The hope is (IF THIS DOESNT GO OFFTOPIC), people who have become successful, or know someone who has, will share their story. We can all benefit by reading these stories. I'm going to ask readers to FOLLOW A FEW SIMPLE GUIDELINES:
1. if you dont have a (TRUE) experience to share about becoming a millionaire, or someone you know who became one, PLEASE DO NOT POST. Offtopic posts will clutter the thread, and it will be far more valuable if EVERY post is an account of someones success story.
2. Please dont debate/nitpick. Just let people share their experiences. We all know zillow valuations arent accurate, tax implications can reduce the actual numbers, etc. Debating takes the thread off the intended topic (readers posting their experiences). If you see flaws in someone's estimations, pat yourself on the back for spotting them, but dont take the thread offtopic. Theres no age restriction on this thread, so even if it took you or someone you know till they were 60 to make it, thats fine. If you havent quite hit a million exactly but are close, dont ask whether its OK to post, just post and indicate where you are....
3. Be as detailed as you can/are comfortable with. Age millionaire status attained, occupation, your road to wealth, lessons learned, mistakes made, etc. Anything you want to include, with as much detail as may help others understand your key to success. If you dont want to say you did it, say your friend did
4. RESPECT PEOPLE'S PRIVACY AND DO NOT PM THEM unless they specifically indicate in their post that they "INVITE PMS."
5. Use the red/green ratings to filter OT posts. If I green you , its because you shared your experience on becoming a millionaire...if I red you, its not bc I dont like you or dont agree with you, but simply to filter the posts that are sharing experiences vs. the posts that are OT or going off on tangential issues. By using the ratings filter system that way , one can read the entire thread, or choose to set their ratings filter to green and see JUST the posts that are sharing experiences on becoming a millionaire.
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Summary:
- save, save, save (duh) at least until you are a millionaire - max out your retirement (ie. 401k, pension) - invest & take smart risks in businesses & yourself - buy long-term property - education is helpful but not necessary - pass on your wisdom gained to other friends & family members
Message edited by: DisciplineHedge on 2007-07-13 12:35:47 CDT
Message edited by: SUCKISSTAPLES on 2007-07-16 08:53:13 CDT
After graduating from law school, I started investing in rental properties in California. I stopped buying around 2004 as I detailed in that thread , when I thought prices went too high for my investing style. Hit $1M net worth sometime around the age of 27-28. Properties in CA continued to go up in value and my net worth went up with them. Most of my net worth is in real estate, but I have extracted some equity when interest rates were in the low 5s and have that making money for me in higher-return safe investments (Penfed 6.25% CDs, etc). I am very conservative and have only the annual IRA contributions in stocks.
This was something I always wondered, but I have a feeling that if I posted it instead of SIS it would have gotten plenty of red...I'm slowly on my way and hopefully will be by 30. Real Estate is the best way to go.
I will tell my odd story, I know it's kind of long but I don't know how else to tell how I got to this point, Most of it has been posted over time in bits&pieces but will now put it all together. To start, I was a 17 years old senior in H.S working as a machinist at a company my father founded about 9 years earlier. Had planned on going to college when my father suddenly passed away and I decided to skip college and stay at the company. Looking back I see that was kind of dumb as I was just a factory worker and he did have partners who did not want me anywhere near the office. Then my mother became involved with the company and all sorts of fighting started when she wanted me in the office. The fighting was destroying the business, I think the partners were deliberately killing it so they could buy her out cheaply. So after a couple years my mother had to decide, Sell it to them or buy them out and have me run it. She asked me what I wanted and I said, "Dad started it and we need to keep it" So she borrowed money and bought them out. So only in my early 20's I had to move into the office and try and save a struggling company. The thing that really helped was my workers trusted me, They liked my father and did not trust his partners. So with their help I turned the company around and grew it. So that was my start. Was a bumpy ride as I have mentioned my addiction to pain meds, I was what they called a "Functioning drug addict" Even though I went thru a period of years where I took drugs every day I never missed a day of work and work actually became another of my addictions. The drugs took a big financial toll on me as I was spending thousands of dollars a month on them. So I was pretty much broke and in debt. Then 13 years ago I quit drugs. Now I was able to save money and started investing in stocks, at first I was doing it normally. Then I really got nutts about it during the dot-com boom and started position trading like a crazy man, After awhile I realized my addictive nature had taken over and needed to stop. Worked out pretty well as this was before the burst and I had made my first million during my trading days. Now I continue to grow it by working very hard and finding the best rates to put my savings. I know I should be more into the markets but my 1099-INT generates $100k+ and I worry I would go overboard again. I do have a retirement annuity account which my company contributes $10k a year to ( worth about $190k) along with a managed PAS account (about $210K) with Fidelity , So at least I have some long term market exposure
After graduating from law school, I started investing in rental properties in California. I stopped buying around 2004 as I detailed in that thread , when I thought prices went too high for my investing style. Hit $1M net worth sometime around the age of 27-28. Properties in CA continued to go up in value and my net worth went up with them. Most of my net worth is in real estate, but I have extracted some equity when interest rates were in the low 5s and have that making money for me in higher-return safe investments (Penfed 6.25% CDs, etc). I am very conservative and have only the annual IRA contributions in stocks.
