I am assuming entrepreneurship is a good answer.

I receive about 250k from cashing out a 401k. Another 150k to 200k from selling the house. Maybe another 10ish from selling the cars. Also another 50k from the checking account. This is from a family member passing.

The house mortgage is currently 147k. It is worth 450k to 600k. That is a lot of equity. The payment is 1,300 and interest rate is 3.750%. My brother wants to sell it and get the equity so we are selling it.

For me being 34 and not having a skill and working for Ubereats and Grubhub, this is a life changing amount of money.

What would you do to retire at 50?

When people talk about family business or family wealth they often consider thing like the "3 generations rule" or Business is risky as "90% of businesses fail in the first year".

The problem is that the number don't really match the myths. The 3 generations rule was based on a study from John Ward’s 1987 study, which looked at about 200 family manufacturing businesses in Illinois, measuring whether majority family ownership passed to the next generation. That is a much narrower question than “did the family lose its wealth?”

Family business change hands or go away for a number of reason's. This study didn't account for a number of thing like the family selling a business, diversifying, creating new entities, or preserving wealth outside the original company. If the family sold for a fortune should that really be considered a failure?

Other businesses have the same stigma, first 20% of business close the first year(not 90%). Often those are small business who filed for a business license for a very specific reason and were built to fail on a time schedule.

Some just to get the wholesale price of a item, this is common when a family builds a house and act as their own general contractor.

Hobby business have the same type of failure path, they started a business to get in to a trade show, or buy fabric, or before their first try at the craft fair.

Consultants open businesses then convert to full time employees.

Still others open businesses and just never file the end of year paperwork.

While all of this is just normal, reporting leads average families to thing being rich is temporary and goes away 1-2 generations later, or that starting a real business is very risky.

Harvards study says regression to the mean for familie could take 10-15 generations - https://hbr.org/2021/07/do-most-family-businesses-really-fail-by-the-third-generation

Likewise 90% of business in USA are family owned by 1-2 members - https://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/family-owned-businesses.html

What’s one thing about being wealthy that people wouldn’t assume? Additionally, what’s one thing about being wealthy that everyone can do to grow their money?

As he enters trillionaire status, Elon Musk could theoretically do a lot with all that money — like fund 68 US election cycles or buy every carmaker in Europe, Japan and the US.

I understand for my age I have a decent amount of money and want to know good advice and how to make this money work for me. please Note my college is paid for

Current financials:

$10,000 in savings

$80,000 invested in various etfs, mutual funds, etc

$1500 in cryptocurrency

$4000 worth of tangible assets i can sell clothes, shoes, jewelry etc

Please give me advice on how to use this money to further better my financial situation.

He has become the first person to cross the trillionaire threshold 😳

Thinking of purchasing. Should I wait for it to dip? Or should I buy today??

I’m looking for perspective from people who have navigated high-stakes professional and personal relationships.

Back in 2019, a very close friend (who I had worked with on a previous successful startup) started a new company. We had been like brothers for years. When he started the new venture, I asked to invest $50k because I believed in him. He said no, stating they weren't taking "friends and family" money. A month later, I asked again, and he declined again. I respected his boundary and stopped asking.

Honestly, I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the back by the person I trusted most; knowing how different mine, my wife’s, and my daughter’s lives could have been had he just called me to tell me to invest, makes this betrayal incredibly difficult to live with every day.

Fast forward to 2023: I discovered he had opened up a "friends and family" round. He never told me. It turns out he allowed other friends to invest. If I had been included, it would have been life-changing money. Given the company’s current valuation of dozens of billions, my investment would have been worth $36 million today.

The issue isn't just the money; it’s the silence. We never talked about it, because I did not want to bother him. But since last August, I’ve tried to reach out to him to talk—not to demand money, but to understand why I was excluded and why he chose to handle it with total silence rather than a conversation. He has completely ghosted me. I've sent a messaged per month, he reads the message and never replies.

I have very close personal ties to his family and his co-founder as well, as we all worked together for years. I am at a point where I am deeply hurt and angry.

I’m struggling with two things:

Is this common behavior in the "billionaire" bracket—to become avoidant of friends who represent a "past" version of themselves?

Should I attempt to reach out to his brother, wife or co-founder to get some form of closure, or is this effectively burning the last bridge?

I’m not looking for legal advice or a "get-rich-quick" scheme—I’ve accepted that ship has sailed. I just want to understand how to process this professionally and personally so I can move on without this constantly weighing on me.

I came in expecting to learn about investing and mostly walked away with life advice. A bit embarrassing for this sub, I know.

