How did you become a millionaire

[sugaraddictwithapinchoffluff]

Go on, make me extremely jealous of how you became a millionaire, what it's really like and is it what it's cracked up to be? What sort of luxury do you indulge in that people like me can simple not afford ...

Take it away...

@Nannamia

I invented Post-it notes

Do you know the formula for glue?

I do a little bit of this...

and a little bit of that.

I stopped buying a takeaway coffee every day.

Crypto - I'm a whale.

Save a penny a day and you can become a millionaire. Article below.

www.compoundingpennies.com/save-a-penny-a-day/

Business and investing is the way to make millions. It’s not being a worker bee. Invests in assets that will increase your money, then compound interest. Think long term.

Start saving in stocks and shares. If you don’t know how, sign up to a companies like plum who you can’t open a stocks and shares ISA with and invest in different funds.

You can also set up an app called Plum up to link to your bank account and it will automatically round up your spending to the nearest pound and put it in a saving account for you, or you can split it across your stocks and shares funds. You can also set it up to do intelligent spending so if works out an amount every month to take and save for you, so you won’t even notice it out your spending account.

Pennies make pounds. Think long term investments. Plum link below.

friends.withplum.com/r/HkyiBS

The best first read is ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter. Can get on Amazon.

You won’t become a millionaire over night unless you win the lottery, but having a long term goal and making the right choices, investing in assets that will grow in value like stocks and property..

If you don’t have your own property yet, and if your under the age of 40 you should open a government Lifetime ISA account. The government will give you 25% of your savings up to £1000 each tax year. If you need your money out though you won’t get your bonus, so keep it in until pension age, or help yourself get on the property ladder as it van go towards your first home.

Read more on the government website.
www.gov.uk/lifetime-isa

I know quite a few millionaires (mainly through work). The vast majority had money to begin with. It is easy to stay a millionaire with decent investments and property. But I also know many who used that money, or inherited family businesses and developed them, turning them into something hugely succesful. It is hard to knock them as they may be wealthy, but work their butts off.

Of the ones that are self made, mainly builders, property developers and software product development.

I inherited.

In our case its down to

• Actual capital: DH inherited a small sum from his grandmum in his late twenties. He used it to get on the London property ladder. In addition we are both high earners. However, once we crossed the threshold of having a salary of about 100k and the nice house, decent cars etc, we didnt upscale our lifestyle. We pretty much lived on one salary and saved the other
• Used leverage judiciously: We have a couple of houses that we bought using leverage. We are now debt free but they give us some nice passive income
• Invested in the stock market: Since we are mortgage debt free and have relatively low fixed expenses (kids go to state school in an affluent area in the US where we live) we can take a lot more risk in our investment
• Access to off market investment opportunities and tips: Our social network gives us access to this and tbh this is probably the our biggest gains over the past ten years. Think investing in FAANG stocks early, access to IB research etc
• Good advice : Related to above. For eg, we once thought about buying a second property outside of london like a lot of our circle do. However my boss advised me against it - pointed out its a white elephant and money deployed more effectively elsewhere. Ive also had access to great advice re my career

Opportunity to move to the US: DH got the opportunity to the US and its worked out well financially as salaries are much higher here. We also live in a lower COL area than London. Healthcare is obv more but we have employer subsidized. -Having a good marriage: Probably the biggest factor in building wealth. However, its not just the financial cost of (not getting a) divorce but the fact that DH and I have complete joint finances. DH is a great property investor and I am a good stock market investor and we both deploy our joint capital effectively,. Finally, I have a favorable tax position in the UK (am a non dom) and the fact that we trust each other lets us plan effectively for this.

On paper I am worth about £10m in my own right (not my husband) due to my business. We additionally have a £2.5m house and my husband will earn around £1.5m this year in salary and bonuses. We have about £1m in the bank in our mortgage offset account, a small mortgage (600K) and other investments worth around £1m-2m.

How did we do this... no inheritances and in fact no family involvement whatsoever. I am a foreign immigrant and arrived in the UK with only what I had in my backpack. However I did have truly excellent grades and paid my own way through university through a lot of scholarships and a lot of part time jobs. Graduated with no debt, started working in a well paid professional position. Set up my own company, it did well. Meanwhile my husband also worked in professional job, did well, got more senior. We've both worked very hard and mostly enjoyed it.

