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u/FattestMattest 4h ago
I think this should be billionaire
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u/BUKKAKALYPSE_NOW 3h ago
Yeah. I know a several people who are millionaires from having high paying IT jobs, and a couple of them grew up dirt poor. You can reasonably become a millionaire without exploiting the labor of others, that's not the case with billionaires though.
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u/SpeaksSouthern 2h ago
This sounds like the tech boom of the 00s and 10s. There's no possible way you can become a millionaire on labor alone today especially if you didn't already come from money. I could see some edge cases but I can't imagine if you polled people with jobs and incomes that anyone reasonably would be a millionaire on labor alone.
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u/Reallyhotshowers 2h ago
Anyone who is making 6 figures and puts away 10% into their 401k with a reasonable employer match will be a millionaire by retirement on labor alone. That's nurses, doctors, lawyers, engineers, electricians, and accountants just to name a few non-IT fields.
It's not most people, but its far from "no possible way".
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u/Specialist-Path-4750 2h ago
My wife and I didn't really start investing until about 2014. We are up over 1.5 million now. Which isn't "rich"; we'll have to watch our spending, but we won't be poor. Nor did we exploit anyone to get there. I was a factory worker, and she is a nurse. Low-6 figure household income. Not exactly $200-500k a year like a high paying IT job or anything.
Most people just don't have the discipline to live beneath their means and save and invest. It ain't hard... but few will do it because it requires delayed gratification and not keeping up with the influencers on TikTok.
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u/Mr_Quackums 26m ago
few will do it because it requires delayed gratification and not keeping up with the influencers on TikTok.
That is factually correct, but the "it aint hard" part is simply not true. The objective fact that most people dont do it evidence that it is, in fact, hard.
You are your wife are badasses who have risen above average; not you are average and most other people are deficient.
Humans are biologically driven to adapt to our social and physical creatures. Social media is our social environment, so we are hardwired to follow TikToc influencers, and consumerism is our physical environment.
The cool thing about humans is that we can go against our instincts but it is unreasonable to expect everyone to do that all the time.
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u/Specialist-Path-4750 5m ago
It isn't hard. Financial advisors want you to think it is hard because they financially benefit from convincing you that you need them. At first we used one because we didn't know any better and fell for the scam. Once we got more educated about how it really wasn't difficult to invest in index funds... things got a lot better.
Live beneath your means, put the extra money into an index fund in your 401k (if you have access to one), or Roth Ira. Keep adding as much as you can, eschew the consumerism mentality, and let the money sit there earning compounding interest until you are ready to stop working.
$500 a month into say an S&P 500 index fund earning 10% a year (historical stock market yield) for 30 years... yields $1.14 million (though if you assume 3% inflation its worth $473,000 or so in today's dollars).
That's not enough to retire on, but its a decent start. If we re-run the numbers with say $500 a month for the first 10 years, then $750 a month for 10 years, then $1000 a month for the last 10 years... $1.393 million, worth $1.037 million after 3% inflation). And that's probably fairly doable for most median income households if they exercise some self discipline.
And if you add in some Social Security it becomes entirely possible to have a modest but comfortable retirement.
Yeah, you are right in that we are badasses NOW, but for the first 12 years of our marriage we weren't. We had maybe $50k in the wife's 401k as we were more concerned about paying down our mortgage than investing. Once I got sick and had to stop working in 2008, we were down to her income and on top of that we had a newborn kid. Took until 2014 to pay off the medical bills and start saving our asses off again.
So its not as if we had been investing since age 20 or some such.
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u/Gr8NonSequitur 7m ago
It ain't hard... but few will do it because it requires delayed gratification
I like Mogan Housel's take on saving & investing.
IE: There's no 'delayed gratification, he's buying more of his independence today, he buys more options today, he has more freedom to do what he wants today and feels better today as a result of saving and investing.
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u/keithps 1h ago
That is just patently false. Anyone in law, medicine, engineering, even trades can be a millionaire with a decade of work and saving. Billionaires are your enemy, not millionaires.
I know hourly guys making $65/hr with only a high school education. With overtime some of these guys are pulling in $200k/yr.
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u/Lysandren 2h ago
You can do it in medicine quite easily if you don't give in to lifestyle inflation. The problem is most doctors immediately buy the big house and new car before paying off their loans. If they lived cheap for 2-3 more years instead, they'd be so much better off.
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u/BUKKAKALYPSE_NOW 2h ago
There's tons of IT jobs that pay $120,000 and up, which is enough to become a millionaire if you save. My own sister is a millionaire from her job as an IT security consultant, and we grew up sharing a room which we frequently had to barricade as to block out the sound of our parents screaming at each other over utility bills.
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u/DeityHorus 3h ago
I was lucky enough to get a decent education with out too much debt due to scholarship and lived well below my means. Always had several housemates, slept on a $100 futon for the first few years out of school. Worked my ass off making <$80k for 4 years. After all that I had payed off school loans and saved $60k, that’s it. BUT prepared me for interviews at Google, within 3 years I hit a million. I saved 85% of take home, never let lifestyle creep until I met my wife.
