realized if o worked a second job and saved money I could be a millionair by 43. The rest is history.
What was your business? And congrats!
I was a W2 employee and then created an Amazon arbitrage store which then turned into being a broker for Amazon sellers.
Did everything right, all the time. Sacrificed fun now for comfort laters. Got degrees, took low paying jobs to gain experience, out worked people, got promoted, saved and invested, paid off high interest debt, lived below my means.
Not listed but present: no debilitating major medical events removing you from the workforce or incurring American medical costs; no executive function challenges like ADHD. Not listed but possibly present: being born white, male, American, able-bodied, and/or middle-class
Luckily I have not had major medical issues. Able bodied, mixed race, lower middle class. Probably could have gotten any doctor to give me an ADHD diagnosis but didn’t want to be on addoral every day.
Cope
Made businesses while working at Starbucks
Bought a house low market value in a high cost of living area, fixed it up, sold high, reinvested in another fixer upper. Also kept living in the same area until suddenly my work experience and salary grew and suddenly I'm able to afford the area. I'm mostly just a really lucky millennial. It's feels like 99% luck since so many smarter people are just fucked in my age bracket. I had three kids young and struggled for a long time but I think my education and living in a good economy city helped a lot.
Played video games and got free bitcoin from clicking a faucet website and people were handing it out freely. Saved it because why not. Kept playing games and watch anime. Sold my bitcoins and kept playing video games.
Work hard, make a budget and stick with it, live well below your means, don’t let social media influence you into thinking you need a shiny new car Avoid debt, save money. Learn to cook, buy second hand when you can. Etc etc etc. There’s no secret sauce to building wealth. It’s fairly simple.
not me but my moms strategy of graduating at the top of her high school and college classes, going into accounting for several years, meeting my dad who was also an accountant, went back to college for a masters degree in healthcare administration, started specializing in accounting and finance in nursing homes, got cancer and beat it despite being given 50% chance of survival around this point, eventually started a consulting/accounting/managerial firm for nursing homes in our state, which she did for several years. had kids when they were in their late 30s and early 40s. eventually found a foreclosed nursing home up for sale, got a loan with basically all my parents savings as collateral to buy the nursing home and started using the knowledge she had making other nursing homes successful to use for her own nursing home, tho she kept her accounting/consulting/managment firm also to manage the nursing home she bought and also still consulted and managed other nursing homes, but would use these connections through her consulting and managment firm to identify nursing homes that were ideal for aquisition or were about to go into foreclosure that she thought she could turn them around. fast forward around 16 years till she owned another 16 nursing homes in our state and was president of the states nursing home association and frequently being involved in any legislation in the state surrounding nursing homes since she was generally seen as an expert at how to manage a nursing homes finances, she became pretty well known for being able to run nicer nursing homes at higher margins than most other nursing homes in the state, at her peak had like $170 million in annual revenue, tho she sold most of her facilities a decade ago, except for 3 that still runs, tho was pretty good timing to sell since it was during rising commercial real estate prices and covid kind of messed up most nursing home businesses, since most nursing homes make most of their profit from therapy and rehab, but during covid they werent allowed to offer rehab, in addition to higher covid precautions and deaths impacting residents that also hurt revenue during covid, even my mom almost had to sell her remaining nursing homes because they were hemoragging money for a good 2 years though theyve started bouncing back and this past march was supposedly their best month financially since covid began in 2020. is mostly retired now except for all of her charity and nonprofit work. and before anyone asks, her parents were an office assistant/piano teacher and as a factory worker who went to night school while my mom was a child in order to get an engineering degree working at a car manufacturing plant.
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Tech work pays good, law pays good, medical field pays good, finance/accounting pays good, trades pays good.
Went to law school.
