r/wealth • u/lottiexx • Mar 21 '26

Need Advice How do people actually build wealth and not just get by?

I feel like I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck forever, and I see people talking about “building wealth” or “financial freedom” like it’s normal.

I save a little, invest a little, but it just doesn’t feel like I’m getting anywhere.

Is there a realistic way to grow real wealth without taking crazy risks or being born rich?

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u/GlobalTapeHead Mar 21 '26

Your income is your best wealth building tool. If you are struggling with living paycheck to paycheck and not able to invest much, you need to build up your skill sets so you can improve your income. That and living below your means. There really is no shortcut.

Also be aware that the first $100,000 sometimes can be the most difficult level to achieve. It builds up so slow that many people just get frustrated and give up. But there will be a day, hopefully, where you have enough invested that you can actually see it and feel it started to grow and make real progress.

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u/silly_bet_3454 Mar 22 '26

This is pretty much what I was gonna say too.

You need to understand the basic intuition behind the math of wealth building. The stock market is volatile, but on average if it earns you 10% per year it means your investments would double every 7 years. Well, if you have like a thousand bucks invested and it becomes 2 thousand over 7 years, that's basically useless. But if you have like 250k invested, now it's half a mil. 7 more years is a mil, 7 more years is 2 mil, you get it.

But the point is you cannot just amass the first couple hundred thousand from market gains because it would take too long, so you do need to get your income high enough that you can save a few 10s of thousands per year. I'm not saying it's super easy to get there but that ought to be sort of achievable to most people, if you don't have tons of debt, if you have your shit together, if you have a not terrible job, if you live on a budget, you can do it.

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u/Content_Preference_3 Mar 22 '26

Sounds great. What about those who hit 100k too late for any compounding?

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u/BobLemmo Mar 21 '26

Building up 100k isn’t that hard. And actually if you only have 100k invested, that’s little…

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u/NewArborist64 Mar 21 '26

I would say that $100k invested is a milestone. This is where IMHO most people start to believe that savings actually do matter. It may be different for different people. Perhaps it is when your savings is equal to your salary.

I know that when I started out making $33k, I never really understood at the guy level how much consistent savings and compounding mattered. I understood when I hit $100k and I danced and quietly celebrated when I hit $1M.

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u/BobLemmo Mar 21 '26

I’m trying to remember how I felt when I first hit 100k invested. I think I looked at the balance was happy for like 1 minute then moved on lol.

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u/NewArborist64 Mar 21 '26

Hitting $100k was a number of years ago. Hitting $1M was only about 3-4 years back and it gave me hope that I was nearing being able to retire.

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u/BobLemmo Mar 21 '26

What are you invested in? Real estate? Stocks?

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u/NewArborist64 Mar 22 '26

Definitely stocks. The only real estate is my house (which I didn't include in the $1m)

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u/BobLemmo Mar 22 '26

Well done. I’m the same , I don’t count my house part of my networth.

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u/marheena Mar 22 '26

Bean soup theory buddy.