re: Creating Wealth and the people you know who have it ...

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I would hope that anyone with an income of $300K a year would have assets worth more than 1 million dollars

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Your assumption is wrong. Dallas and its suburbs are full of highly compensated employees with net worths no where near $1 million (especially since many of these individuals had a bunch of money tied up in homes that have now lost a lot of value).

You'll note that I didn't say "I assume" I said "I hope." There's a big difference. I would hope that anyone making $300K can manage their money wisely; I know that this is not always true.

I agree with your post. I also think it has to do with passing on knowledge to your children. Me and my siblings are all college graduates, the first in our family. So we make more than our parents. Now if our children take that next step they should be in a better situation than we are/were at their same age.

So they have a better chance at success than we did, or at least they should.

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For the sake of this thread, let's define wealth as an income in xs of 300k/ yr with assetts > $1M

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I live on a street where everyone's assets are over a Mill because we're on prime lakefront. Don't know about the incomes. But every person on the street has one thing in common...they're old and they're married. They came from humble to middle class origins and made money over a long period of time.
I know their stories because I've hosted many block parties. It's about 12 houses..the other side of the street is deep woods. Only one place has kids. Two of us are retired, the rest still work but kids are grown. 11 of the 12 have dogs. The only place with cats is the one with kids. He's afraid that a dog will kill his kid.
Only one family inherited a great deal of wealth. They've worked very hard to increase that but they are also the least social. They never invite any of the other neighbors to their mansion. Not sure what the point of having a mansion is if you don't show it off.
Damn, I just heard a really loud BOOM as I was typing this. Neighbor must have been shooting at a gator. That's another thing. We all have guns.

Well, I think we only had 1 year that we made over $100,000 and our assets were well over a million, but divorce and the stock market has been pretty rough on our net worth this last year. By the way - I wish I had had more of it in real estate - haven't lost any value on my houses at all.

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Mostly, wealth creation was accomplished on their own. They've worked their butts off.

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So they themselves are sacrificing.

Again, I maintain that wealth creation comes from personal sacrifice, albeit one's own or one's ancestors.

Maybe I didn't make the part about one's own sacrifice clear.

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My grandpa died with over $2MM in the bank and he never made more than $30K per year. But he and grandma saved, they rarely ate out, always bought things on a bargain and lived in the same house for the last 50 years. And grandma never really worked either.

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That's perhaps the saddest story I've heard on here. What good is money if you don't spend it. Being a miser is every bit as bad as being a spendthrift.

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I would hope that anyone with an income of $300K a year would have assets worth more than 1 million dollars

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really? that is quite a hope.

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Again, I maintain that wealth creation comes from personal sacrifice, albeit one's own or one's ancestors.

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Balzac has been credited with saying...

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Behind every great fortune there is a great crime

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But what Balzac certainly said was...

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Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu'il a été proprement fait.

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In English...

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The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed.

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