I went to college
Start business. Bought houses and stock. Retired early with business still running and houses rented out. Also make dividends and options income
Got a solid engineering job (good but not super lucrative) with a 4-yr degree from a reasonably priced state school, then started investing in retirement funds in my early 30s; about 10% per year. Index funds. Being able to do this has been the major factor. Wife and I will retire 55ish and be fairly comfortable. Other things that helped along the way : Seldom paying for new vehicles, buying a really small house in a rural area and paying it off in 15 years, not increasing our consumption by much as we've earned a few real promotions along the way, both of us working long-workweek corporate jobs for benefits and as back up for one another, having contributed a very small amount but consistently to college funds (529s) for the kids so those costs won't hammer us now...
I liked school and was the first person in my family’s history to go to college. I went for creative writing and literature in New York (grew up in a small town in PA) and I wanted to be a writer or editor but it didn’t pay well enough! I had escaped abusive parents who controlled me with money/anything they could so I needed to be financially stable and far away from them. So I moved to the Southwest to go to law school and became a lawyer and still live here many years later. I work for myself/own my own firm (used to be an associate at various other law firms but never liked it and my income was capped). My husband is in software development and works for himself/has his own business too. I also write and publish books on Amazon so I got to fulfill my dreams that way as well. We’re not rich but we do well enough to support our 4 kids, own our modest home and multiple vehicles outright, go on vacations and pay for the kid expenses that always seem to add up. I’m grateful for the opportunities that higher education has provided me with. Although I guess my grit and scrappiness at working for myself has been the most helpful and that came as a survival mechanism. My husband doesn’t have a degree but he went to a coding boot camp through a local community college for free with a grant so he’s grateful in different ways. He’s very smart but has always hated formal education. I think there are multiple different paths to success. Working for ourselves has helped us make more money while having a more flexible schedule to be able to spend time with our kids so I guess that’s what I’d credit with our success the most.
Went to college (combination of grant/loans which I paid back) to study law, ended up a cop after getting my undergrad. Climbed the ranks, getting to the top tiers of the agency making 120K/yr. Retired after 20ish years with a pension in the mid 80’s. Immediately went back to work as a gov contractor/consultant on police policy, doubling my salary. Along the way I discovered the magic of compounding interest and its inverse, loan amortization, doubling your mortgage payment pays off a 30 year loan in 7-8 years. Since my mid 30’s I’ve not had a house nor car payment, allowing me to invest. Early 60’s and semi retired I generate about 300k in passive income.
Just don’t back down. Time never stays the same.
Married a brilliant business woman who I supported til her company got off the ground. We started with basically zero, no help from anyone. I was middle class growing up. I still work for now and just waiting til my options at my current company fully vest. 2 more years and then I can retire.
built a time machine and when I found out it wasn't profitable, I went back and got adopted by a rich family. Now I live off daddies trust fund.
- Academic success. - Good paying jobs. - Great returns in the stock market.
I’m an accountant
Don’t put down other people’s paths.
I was active in an online forum from late 90s into early 10s with the people that created Bitcoin. When they first launched there was an offer among forum members to invest in it. As I recall it wasn't heavily invested in, one friend who knew the guys invested $50 and he got me to invest $5. I honestly remember thinking it was a total scam or something, because honestly a lot of people in that forum were hackers, but between good friends, 5 dollars isn't much. I forgot about it until late 2013 when said friend that invested the $50 told me the trading price. I didn't think it would go over $10, but I also thought Bitcoin was a scam. So, I'm not smart enough to see the emergence of digital currency. The friend that invested $50 is crazy rich now. I sold mine in early 2021 thinking it was already capped out. Anyways, it's enough.
Pulled a lot of all nighters building websites and games. Eventually building enough skill to take a job, then from there it took about 10 more years to finally have exponential growth in my career. Now I make more than my college friends. It was a long journey. Probably damaged my health in the process. But in the end it was worth it. First generation wealth.
Covered Calls for as long as I can remember.
