FBXL Social

I don't know who needs to hear this, but a million dollars isn't really that much money. You can be a millionaire if you have a paid off house and a modest 401(k). People can do it on a blue collar wage. It doesn't happen overnight, it takes sacrifice every payday because you end up living well below your means, and a little bit of luck to invest in the right things, but it's quite doable.

I should also mention that not every blue collar job is a path to be a millionaire. If you're barely making enough to make rent, it just isn't in the cards. But there's still people working blue collar jobs wind up retiring as millionaires. Not even boomers, millennials (the oldest millennials are only in their 40s, but many are well on track to being millionaires)

So if you want to study the habits of a lot of millionaires, you're going to be looking at people who are living modestly. They are people who could be living much more extravagant lives than they do, but instead save for tomorrow. A lot of millionaires drive old beat up cars because shiny new vehicles are a waste of money. Also, a lot of millionaires are old because they've been working for a lifetime, saving for a lifetime, paying down debt for a lifetime and that's how they became millionaires.

But the other thing to remember is that every year being a millionaire means less. Just in the past few years, even if you accept the official numbers, a millionaire with exactly a million dollars in net worth is 20% poorer than they were. So it's kind of an arbitrary measure that's taking on a greater and greater portion of earners until one day a can of coke is a million dollars.

Another important point is that every 401(k) millionaire is going to be paying working class taxes for every dollar they take out of that financial instrument. Anyone telling you that they are going to magically avoid the taxes doesn't know how those taxes work.

The tax implications also mean something important for the big staters slathering over the wealth of many millionaires -- most of those millionaires will be getting taxed at normal rates for income and they'll be using it to retire not to act as sinister political forces or to exploit others -- they paid their dues (sometimes literally for union jobs) for decades and now are using their accumulated wealth to life for a few decades before they pass away (and get hit with inheritance taxes)

You're not wrong, you can get 5.5% annually from a risk-free ETF that sells money to the Fed at no risk. My point was more about the diminishing value of the title "millionaire".