I do not invite PMs at this time.
For clarity, can you say what fraction of your net worth derives from rental income, and not from the run up in real estate prices? It's great that you timed your purchases well, but I think you will agree that nobody should count on real estate appreciation alone will make them rich.
My RE income/expense examples are covered in the rental thread, on page 2, and you are correct that one cannot expect similar appreciation results as the CA market has over the past several years, a point I stressed several times in the RE thread when things got too crazy.
A friend of the family started out selling cars at a dealship. After a while she decided that it would be more worthwhile to sell houses due to much higher returns on the time spent. She became a Realtor, got married to someone who owned their own mortgage company. They got divorced a few years later but with the experience and connections that she got, she started her own mortgage company. Not sure about her exact net worth but it is at least four million. She does have good business sense (any time we introduce someone to her, she somehow finds a business opportunity) but I think luck had a lot to do with it as well. The housing market was amazing when she got into it and a lot of people made quite a bit during that time. Her subsequent investments have been far less successful. She started investing in real estate in China a while ago, we'll see how that goes.
Off topic comment: I think it's relatively easy to become a millionaire, as in you have a million dollars at some point. Most of us can probably do it in a number of years if we made significant sacrifices on time, spending, family etc. What I'm most impressed by are people who can maintain a steady flow of seven figure income (ie you aren't accumulating a million dollars just by giving up everything else).
Edit: I guess it also has to do with the willingness to take risk as well. I remember a few years ago, she told us about a good opportunity to invest in real estate in Nevada. Land there was pretty cheap at the time but she expected it to rise due a lot of retirees from California moving there due to the lower cost. I was in college at the time and my parents decided not to take the risk. Two weeks later she made several hundred thousand dollars. I'm not convinced that my parents made a wrong decision though, as we didn't have the "cushion" that she had had the investments turned sour, but it goes to show that if you don't take big risks you won't get big returns either.
Off topic comment: I think it's relatively easy to become a millionaire, as in you have a million dollars at some point. Most of us can probably do it in a number of years if we made significant sacrifices on time, spending, family etc. What I'm most impressed by are people who can maintain a steady flow of seven figure income (ie you aren't accumulating a million dollars just by giving up everything else). So are you talking about making a million a year? To me that means taking some big gambles that could cause you to lose everything. I did it with no sacrifices. It's all about balance. I try and set savings goals and this year was pretty good, Made decent money at work and with rising interest rates my cash generated nice income. So I rewarded myself with a new car which I paid cash for and am still ahead of where I wanted to be for the year
Off topic comment: I think it's relatively easy to become a millionaire, as in you have a million dollars at some point. Most of us can probably do it in a number of years if we made significant sacrifices on time, spending, family etc. What I'm most impressed by are people who can maintain a steady flow of seven figure income (ie you aren't accumulating a million dollars just by giving up everything else). So are you talking about making a million a year? To me that means taking some big gambles that could cause you to lose everything. I did it with no sacrifices. It's all about balance. I try and set savings goals and this year was pretty good, Made decent money at work and with rising interest rates my cash generated nice income. So I rewarded myself with a new car which I paid cash for and am still ahead of where I wanted to be for the year
That's what I mean, you would one of those people that I'm impressed by. If you are able to live well AND accumulate a decent amount of wealth, that is great. I was more addressing some people who are just obsessed with their net worth, living on peanut butter and jelly and driving old cars just so they can get that number higher. To me that doesn't really prove anything, and, what is the point of having money if you don't ever spend any of it.