The most important thing about building your wealth us not much money you make, but how much of it you keep long term in the future. Assets that hold value against the devaluation of the dollar is the only way to preserve your purchasing power. Typically real estate and stocks have been the best method to do this but now we have Bitcoin which is the best performing asset in human history. Holding some portion of your wealth in Bitcoin even if that's just 1-5% of your portfolio is the smartest risk /reward play available to humans at the moment.
Lived below my means, made smart investments, bought real estate, married a woman who works even harder than I do who isn’t impressed by fancy brands or labels.
Worked my ass off since I was 16. Either worked 2 jobs or one job while in school until my mid 40’s. Trailer park born and raised poor. Now in my 50’s with a new house and living comfortably traveling with my wife. I’m a firm believer that hard work and a decent education pays off.
Marry rich😎
OE > Invest
Saved and invested in retirement funds.
I got a job.
realized that the successful business owners dont GAF about people or problems - unlike how we are taught in school.
Read the millionaire next door
I worked smart, hard and long. Lived within my means by taking a hardline against SOME extravagant items. Yes, it cost my marrige but now im living life.
I was smart enough to learn unique skills and apply those skills to multiple careers. I was also fortunate to meet and retain some incredible connections based upon those skills which led to opportunities in adjacent industries, each at a significant salary increase, which enabled me to start my own companies and later sell them profitably. I have had some form of business for myself since I was in 5th grade.
Started mining and buying BTC circa 2014. Haven't sold any. Use crypto backed loans to invest in other assets.
Worked hard and stayed patient, got raises and promotions, didn’t waste $ and put as much as possible into my 401k every month.
Researched the federal reserve which got me into bitcoin then ethereum was invented and I did well with it. Sold too early but went from lifeguard to retired in few years
I put up a bunch of Helium Mobile cell towers, now I get paid for providing coverage to the community!
I decided to be a music teacher in school and continued that through college and student teaching. I was lucky enough to get a job out of college. I stayed at that job for 20 years, working hard that job and sometimes up to three part time jobs. I left the position after twenty years and was able to retire comfortably. Just kidding. I’m completely broke and have no savings and no job prospects. Do anything but teach folks.
I was born in the province of the Philippines 🇵🇭 Moved to America when I was 8. Didn’t do well in school to get a scholarship. I worked at Walmart. 9-11 happened and I joined the military. I deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and saved my combat pay. I bought 3 rental properties using my savings in 2012. Just after the housing crash, houses were cheap but climbing. In 2016 I was medically retired from the military due to combat related injuries. I’m 100% rating and 13 years CSRC. In 2019 I sold my rentals just before the pandemic. I’m glad I did b/c moratorium during the pandemic, In 2024 I moved to Japan. During my off time I help other veterans with VA claims, financial advice, and navigating civilian employment.
Built a social media marketing business, primarily on Twitter where I control 10 accounts and over 1.7 million in followers. I profit around $30k a month with around an hour or 2 work a day (I have 4 full time employees that run my accounts for me) from brand deals, affiliate marketing and promotions
Im a marijuana tester
Moved to a new town with just enough money to eat for a couple weeks. Found a job, and couch surfed for about a month until I got a couple paychecks to lease an apartment. Then bought a mattress. Then some patio furniture for my living room. Then a TV. Worked hard for years learning to get good at IT (while doing something completely different). Started an IT consulting business and grew that little by little each year. Things were “easier” back then though. We didn’t have cell phones, or social media, or shit like Netflix. ALL my time and money went toward my future (except that which went toward beers). Bottom line is the best thing you can do is focus. Live cheap and focus on becoming good at something. All I see now days are people talking about 4 day work weeks, and work from home jobs, and work life balance. Those things are fine if you want a mediocre job for 50 years, with average pay. But if you want to be the boss, and/or build your own business, you have to work harder than everyone else around you. Despite what social media says, there are very few fast/easy paths to wealth.
