If you read “The Millionaire Next Door” the average millionaire in this country is self-made, and does not live an obviously wealthy lifestyle.
There are a lot of baby boom age couples who always lived below their means, stayed married, and did without a lot of luxuries so they could have a comfortable retirement.
But there are also others (usually younger couples) who spend A LOT of money on “toys” which they can’t afford and they “rent” their lifestyles and are buried in consumer debt. They live hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck—but on the surface, it looks like they have a lot and are keeping up with or are passing the Joneses.
A typical millionaire mnext door couple doesn’t have fancy RV’s, trailers, homes, boats, ATV’s and other expensive toys. What they do have are large nest eggs which generate a lot of income by the time they retire. By the time they do retire, they are often able to pay cash for just about everything.
Hubby and I are a millionaire couple next door. We inherited nothing, graduated from college with nothing but diplomas and the clothes on our backs. We never got on that “keep up with the Jones” treadmill. We live in the same very nice 2000 sq ft house in a nice neighborhood,we bought our home in 1990. Any updates/upgrades we put into our home we paid cash for, and we paid off the mortgage over 15 years ago. I drive a nicely maintained van which has 199,600 miles on it. (Yes, almost 200,000 miles on it LOL). When my van finally breaks down for good, we will pay cash for nice low mileage van. We have no recreational “toys”, have never been interested in them. We’ve seen too many of our friends who are “house and toy rich” and cash poor. We don’t want to live that way.
Our luxuries now in our “autumn years” have to do with travelling. We do a lot of travelling, and it’s so much fun being able to go pretty much wherever we want, either here in the U.S. or overseas.
us too! My husband was able to semi retire at 59 b/c we saved our $$ and always lived below our means. No where near millionaires but we’ll always be comfy.
We never got on that “keep up with the Jones”