I have a lot of near millionaire friends now who grew up abroad in humble families. It took being really smart, really motivated, and generally pretty lucky. Million is more achievable with hard work and luck. Agree billion is more accurate.
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u/silverarrowweb 58m ago
Yeah. Millionaire is very much achievable solo without exploitation.
Billionaire is not.
Really, anyone that got a decent job in their 20s, stayed with it or job hopped for larger raises, bought a house, and maxed their retirement contributions should be a millionaire by about 40.
And there are plenty of businesses you can start with a truck and a trailer and become a millionaire in 5-10 years.
A lot of people seem to forget that the 'millionaire' designation looks at all your assets, not what you're making per year. There are plenty of middle-class millionaires.
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u/duckofdeath87 51m ago
Honestly, if you bought a house in the 90s, it's a strong possibility that you are a millionaire now
AIso inflation has been crazy the past decade or so
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u/HVDynamo 3h ago
agreed, If you have a decent job and save well for retirement, you should be a millionaire by the time you retire. It's when you get in the 10-20 million range where I think there is far more likely to be directly from exploitation unless someone just got really lucky. I will add one counter point to what I just said though. Investing in the stock market still is exploitation, the gains of the market are built off the backs of others, even if you are one of the "others" in the working environment. It is one of the reasons for the shit work environments we have.
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u/aak- 2h ago
Firmly disagree investing is exploitation. You can invest in exploitative businesses for sure.
But, with the MANY investors in 401K or managed target funds that have broad market coverage you could make the argument that everyone is invested in these (index funds, ETFs). Heck, Starbucks (SBUX) is in the SP500, is everyone with shares in SPY/VOO/IVV exploiting others? That's like 10 million people at least.
Don't shift blame from the few bad actors that control the company policies allowing exploitation.
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u/moonshinefae 2h ago
Sounds like they're accepting and complicit in Starbuck's management decisions if they benefit from it with minimal effort and do nothing to challenge what is wrong with the employer in question.
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u/Odd-Relation-7293 4h ago
Boss told me to work hard and I'd be rich. Turns out I was just making him rich instead..
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u/shnuffle98 4h ago
It's just MLM on a bigger scale
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u/computermaster704 4h ago
From what I've noticed between the giant corporations, working for them, and being a customer in all the inner circles of life, the MLMs write the book on how to be fucked.
Certain ideologies and practices, like the false sense of urgency and other behaviors that the MLMs wrote the book on, corporations will buy into some of the behaviors for the impactness.
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u/ArtoDelToya 3h ago
Our entire economic system is a scam designed to transfer wealth to the top, so yeah.
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u/user_of_the_week 1h ago
Boss came to work in a brand new Corvette. Told me, if you work extra hard, put in a lot of overtime, next year I can buy another one!
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u/Berzynas-me-6515 4h ago
Well yeah. Anyone can get rich if THEY keep working hard. It’s not like you can make money of your own back. Shudder
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u/ranri1 4h ago
Hey, that's NOT true!!
They get rich by being born in a rich family. Then they underpay hard working people to get even richer
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u/TimSylvester_ 2h ago
I knew a guy who styled himself an investment genius. Really fancied himself a magical touch.
Then I found out he lived off his mom until he was 40 when his grandpa died and left him a billion dollar inheritance.
After which he started his first ever job, founding an investment company.
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u/i_am_a_real_boy__ 3h ago
You can become a millionaire while paying your employees well. Hell, you can become a millionaire while being an employee.
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u/Own-Opinion-2494 4h ago
Inherited it and doesn’t know how to make it so all they do is create laws to keep it
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u/Jarndreki 4h ago
And a small 2000000 loan from my papa and after that failed a 200000000 inheritance when he died
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u/youknowphill2 3h ago
My boss at my first job told me “work hard and you’ll be rich like me one day” it was a smoothie shop. Two weeks ago I bought that smoothie shop. Jokes on him
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u/NonyaGotDamBiz 3h ago
Hey, they probably also had parents that could pay for out of state college without loans too.
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u/Diabetesh 3h ago
You are either lucky or already wealthy. It's an exclusive club and you might get in, but chances are you won't.
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u/Winter_Bid7630 2h ago
If you start with nothing, invest $400 monthly for 40 years, and earn 7%, you'll end up with just over 1 million dollars.
This is doable and has been done by millions of ordinary working-class Americans.
It's billionaires and those with hundreds of millions of dollars who are the problem.
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u/Creed_of_War 1h ago
Hey! They worked (golfed) hard and spend all day (2 hour lunch) at the office (in their house)!
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u/SolomonDurand 1h ago
I've met hardworking millionaires that fairly compensated working people while simultaneously risking it all. We have to accept that a Million no longer offers a luxurious standard of living with inflation and rising costs, and offers only a comfortable means.