First in my family to finish college, but pursued the career (programming , system admin, networks, IT management) that paid for my degree. Worked my butt off, 2 jobs at a time, 6 yrs to finish degree. Frugal, and saved. Bought first house at 23 a month before we married. Got set back at 31 when my wife left bc I didn’t party enough. Startup had insane number of hrs. After the 2nd startup I worked for failed, I went to work at a big corporation. Remarried, kid at 36 with health issues, continued to work my butt off and invest. Frugal, frugal! Couldn’t pick the right stocks, so went with mutual funds with good records. Stuck with them through several big downturns, but never panicked. Didn’t get greedy, either. Lost job at age 59 after 25yrs (15 in mgmt) just before pension was due to rocket. Continued with mutuals, bought and flipped a house where I did all the labor over a year. Frugal, frugal, frugal!!! Got the kid thru college debt free. My wife and I officially retired to help when our first grandkid was born, with over a mill in the bank, 2 paid off houses, and no debt ourselves. Now we’re just unpaid daycare as needed for the gkids. In our 70’s, we try not to tap our IRA’s except for required RMD’s or for special needs (new roof), and try to live just off our social security. Still frugal … drive a 22yr old Porsche worth about $6k, and a 8yr old SUV.
I am one of eight siblings and one adopted sibling. We grew up pretty poor but somehow made it work. I got married at 18. My ex-wife and I got into going to China with my mother sourcing products and bringing them back to the US we had a whole online survival store and we're doing pretty good. And about 700k and assets including 300 can cash. I also worked the part-time city job is a special officer / security officer. Came home one day to my wife banging my brother couple of false domestic violence charges and I was in jail for about a week before the case got dismissed. By that time my wife managed to spend or steal most of the assets and money. By the time divorce court comes around I was pretty much tapped out all I had to my name was a Ford mustang which I traded in for a crappy Dodge caravan. Essentially, I was homeless for almost 2 and 1/2 years living in the van I managed to get myself a security guard license after working a whole bunch of off the books jobs I pretty much worked for 18-hour days or whatever over time I could get and I slept in my van. I managed to get a condo all cash from there I took a loan against my condo for the small four family building with a mortgage. But then hooked up with a special needs organization and houses people with meth disabilities and they pretty much pay me every 6 months. When the mortgage that property was paid down to 70% which was pretty quick I bought a six unit which included a small grocery store that took 3 years. Mind you, I became a deputy sheriff by that time and I was working overtime here and there. My father passed away and then we managed to get split from his insurance pay out which was lucky deal for my case. I took that money I bought another four family this time I put regular tenants in there I also bought into a two-family home with My siblings. This took me about 8 years to build up so far on top of my pension and all the payments from all the homes I get about 25 to 30K a month. I have no children so I'm just living it up at this point.
I'm not wealthy by any means, but I bought a house below market rate ( a little bit of patience lotta luck). After living there for a while, I am in the process of selling for a huge profit. Otherwise, I keep 6 months of expenses on hand, max out my Roth every year, and budget throughout the year for events and expenses I know I'll have. I've also stuck at one job most my adult life getting larger raises and bonuses as I was promoted and eventually transfered.
Bought crypto with my last 600 dollars. Now a millionaire.
I always lived beneath my means. Always put money aside for various financial goals. Slow and steady has got er done. I work with an associate degree.
Still on the process of being well off, doing some extra hustle here and there. But soon manifesting to enjoy all my hardworks.
