By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com
People become millionaires in many ways, but millionaires also have much in common. If you want to know how to become a millionaire, it’s easy enough to give you the formula (or formulas), but if you’re not willing to put in the work, it’s not going to happen.
In general, there are 3 ways to become a millionaire (though there are a few fluke millionaires out there that didn’t follow these paths, such as lottery winners and inherited fortunes):
- Own a profitable business. (Even better is selling your profitable business.)
- Work in a high-paying profession, such as doctor, banker, corporate attorney, computer engineer, and others.
- Work a decent-paying profession making, say, $50,000 per year, and save a huge amount of everything you make while never marrying, never having children, rarely vacationing, and having almost no luxuries.
If being a millionaire, or at least being well off, is important to you, we would suggest one of the first two paths. The last path is no fun, regardless of how much money you amass. Few of us really want to be the schoolteacher who saves 90% of her earnings and puts them in safe stocks for 50 years and leaves $2 million behind at the expense of having really lived a full life. (A caveat here: in households where both parents work, each can have modest incomes and together achieve millionaire status as a household much easier than a single person with a modest income.)