His calcs are awesome. And free!

Just because you have hurdles doesn’t mean you can’t win. I personally like to run under them. But then I’m short. Lol.

As the 20s is now a reality and time to refocus, I pulled out my 1996 copy of The M/N/D and really noticed the white ethnocentric bias. (Disclosure: I’m Asian and my household made millionaire status, as did my parents and we were never mentioned, nor were African Americans.) What’s been revealed since are structural impediments to minorities gaining access to wealth. I made millionaire status INSPITE of the institutional structures that would only let me go so far. However, there are still basic strategies, live below your means, cook at home, bring leftovers for lunch, save, save, and save. 401(k)s with employer match was a Godsend, as well. O always contributed, never noticed it. Ran into debts in my 20s and 30s but also opened an Etrade account and started dabbling in the market and lucky enough to get into Apple when it was under $20/sharr. And then I ignored it. No matter your situation, spend less than you earn. It’s the only way.

Agreed. Thanks to the Internet and worldwide connectivity, anyone with ambition can hang a shingle and find a way to make money.

Well said Cato! Millennials fail because they are being told they will fail, so they don’t try in the first place. Then there are the Millennials who think for themselves, like you. Every generation has something against them. My grandparents came here with nothing (having given their live savings to a shipping company for transport to America). They stood in bread lines and my grandfather shoved snow in the schoolyard (to the heartbreak of my young father) for $0.25 a week. My father grew up during the time of the great depression and never made very much of a salary, but he still found a way to house and comfortably feed us. Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Millennials have it better than anyone. Don’t let those who seek to control you by keeping you down tell you any different.

Groovy: I agree. Thanks to the higher education/predatory loan industry, a BA or BS today is the equivalent of a high school diploma when I was young. The answer? Go into even more debt by pursuing a Masters Degree, which is the equivalent of a BA or BS when I was young. What we need is for Corporate America and government education certification to step-up and revive the practice of apprenticeship.

I won’t go through all the details, except to say that the ramifications of my first divorce, when I was 40, left me with nothing. I was 51 years old when child support finally ended – leaving me with a net worth of $0, no 401K, and no pension. The same was true when I got my second divorce at 55, we got divorced because I was sick of being poor with no hope of a decent retirement and my second wife wouldn’t get on board with doing what was necessary to build wealth. In the four years since (I am 59 now), I have built a net worth over 1/2 Million dollars; and I’m on track to hit $1M in the next three years.

It was only recently that I came across the book, The Millionaire Next Door, and Stanley’s latest book, Stop Acting Rich, to find that I was following Stanley’s advice all along without even knowing it. As I state in my upcoming book, which I will not shamelessly plug here, there are many ways to grow wealth – even if living paycheck to paycheck. If I can do after starting out with nothing at 55 years old, then anyone can do it. What it takes is action. The action of doing and hard choices like moving to areas with a lower cost of living, leaving a spouse because he/she won’t get with the program, finding ways to cut expenses and use the savings as capital, taking the time to cleverly invest that capital, garnering multiple streams of income, and converting from desire based purchasing to needs based purchasing (the beauty of non-ownership, as I say in my book) – even so, I want for nothing. Best of all, by not wasting my money on material possessions and not pouring it into the black hole of home ownership; if I lose my job tomorrow, then I have nothing to lose and enough cash to support myself for the next ten years. If I keep working, then I’m looking at one heck of a comfortable retirement. I can unequivocally state that Stanley’s advice is timeless and just as relevant today as when he wrote it.