As soon as that check comes in from the Nigerians I will be.
IANAM but I know an elderly couple (or rather, my parents know them) who became millionaires. IIRC, they bought a house in 1970 for $10,000 and sold it twenty years later for a little under $1 million.
I wish I was. I have loads of monopoly money. Does that count??
Probably, in lira.
Some people I know have a lot of land, perhaps around $5M worth. They call themselves “land
poor” & I never understood what that means.
I still have every paystub since I joined the Navy out of high school in 1975. Last Christmas break I added up everything I have made since then and the total was about $878,000. I figured about June of 2003 I will surpass the one million mark. Out of that I have paid about a quarter of it in taxes and almost $100,000 in child support for my son. Sure would like to know where most of it went.
Well, to be honest, I will be a millionaire at some point in the future unless something really bad happens. I have enough in the market that, if I get a decent rate of return, I will be able to retire at 55.
At the same time I am living the life of a poor college student so I don’t eat away the money I have already. I also know that my parents, who are retired and have been for a good number of years, have a reasonably big chunk of change in accounts for all of us kids. (My Dad asked me a “theoretical question” last year. The question was “If you had $100,000 to spend would you buy a house or invest it?”. I said I would invest it. If I said ‘buy a house’ I’d probably be in my own house right now)
In any case, a million isn’t all that much these days. If you have a million you can draw about 2% after taxes to live on with out touching the principle. 20,000 is ok if you own your house and cars but it isn’t living large by any means. I think that is if you are getting about 9% a year return on your money. I could run the numbers to be sure but, hey, I don’t feel like it.
I do know that my Grandmother, who passed away on 09-11-2001 before the attacks occured(#1), was loaded. My Dad handled my Grams money. He was offered X million from a mining company to mine gold from land my Gram owned. My Dad did some research and found that the land had a little gold but it had a whole lot of copper. My Dad proposed that the X million was great and they could have all the Gold but my Gram would own all the copper and that the mining company had to cover all envirnomental costs. They bickered for a bit but the mining company finally backed down when they figured out that they were not going to scam my Dad.
RE-reading this post it probably has TMI but, hell, I wrote it so I’ll post it.
Slee
#1. On 9-11 I woke up and turned on the TV and saw the horror that happened. I was totally shocked as most people were. After a few minutes I noticed that I had a message. The message was from my Mom asking for me to call. I called and my Mom answered. I said something about the attacks and my Mom said something about it as well. She then told me that my Gram passed away at about 4 AM. The shock and horror of 9-11 were multiplied by the loss of my Gram.
Everytime I hear about 9-11 I remember my Gram and it hurts. At the same time I am thankful that she didn’t live to see the horror that happened that day. My Gram was sweet and kind and wouldn’t understand how people could kill innocent people that way. She wasn’t perfect but she was a sweet and good person. God, I miss her.
Not even in Turkish lira am I a millionaire. I stand to inherit a good-sized package from my father, but I’m not counting on it and trying to save, and encouraging him to spend as much as he can–he worked for it, not me.
I’d rather have him around than his bucks.
Wait a minute… calculator check… OK, yes, in Turkish lira I am a millionaire.
I went to HS with a guy who had a self worth of 3 million AUD (1.5 Million USD) all made BY HIMSELF working the stock market, I think he started off with $20,000 from his parents. He got himself a porsche for his 18th birthday.
I chat in a geek IRC room with apparently a british whiz kid who owns like 3 corporations and has a very high net worth. If I remember correctly he is worth like 20 million but I’m not positive on the number.
That is exactly when I will become one, too. I’m willing to wait.
IANA millionaire, but I would expect that there are a few here since about 3-4% of households in the U.S. have a net worth of $1,000,000 or more. Becoming a millionaire is really not that difficult to do.
Let’s say a person graduates college at age 22 and starts working, earning $50,000 a year. 80% of this his spends, but the remaining 20% ($10,000) he invests in the stock market, each and every year. Since 1900, the U.S.'s average inflation-adjusted return on stocks has been 6.7%. If he invests using a total stock market (Wilshire 5000) index fund having an expense ratio of just 0.20%, he would capture 6.5% of that expected return. If all goes as expected, he will have accumulated $1,240,347 (in 2002 dollars) by the time he’s 56 y.o. He’ll still be a millionaire even after he pays his capital gains taxes.
All this despite the fact that he started with nothing, had just an ordinary job, had no inheritance, no pay raises, no bonuses, spent a full 80% of his income, and only earned average returns. Could it be any easier?