I am an only child and will be a millionaire when my DM dies. I’d rather she didn’t die and I stay not a millionaire though. My parents were teachers but did well out of the property market. My grandfather made a lot of money working in the pharmaceutical industry and that helped to set up his children for life. He didn’t come from a wealthy background, but I think social mobility was much easier 50 years ago. My aunts both married men who inherited family businesses which in turn means they are now multimillionaires. DH’s uncle set up a firm in a niche engineering specialism, the firm did well, he sold the firm and now he is a millionaire.

Buying property in the 80$ & doing up. Selling before crash. Built a house in Oz, sold for a profit. Bought another wreck repossessed property in London (90s) & painstakingly renovated it. Price galloped. I'm only a millionaire on paper, by luck, hard work & gut feelings. .

Millionare at 35. Lost the lot within 10 years. 2008 crash, uninsured burglary, huge care costs for parents with no assets. Add in ill health and if one party earns a huge salary you may not be able to replace it if they cannot work. We spent what we had left on our children's education. It paid off for our son who has a top job. Now recovering slightly but not sure we will ever have that amount of money again due to our ages. Be careful and save!!

@Novemberchild2 what does this mean? I've heard my husband mention this term
In relation to crypto

@ALongHardWinter

I stopped buying a takeaway coffee every day.

I take food, milk and teabags with me, to work.

I expect I'll soon be a millionaire.

Relative who is a millionaire - was CEO at a major bank - worked his way up from working class. Whole family is proud of him.

My DHs grandfather bought an 8 bedroom house in London with a large garden, parking and access into a 4 acre private gated garden shared amongst other houses on the square. My ILs inherited it and lived in it and then last year my DH and his siblings inherited it along with another property, some shares and other cash and sold it all.

Technically I'm not a millionaire but he is. We both also earn professional salaries and I have a house that I bought when I was single that I now rent out.

Yeah lots of hard graft. That's how I did it. I don't keep mine in coins in the bank though. Wealth management company look after things and I live in a modest house. Although I did have the house revamped throughout . Funnily enough I don't spend loads on stuff really . And I only have one designer handbag.

My parents have over £1m in mortgage free property plus savings, through sheer hard work. DF came to the UK alone at 14 and went to night school to get A levels. Went on to study a degree and masters. Became a partner at a consultancy firm and retired at 60. DM also had a good job (not quite the same level) and retired at 55.

I’m so proud of them. They have a very happy life and retirement, travelling all over the place (pre covid).

[quote scruffysally]@Novemberchild2 what does this mean? I've heard my husband mention this term
In relation to crypto [/quote]
Does your husband hold some?

Crypto is a form of electronic currency. You can trade it online and over the last couple of years the return has been huge. However, it's high risk and currently prices are really high so some investors are taking profits and waiting for the next dip to buy again. FOMO fear of missing out means smaller investors are entering and buying crypto's whilst prices are high. Some say they could go higher still. Given time I believe they will.

A whale is someone who holds a very large wallet of crypto coins. A small number of whales control most of the crypto markets and if a whale cashes in coins the value drops considerably.

I was joking when I said I was a whale. I'm a small fish in a very big ocean.

HTH?

We worked hard and we were lucky. No family wealth here. My husband studied hard and got a well paid job very young. We invested in property very early and now have several.

We don't spend on cleaners, housekeepers, designer brands, expensive holidays or private school. Most people don't know what we have and we haven't told our children because we don't want them to grow up feeling entitled. We don't have a pension and rental income is what we consider to be our pension.

Combination of getting on property ladder early, working overseas as an expat for a few years so saved a lot then, a couple of medium sized inheritances, and investing in stocks and shares.

I work and have a DC and am pregnant with another, so not much time or energy to spend much at the moment but do treat myself to minor things now like business class flights, taxis, hotel room upgrades, takeaways, nice cars, crank up the heating (none of which I did in my 20s)

Would need to be multi-millionaires to be able to afford a really extravagant lifestyle….maybe one day when inheritances come through from mine and my DP’s parents - as both are well off.

I know two people who are Bitcoin millionaires.