My uncle knew a person who made 300M by selling his own company to an Asian company.
That guy is a great sales person. He first sold memory foam to a major retailer in US and then the market was getting hotter and hotter. Lots of competition joined this tiny market.
Somehow, an Asian company/Private Equity found his company and decided to buy it. The company was only making millions dollars revenue at that time. No one(at least my uncle) knows why that PE paid such a high price to purchase a declining business.
After he sold his company, he threw a family party. Whoever came to the party could bring 1M dollars home. He created another 3x millionaires that night. And then he brought a private jet, hanging out with other celebrities. My uncle rarely saw him after that.
Becoming a millionaire is easy if you give yourself enough time. In my case I simply have one California property that has appreciated astronomically, and a nice 6 figure pension I will draw from age 53 till I die. 40 years? Whats the pension worth? In 40 years I will draw over $4,000,000 when you factor in my cost of living increases. Its a never-ending source of money. If I had a 2 million dollar investment at 5%, that would be $100k a year. So is my pension valued at $2M?
I made sure to buy the most house I could buy each time I bought. THat meant I never bought fancy cars and such. So the basic strategy was to invest everything I could in my own house (that way I enjoy my investment even if it goes down), and to work 30 years at a place with a good pension plan. Thats it in a nutshell.
I have a relative who started a nursing home because none of the ones he was familiar with were being run with the best interests of the residents in mind, and he felt nursing homes should be a lot more humane (if that's the right word) and less of a "factory". He had zero business background and zero money but decided to do it anyway. He got a partner who shared his vision and had enough money to put into the venture so that banks would finance the rest.
Turned out to be successful. He bought out his partner years ago, expanded the original facility twice, and still owns it today. I'd guess the business is worth in the neighborhood of $5 million.
I would never have believed someone with absolutely no background in business and no money could start and run a successful business - especially one with heavy regulation - but seeing is believing.
Since SIS has strongly attributed to my AOR success (earnings of $18,000 in last 11 months), I feel a sense of obligation to report my story here...
I am 46 years old and I have just joined the ranks of a millionaire. While this has been my lifelong dream, somehow it just doesn't seem as exciting as I thought it would be. Perhaps it's due to the fact that a million dollars carried much more clout as little as 10 years ago. Nowadays, it seems that if you own a home in any of the hot markets throughout the country, your net worth can easily be in the million dollar range.
As for my story, (it's not very glamorous, so I apologize for the lack of excitement) my wife and I are both professionals making six-figure salaries. This income flow has pretty much resulted in our accumulated savings of $700,000. Since the net value of our home is somewhere in the $300,000 range, our combined net worth is just over one million dollars. When the current value of our employer's pensions is figured in, our total net worth comes close to $1.25 million dollars.
What really has me excited is the potential savings that we can incur over the next 10 years. If we stay on track, I have estimated (conservatively) that we can accumulate a total of $3 million dollars. The only challenge here is that we both remain employed with our current company and continue to earn high incomes.
The resthome gig can be a good one...I almost got into rest homes when I was purchasing property...one of the realtors who was selling a property I was looking at also operated care homes for developmentally disabled, and she was selling "turnkey" carehomes, basically just regular houses setup like group homes.
She was selling the homes at premium prices bc she had the staff all lined up, the patients were already in the homes and everything. If you bought a house from her at a premium price, she took care of the rest. In hindsight I should have done it, the #s made sense and there was great cashflow $10-12k/month. Plus those properties appreciated like crazy too. Just wasnt looking into getting into the care home business.
