[Converse of this thread]
I’ll nominate my dad-he started from very humble beginnings (son of a train engineer), and basically made himself what he became: a multimillionaire physician. Put himself through college & medical school, made wise investments-I essentially owe him a lot, in the end (he died 14 years ago).
I guess it depends on how you define “riches.” I know a woman who was raised by incredibly abusive parents – forced as a small child to eat drain cleaner as punishment, which resulted in life-long digestive problems; father and brother both molested her; mother beat her – she can tell stories that will curl your hair. Not surprisingly, she married a very abusive man. (She probably should have known something was up because her parents “approved” of him – they probably recognized that he was cut from the same cloth they were. She was just so pleased that her parents finally approved of something she was doing that she didn’t stop to question their motives. )
After years of abuse at her husband’s hands, she finally left. Ended up going to a naturopath to get help for her physical problems; he helped her get well – as well as she can be with all the permanent damage that was done. They ultimately married and she has been living in comfort and safety for many years now. He’s not wealthy but is a really good guy and loves her. She’s pretty “rich” in my book, considering where she came from.
I didn’t witness it personally, but my grandfather’s brother started a boat tourist company in my home town that is still a major tourist attraction there. He sold it years ago for millions. He’s extremely wealthy still. My grandparents themselves have an unknown amount of money in savings, as he worked with his brother in the company and made money from it, as well as investing in real estate and such. Not even my mother who helps take care of them know exactly how much they have but it’s probably a substantial amount. Both my grandparents came from dirt poor abject poverty in the great depression, and they live very frugally now.
My best friend growing up. He, his brother, mom, and stepdad all lived in a tiny two bedroom apartment. His stepdad was a garbageman and also for reduced rent was the property manager of the apartments with help from mom.
We went to high school and then college together. I worked part time and my parents paid my tuition. He worked full time and paid his own tuition.
Throughout college he worked at a big box retailer and over the years climbed the ranks into VP status. Bought his mom and stepdad their own house so they could retire and not have to manage apartments. Built an 8 room lodge in northern Wisconsin to vacation in and lives in a high rise in NYC across the street from Central Park.
The mother of a childhood friend of mine came from a very poor background growing up in an inner city (don’t want to say specifically where as what happened in the second paragraph was in the news so want to leave out identifying details). She married a guy (my friend’s dad) who had his own oncology practice and through that they became incredibly wealthy.
Turns out a lot of their wealth came from the fact that he was embezzling from his business. I guess they had enough squirreled away though despite the fact that they owed millions to the government so they did not become a riches-to-rags story. Instead they moved to another state and I have no idea what happened after that, but I think they mostly escaped legal consequences.
My sister in law’s parents were a cop and a cleaning lady, I’ll call her Dee. Coming home from his funeral, Dee got nostalgic and recounted how they’d met; my brother and SiL prompted her to go on, thus finding out a lot of family history that my sister in law had never known (she didn’t even know why they never went to the village where her mother was born, when it’s not so far from the one her father was from and they visited and visit this one often).
Dee’s father had been a day laborer, like his father and his grandfathers before him, and like Dee’s maternal ancestors since time immemorial; she’d been born in a one-room, one-bed shack. They ate by the method of cucharada y paso atrás, a single spoon used in turn to eat directly from the pot. Normally the bed would be shared by the parents and the youngest child but, once the only boy was born, he got pride of place - the youngest daughter got moved to the pile of hay on the floor as soon as she moved from “I’m hungry, feed me now” to more or less regular feedings.
The father died when Dee was 11, and the mother moved them to the Big City. She was soon able to secure servant positions for her two eldest daughters; these were live-in, and Dee’s masters insisted that all their servants needed to be able to read, write, and do basic arithmetic (she can add, substract, and do some multiplication including the most frequent percentile calculations).