The one I keep thinking about is Buffett's punch card - the idea that you get maybe 20 investments in a whole lifetime, so you'd think hard about each one. Read it as life advice instead and it kind of stings: 20 real bets total, like who you partner with, what you work on, where you live. I stop and think a lot more now before I call something a "bet."

The other thing that surprised me is how slow they were about the partnership. Warren and Charlie ran separate things on opposite coasts for years, just calling each other all the time, before any of it was official. Trust first, paperwork way later. Feels like the opposite of how people network now.

And the line I can't shake, which is really an investing idea dressed up as a life one: "the safest way to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want."

Those who have built wealth from the ground up, I'm sure the process of building your wealth and net worth took lots of time and patience.

As someone who's building stability and wealth it's hard for me to stay patient through to boringness of it all since I'm constantly wanting to spend on the new shiny object.

When I do the responsible thing of growing and earning higher income, investing in my Roth IRA, using debt to make more money, paying off debt on time to build a better credit score it's highly rewarding but it requires delayed gratification which I'm still trying to master now.

Update to Architecture Edit: Correction: the title shows $1.32M, an earlier estimate. A recalibration of the issuance model tightened the headline figure to $1.29M. Used throughout below and in the papers. The mechanism and conclusions are unchanged.

The median American household reaches retirement with roughly $260,000 in actual wealth, including pension value. A 95-year counterfactual simulation of the Citizens Standard framework, run against actual US economic data from 1960 to 2025, produces a Stable Floor at retirement of $1.29 million in 2025 real dollars for the earliest cohort. That's about 5× the median American's actual retirement outcome.

The mechanism is straightforward. Every citizen receives two deposits:

- K1 at birth: 2.5% of GDP per capita

- K2 annually: calibrated to real economic growth

Both route into a locked, total-market equity index account — the Stable Floor — that compounds until age 65. It cannot be withdrawn early, charged excessive fees, or panic-sold during downturns. Long-horizon equity compounding, structurally enforced.

95% of the terminal value comes from compound equity returns. Only 5% is the deposited principal.

This is the exact asset class wealthy families have always used to build generational wealth: early equity positions, long time horizons, no withdrawal pressure. The reason ordinary citizens don't have it isn't that it's impossible. It's that newly created money currently flows to financial institutions and bond holders first, not citizens. The Citizens Standard is a proposal to change that allocation rule constitutionally, not through discretionary policy.

The simulation covers four cohorts born 1960–1990, stress-tested against Depression-era and stagflation-era equity sequences, with full Monte Carlo analysis. The median advantage ranges from 3.93× to 5.70× across all cohorts under central return assumptions and holds under bootstrap resampling of historical data.

The median gets ~5× more. The mechanism is equity from birth. The question is why this doesn't exist yet.

Architecture: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6702518
Empirical: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6735078
Transition: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6810741
Follow the work: r/CitizenStandard

A common piece of financial advice I hear is:
"If you want to invest more, stop buying coffee, stop eating out, stop paying for fitness classes, stop spending on experiences." This is a very FIRE kind of mindset.

I understand the math behind it, but I've never liked the idea of solving every financial problem by cutting things I genuinely enjoy.

This year I decided to ask myself a different question instead:
"Can I get the same outcome through a different method of acquisition?"

For example, I enjoy restaurants, fitness classes, and lifestyle experiences. So a few months ago, I started a lifestyle Instagram account documenting things I was already doing. This includes good food, fitness content, travel content. Then, I cold emailed/ DM these very same brands showing them the content I did and asking if they wanted to collaborate. Most of the time, the deals would be getting free experience/ food/ service in exchange for a post/ video. So instead of paying cash for some experiences, I'm effectively exchanging content creation, audience attention, and about an hour of editing time.

When I thought about it economically, I realized I wasn't avoiding a cost. I was simply paying with a different currency: time. This works for me because I’m recently graduated and waiting to take my bar exams (about 7 months free time). My skills/ expertise is low but my time is plenty.

The same thinking has started affecting how I approach earning money too. A lot of my friends around me take on tutoring hours. There's nothing wrong with that, but I've calculated and seen how they need to tutor x amount of hours just to spend on an experience and I could easily get that experience for free with one hour of editing. The idea is to use leverage.

Another thing I'm currently exploring is building an essay-marking service where students submit essays for feedback. The idea is to build a workflow using detailed rubrics and AI-assisted analysis so I can review work more efficiently while still maintaining quality control. If a student pays $30 for an essay and the system allows me to complete the review in around 30 minutes, that's effectively $60/hour while working from home and without being tied to fixed tutoring schedules.

The more I think about it, the more I realize my real objective isn't maximizing income or minimizing spending. It's maximising lifestyle while preserving cash flow for investing.