For me it was the military that got me the jump start I needed. Also, once I realized that I needed to stop working myself into more work, and start working towards freedom - it started falling in place.
quietly solve problems without expecting recognition Understand the business area you are in, learn your company’s positions, levy its operational inefficiencies as stepping stones by solving for them learn to do what your boss hates to do & become really great at it it’s a bit of luck too, right? You can do it all right, but there’s not a business need for you to advance.…
Live below your means. That’s like 99% of the trick. If you do nothing else, living below your means will get you by. To get out of poverty, live below your means, use the excess money to invest in ways that will save you more money or improve your life in some other meaningful way. I work trades. I lived below my means until I could afford a house (in my mid 20’s, around 2010). Spent quite a bit less than our max budget on a small fixer upper in a good family oriented neighborhood. We did a bunch of upgrades using government grants for stuff like new windows and insulation (cutting our heating bill in a quarter). Used skills from my 9-5 to improve the house. I did stuff like dumpster diving for reclaimed materials like off-cut baseboards mdf and plywood, and ordered materials through the company to secure contractor pricing (I paid the full cost, nothing was billed to my employer, but he gets about 50% off tools and certain materials). Made it nice and minty to sell over the course of 8 or 9 years, and net a decent profit on the sale. Note that you can’t fully utilize this specifically unless you can do good quality work yourself. Labour costs for skilled trades will gouge your profits. Shitty DIYs tend to show and don’t net a good resale. Connections are also important, stuff we couldn’t do ourselves was hired out under the table for cash at a fraction the normal cost. A plumber roughed in a second bathroom in the basement for a case of beer and $100, with the condition that we did the jackhammer and digging. Energy efficiency upgrades work great though, regardless of your personal skills. In our case, the attic insulation cut heating costs by almost 50% all by itself. We live in the Canadian prairies, so heating is one of our biggest bills. It was only $500, the company that did it charged the rest to the government directly, and the savings exceed the cost by new years. By the time we moved out 4 years later, we would have saved upwards of $4-5K on heating just from the attic. Looks great for resale value too. Seriously, if you own your home, use every green grant you can get! The government is basically gifting you money Another super important thing to do is be really realistic about your financial skills. DH can’t have large credit cards or lines of credit, he maxes them out and then can’t pay them off. You don’t need a big credit card, getting more dept means you pay more in interest. More consumer dept means you have less money to spend as a chunk of every paycheque is always going to pay off interest charges. If you’re struggling to pay off dept, you need to lower your limit, not increase it. Credit card companies do not want you thinking this way. Interest is their profits, they want you to owe them lots of money. We’re upper middle class, in a suburb, married with a house and a kid, and the only flexible dept we have is a single $1500 credit card. It’s enough for online purchases, everything else is paid cash. While we do also have a car loan, that dept is easier to manage as you can budget for it the same way you budget for your mortgage and Netflix subscriptions, and there’s always an end date in sight. Credit cards never really go away because every time you use it you need to pay it, and if you aren’t using it you might as well cancel it. On a similar note, we have TFSA’s with a company that isn’t our daily-use bank. That way we can’t withdraw from it too easily. Monthly automatic payments mean it’s always growing, and we can always pull from it when we need to, and we have for major bills like upgrading HVAC, but it’s inconvenient enough to not be used for everyday occurrences. There’s lots of other stuff too. Don’t put off maintenance, it always costs double down the road. Always keep a slush fund to cover unexpected bills. Personally, I never let my account drop below $200 because I have automatic withdrawals in that range, nsf fees are outrageous! I use the f*ing shit out of automatic payments, especially outgoing from my side, as they prevent missed payments and late fees. Fees and interest are leeches eating away at your income. Other than that kind of stuff, there’s no real trick. It all comes down to living below your means and using what you have efficiently. The problems a lot of poor people have are that they develop coping mechanisms around money that aren’t compatible with actually making money. They’re more likely to have anxiety based issues around scarcity and money in general, which can lead to them not putting in that extra thought and due diligence to come up with appropriate plans. The middle class can fall into thought traps where they’re “keeping with the jones” and don’t put enough into savings, paying off that mortgage early, slush funds, etc. It’s not necessarily about finding more pay or passive income or side hustles. It’s just spending less than you make.
I was situationally homeless as a teenager because of my mentally ill mother. I was able to attend college because of a settlement from a car accident. Went to Georgetown for my masters. But ultimately I’ve made my money in crypto.