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The first million is said to be the hardest to reach which makes the goal seem unattainable which discourages people from trying in the first place. But you can train your mind to think in a way as to make the task more manageable: to get to the first million, you have to get past 500K; to get past 500K, you got to get past 250K; to get past 250K, you got to hit 125K....and so on.
In other words, you need to mark milestones in your journey, chopping up the trip into shorter and shorter segments. This is like working out in the gym. I spend 30 to 40 minutes daily on the treadmill. 40 minutes seem like a long time, but I mentally mark time at 10 minute intervals. Once I hit the first 10 minutes, I feel a sense of accomplishment, which emboldens me to do the next 10 minutes ...etc.
Sure, the 1st 50K is hard, but the next 50K won't be as hard, thanks to compounding. Now you're at 100K. 200K won't take as long to reach....etc. Next thing you know, you're at 500K. Soon, you'll be at 1 million.
Stay married to the same person your whole life,have a relevant job,max out your tax deferred/exempt contributions,LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS,keep your personal demons in check,and your hobbies within reason.You will become financially secure by your late 40's.
Financial elder abuse. That's how my siblings did it. Very easy to get away with because district attorneys won't prosecute. It's just a "family matter".
I don't think athletes and actors visit this site that often.
Actually, a lot of athletes and actors aren't millionaires either. They may earn millions, but quite a few spend more than they earn. A lot, as another poster mentioned, have major personal demons (addictions, divorces) that comsume huge amounts of income & wealth (think Tiger Woods' sex addiction and the expensive divorce & spousal/child support payments as just one example).
Alternatively, there are a fair number of engineers, small business owners, accountants and teachers who have $1m because they earned at least average/above average incomes, and diligently saved 10, 15, 20% of their incomes for their entire working careers. See books such as: The Millionaire Next Door and The Difference for more info.
Stay married to the same person your whole life,have a relevant job,max out your tax deferred/exempt contributions,LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS,keep your personal demons in check,and your hobbies within reason.You will become financially secure by your late 40's.
Bingo! All very true. The execution is the tough part, though As they say, it's simple but not easy.
I have no doubt that I could have become a millionaire, but I didn't have the heart for it.
When a person accumulates a wealth of a million dollars,where does it come from? He extracts it, by his wits, from people more foolish than himself.
Let's use the blunt example of a door-to-door salesman, who earns a million dollars. Whose money was that, before he got it? The suckers who answered the doorbell. Does that make our millionaire more deserving of the money? A more virtuous person, worthy of more respect and adimiration?
How much of the Walton Family fortune was extracted from the lowly shoppers of small town America? A hundred billion dollars, accumulated from cash register ringups, from a hundred million families. Do the math in your head. The Walton family took an average of a thousand dollars for their own personal profits, from the pocket of each shopper.
That's what you need to do to become a millionaire, and then try to go to sleep at night. No thanks.
The first took a long time, but the second after losing the first was more difficult, and the third after our most recent RE/stock/bond crash has been even more difficult. Maybe you were not asking about how many times we cross the line but many of us have ridden a pretty volatile economy in the last twenty years... and I expect my children will have an even more difficult time in the future.
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As they say, it's simple but not easy.