Road to wealth was owned to stock options as corporate executive. Planned to take a break around mid 30s and discovered that I do have a knack for managing my own money so the break became permanent. My mistakes/lessons learned: I would have paid more attention to my finances when I was working. My investments in 401Ks were either terrible funds (expensive and horrible track records) or company stocks (not the worse but not great either given the concentration of stock options). My spending habits were out of control with practically no savings from paychecks to paychecks. My living expenses now come from interests of HY conservative accounts (cash, CDs). The rest of the portfolio though is in aggressive stocks or funds. As is, I only need approx. less than half of the HY interest incomes, the rest is discretionary funds for either adding to the aggressive equity investments or fun spendings.
To the point of 'living well and sacrifices on spending, time and family during accumulation', I definitely didn't hold back on the spending but the millions were earned at the expense of family and relationships. So to sum up: to do it over again I would pay more attention to family, learn finances, spend less. As it was, my finances today was due to hard work and the dumb luck of not knowing enough to liquidate my stock options for buying things that I didn't really need.
sammy1224 said:Since SIS has strongly attributed to my AOR success (earnings of $18,000 in last 11 months), I feel a sense of obligation to report my story here... Sammy
Sammy, do you have an AOR thread on FW? I would love to read how you made $18k in 11 months!! Myself, I have made around $2k in the last 6 months. I am on track to make $4k from the last AOR, and I think that is pretty good.
People say that making your first million is the toughest. Most of the friends in the circle have household incomes of $200k+ and none of them are millionaires. Most of the people who make millionaires at a relatively young age are the ones who do something more than doing a 8 to 5 job, even if that job is high paying one. I myself make over $100k per year and not even close to a quater of a million!! But then I have age on my side
I find this thread very constructive and will bookmark it. But I also wanted to point out that most importantly there is a lot more to life than making millions. In this age sometimes we all tend to forget what life is really about and obsess about making money more than anything else.
Hindustani said: But I also wanted to point out that most importantly there is a lot more to life than making millions. In this age sometimes we all tend to forget what life is really about and obsess about making money more than anything else.
Hindustani said:sammy1224 said:Since SIS has strongly attributed to my AOR success (earnings of $18,000 in last 11 months), I feel a sense of obligation to report my story here... Sammy
Sammy, do you have an AOR thread on FW? I would love to read how you made $18k in 11 months!! Myself, I have made around $2k in the last 6 months. I am on track to make $4k from the last AOR, and I think that is pretty good.
No, I did not post it on FW. However, just to clarrify matters, I did an AOR for me as well as one for my wife. Additonally, the revenue includes a sizeable amount that was earned as bonuses and awards.
Spouse and I were just wage slaves. It took us until our 50's to make the first million, in our 60's we have a second now. About 1 million is in IRAs, about one million in 2 homes, plus about 50k/year in pension/ss. There is probably a 200,000 tax liability on the traditional IRAs, and we are going to sell a home to more roth conversions and get some more cash.
We just lived within our means, all the usual silly rules like having savings deducted from paychecks, maxing out retirement opportunities and employer matches. We did limit ourselves to one child, which helped a lot. Now that he's a successful adult, we spend every cent we can on him, ironically, to limit estate tax. We've always kept our eyes on the bottom line, the net worth. We've been very conservative by FW standards.
Frugality was in our genes and upbringing, it helps. I clip some coupons, do AOR type stuff, shop at the thrift store because I enjoy the challenge of it. We don't spend money on booze, tobacco, CDs, bottled water, gadgets, SUVs or status (we ARE the millionaires next door). There's so much crap out there to piddle money away on. It's just as easy to find cheap hobbies as expensive ones, and they are just as satisfying. There were only a few years where we grossed over 6 figures.
I have 3 siblings, all were worth 0 at age 20, all are millionaires now. One married a doctor, but they work the hardest at it with real estate. The rest of us are just careful and frugal.
This isn't my usual id here.
We didn't quite reach retirement without disaster. One of us was disabled and had to quit work. About 20-25% of people are unable to work by our age, so we're glad we didn't depend on work to see us through our old age.
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