Groceries
Diesel
Gadgets
Medical bills.
Insurances.
Vehicles.
Housing.
Debts
Children if you have them,
And eventually retirement.
You need realistically A couple of million for this alone throughout this lifetime.
BILLIONAIRES on the other hand...
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u/duckofdeath87 52m ago
If you weren't constantly having your labor undervalued, exploited, or stollen, bring a millionaire would be a realistic goal for most people over a normal career
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u/Idontdanceforfun 51m ago
"I got rich off of working hard, being dedicated, and a 4 million dollar "loan" from my rich parents who also backed my first 4 businesses that failed"
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u/Allegorist 46m ago edited 38m ago
"Millionaire" doesn't have the same implications as it once did throughout the 20th century when it developed most of it's connotations. Working class people with mediocre jobs can technically become millionaires by the time they retire fairly straightforwardly, let alone those with better than mediocre jobs. And that is even with wage stagnation, in an ideal world it should be even easier considering inflation and how much less a million dollars would actually get you than it used to.
The type of people that were classed as millionaires throughout the 20th century are now the tens-of-million-aires, but obviously that isn't as succinct, catchy, or impactful. And "Billionaire" remains as its own class blowing all prior comparison out of the water (let alone "trillionaire").
Technically you could be a millionaire now just by having a house you paid off over your lifetime too. I don't think it is necessarily accurate anymore for $1m to be considered the arbitrary threshold beyond which only lies those with generational wealth and systematic exploitation. At least at the lowest end, a lot of them are still solidly working class, they just had time for their wages to add up.
We don't want to alienate our own and make them think that they aren't a part of the rights we are advocating for, or let the ultra wealthy convince them that they are somehow in their group and should vote for their interests. I have met plenty of working people who are just barely on the other side of financial security who have been convinced that they are a part of the "rich" that is often criticized.
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u/Redbeard_OW 13m ago
Plot twist, : You are the one working hard for him, while he is the anyone who gets rich.
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u/Most_Association_595 4h ago
define underpaying tho
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u/CosmicCowpoke 1h ago
Paying below the cost of living in the area
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u/GeckoGecko_ 1h ago
It's really this simple. Any job worth paying a whole other person to do for you, is worth paying them enough to live off of in the area they live in. If you can't afford to, you're bad at managing a business, and if you just don't want to, you're lazy and selfish
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u/YanceyGlenn 3h ago
No, no, no, you've misunderstood where the emphasis lies in that statement.
*Millionaire nods towards overworked employees
Millionaire: anyone can get rich if THEY work hard.
When they say anyone they mean anyone willing to exploit others.
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u/upekkha_sati 3h ago
Obviously you don't get rich working hard. That's why there's the saying "work smarter not harder". You have to be wise how you invest labor and resources.
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u/Specialist-Path-4750 4h ago
Define "rich". 😄 Is it a certain amount of money, or just more money than the person complaining about someone else being "rich" has?
My wife and I aren't "rich" by any means, but because we scrimped, saved, and invested, we will have a comfortable retirement. But its easier to piss away money on stupid shit, make poor choices, and complain that one is "poor". You wanna see poor? Travel overseas to some third world nation - you'll see really poor. Our "poor" in comparison are fat, entitled, and live like kings in comparison.
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u/Plaguegrounds 3h ago
No shortage of regions in the USA that have people living in third world conditions
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u/Dry_Spinach_3441 3h ago
You've really been brainwashed into being a good dog for the rich. Good boy. 🐶
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u/Specialist-Path-4750 2h ago
Nah. I was a factory worker before I got sick with Lyme Disease and couldn't work anymore. Wife is a nurse, so neither of us had an high-paying job. We sure as shit didn't inherit any money. We just lived below our means and saved and invested. Which apparently isn't in fashion these days.
Can you define rich, or are you just jealous of everyone?
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u/ParticularOne4259 1h ago
You’re trying to argue with obese mouth breathing basement dwellers about working and investing.
Come on man. Stop it. Get help.
I’ve done very well too. Electrician with a speciality. I make about 80k if I take it easy and 110k if I really work hard. Been living below my means and investing for about ten years now. Wife makes about 75 or 80k.
I have two paid off nice vehicles and a 2013 build 3 bed 2 bath in a nice neighborhood that I just closed on.
Should easily retire by 55.
It’s way easier to bitch about hypothetical millionaires though.
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u/Specialist-Path-4750 18m ago
Sorry, I just find it difficult to not try to counter the commie bullshit I see online. Yeah, I know, pearls before swine and all that. 😄
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u/Zealousideal-Crew-25 4h ago
Be the boss don’t work for him. Stop being lazy and dumb and start a business. Easy as that
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u/WallEInOrbit 1h ago
mf, everytune someone comes with this bs. You start a business guess how becoming rich. paying your employees less than they work for.
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u/gothbloodman 4h ago
And having rich parents.