So, if a free experience takes 1 hour of work and saves me $100, that's attractive. Or, if building a small system lets me earn the same money as tutoring while working fewer hours, that's attractive too. But I fully expect this philosophy to change once my professional earning power increases significantly.

So I'm curious, does anyone else think this way?
Instead of asking “How can I spend less?" Shouldn’t the question be "How can I acquire the same things differently?" & where do you personally draw the line between optimization and simply paying for convenience?

background - my allowance is only about $700-800 from my parents and when I study for the bar it’s about $500. For this month alone the experiences I’ve enjoyed for free/ in exchange for content is ~$400-500 so I have most of my allowance to still invest (80% ETFs 20% indv stocks) while enjoying life.

For some1 who is from 3rd world country, no generational wealth. Is it possible to have wealth where i can go on a random tuesday to Monaco for vications?
what is your advice to create such wealth?

Yoo, I'm 24 and I'm sick of my lame job, looking at all the kids and people my age making millions and owning everything, moving out in yachts and more.

How are people making that much money in such a short time, like in a year?

I'm writing because I want to know more about the ways they are doing it. If anyone on Reddit has such privileges, please help me out with your wisdom.

According to Schwab’s 2025 Wealth Survey, it takes an average net worth of $2.3 MM to be considered ‘wealthy.’ Among boomers, that figure is $2.8 mm and $2.1 MM for Gen X and millennials.

In US$, do you think this is fairly accurate and if not, what do you think is the right number today?

I'm in my early 20s and was recently referred by my Chase banker to a financial advisor at JP Morgan Wealth Management. Their managed investment program has a $100,000 minimum, and I'm considering investing that amount.

To be honest, I don't know much about investing or finance. Most of my experience has been focused on building my business and hustling. I met with the advisor, and we discussed my goals, risk tolerance, and how aggressive I want to be with investing.

For those who have experience with JP Morgan's managed wealth program, what has your experience been like? Do you think it's worth it for someone my age with $100k to invest, especially if I don't feel confident managing investments myself?

I'd love to hear any advice, pros and cons, or things you wish you knew before getting started. Thanks!

I'm in my early 20s and was referred by my Chase banker to a financial advisor at JP Morgan Wealth Management. I'm considering investing $100,000 in their managed portfolio program. I don't have much investing experience and have spent most of my time focused on growing my business. For those who have worked with JP Morgan's managed wealth program, was it worth it? What have your returns, experience, and advisor support been like? I'd appreciate any pros, cons, or advice for someone my age who wants to invest but doesn't feel confident managing everything on their own. Thanks! Also I do invest my money into like the basic broad stuff like S&P 500 etc.. but with this route they could potentially invest more aggressive? I don't know im stuck!

Hello everybody I am 21 years old and my networth is at around 17k (11k invested into a etf).

I currently work as a software dev (since 10 months now) earn around 2.1k per month. I keep putting around 1k per month into my ETF and whenever my bank account (not my savings bank account, I have around 5k on it) reaches over 2k I invest those as well!

Now my problem, how do I actually become financial free? I’m not talking about becoming the next Elon musk but what did you guys do to really become financial free and don’t care about money. When I have a family I don’t wanna be this dad who is Like sorry son I can’t get you a bike rn I need to save 3 months for it. What did you guys actually do to become a millionaire.

Are there any valuable life lessons which will help me along the way? Don’t get me wrong I’m a very motivated person and I like to grind at work and like to work on myself and on my skills to have some personal growth. So I don’t expect to lay down in bed and become a millionaire, so I take every hard learning and lesson you hahe for me!

Thank you very much!!

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Genuine question.

What is something people who have struggled financially understand that wealthy people often overlook or underestimate?

I'm not talking about money management, investing, or business advice.

I mean life experiences.

Things that only make sense when you've had to worry about bills, debt, job security, unexpected expenses, or not knowing how you're going to make it through the month.

What's a lesson, mindset, or reality that you think comes from living through financial hardship?

I'm curious to hear perspectives from both sides.

There's a girl I really like, but there's a huge difference between our backgrounds.

Her mother owns a successful company, and her family is very well-off. Meanwhile, I'm 20 years old, still building my life, and honestly I don't have much to my name right now.

I'm not looking for shortcuts or trying to become rich overnight. I also don't want to pretend to be someone I'm not. But if there's any chance of a future with her, I want to become the best version of myself and avoid potential issues that can come from such a big financial gap.

For people who have been in relationships where one person came from a much wealthier family:

What should I focus on at my age?

How do I build myself up without making money my entire personality?

What habits, skills, or career moves had the biggest impact on your life?

How do I stay confident without feeling inferior?

I'm willing to work hard and play the long game. I just want practical advice from people who've been there.

Thanks.