Her husband’s own family of peasants from a place with poor land seemed the Rockefellers by comparison, and the husband had gone to school until age 10 and continued his education with whatever he needed in order to get promoted. He eventually made sergeant; he also managed to get more land by working plots his neighbors didn’t have time or inclination to work on and eventually getting them ceded (“since we don’t really give a shit and nobody would buy it, here’s the deed”). My sister in law is a doctor, her brother an engineer. Dee’s never been “rich”, but considering how low down the food chain she started, it’s actually pretty amazing. Several of my ancestors were servants, but it was two generations prior and none of them had been as poor as her family to start with.
My uncle grew up (along with my mom) in poverty.
He retired as a VP at AT&T.
He actually gave an angry speech at age 18 leaving for college in which he didn’t exactly disown his family but declared that he was better than them and he was going to prove this by getting rich and leaving them in the dust. He did exactly that.
(This is, of course, the story as I have it from those who were left behind so salt may be required. And FWIW they’ve all reconciled somewhat in recent years.)
-KR
There are a lot of those at Best Buy. They had a promote from within culture that made a stereo salesman from South Minneapolis able to end up as CEO - if you joined early enough, and managed to move into corporate, you cleaned up in stock in the 1990s.
And its part of the failure of the company - those stereo salesman didn’t have the vision to understand the internet. Most of them were a little too old and didn’t adapt. They could understand competition for Musicland - even Target - but they didn’t even understand that Amazon was competition until it was too late.
(Best Buy?, right - cause your other option is Target and Target didn’t tend to promote floor sales guys into the corporate office).
I worked for a man who had three sisters and was raised in utter poverty by a single father. He served in the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, came back and went into construction. When he found out that white real estate brokers were making more money than he was selling the houses he was building and they were not doing business with “colored boys,” he got his real estate broker’s license, a mortgage license, and went into business.
Became a millionaire.
Yep. He had the good sense to jump ship about 5 years ago and made a lateral move as VP to another company.
Two examples.
A guy in my class, one of seven kids from a very working-class family. Dumb as a stump in high school, but got into college on a football scholarship,turned his summer job as a mover into a sales job, started his own moving company. When I saw him at our 40th reunion, he had a $2 million house.
My grandfather came to the U.S. when he was 24 without much more than a suitcase. He built up his own business and was at least mid-rich if not Big Rich. Then he lost it all in the Depression, which puts this in the other thread.
In the vein of jayrey I can think of people I knew who grew up with abuse, cruelty, neglect, etc. who managed to rise above it, break the cycle of abuse and develop a reasonable (and sometimes palpable) level of inner peace as well as become good parents and good friends. I’ve met SF soldiers who give off an aura of confidence like they are saying nothing can happen that they aren’t prepared for, but I’ve also met people who gave off an aura of being so comfortable in their own skin you could feel it just being in their presence. I’d consider those people rags to riches on an emotional level.
As far as financial, I don’t really have any I can think of but that is because I don’t know a lot of financially well off people, let alone ones that started from nothing. Maybe grandparents, because I had a great grandparent come to the US as a child and when his son died (my grandfather), that grandfather was worth 7 figures in assets. So if anyone, I’d say my grandfather, he was the first generation born in this country and died a millionaire.
My wife’s grandparents moved here with their infant son (my father-in-law) from Germany in the 1950s – they arrived on July 4, and were initially frightened by all the fireworks, until their sponsor told them they were going off in honor of their arrival. 
They didn’t have much, and my wife’s grandfather worked as a meatcutter and butcher for years. Eventually, they opened their own small-town grocery store, renowned for their fantastic meat counter. They saved a ton of money, and while he recently passed away, she is still living on her own in her mid-80s. They worked hard for every penny, and they have a lot of money sacked away.
I always find it very interesting how immigrants always seem to have a massive entrepreneurial spirit…they are so willing to open a business and do what it takes to reach the “American Dream.” These people are very inspiring and a testament to the value of hard work and not just taking a job and making a steady paycheck. The Chinese immigrants who run a restaurant near our house just bought a house (mainly with cash) that my wife had listed in our neighborhood fall into this category as well.
A close friend of mine who employed me for many years grew up poor during the depression, served in WW2, then started a successful sales business that made him financially secure and, more importantly, happy.
He put his son through NYU Film school. His son became a world renowned film director and multi-millionaire.