In 1972, John Reese came out of the Army, a Northerner in the Deep South with $1,000 in the bank and two credit cards. He walked into a real-estate office and said he wanted to broker commercial property. A mentor asked: “Do you just want to make a living or acquire real wealth?” Reese told that story in a letter responding to last week’s excerpt from The Everywhere Millionaire, by economists Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick.
The Unglamorous Route
The excerpt profiled Americans who built extraordinary fortunes in unglamorous businesses. Reese chose ownership. He decided that buying with leverage — borrowed money, in his case from banks, that lets you control more than your cash alone could — was the easiest way to build an estate. Today he’s got more liquid assets than he ever expected. His secret, for anyone who asks: “Never get divorced, and don’t buy a boat.”
Kevin J Morgan was just as upbeat, seeing millions of ways to make a living and new ones every day. Laura S called it an old story. Millionaire-making is nothing new, she wrote, and most of these owners planted their seeds decades ago. With markets this high, she added, 401(k) multimillionaires are hardly rare.
What the Math Leaves Out
Richard Meyer pushed back. It’s clearly possible to get rich in America, he agreed, but the bigger question is whether mobility, homeownership, starting a business and building wealth are within reach for the median American. Plenty of people, he noted, face pricey housing and healthcare, scarce capital and a growing wealth gap. Nate Ruggieri added that, adjusted for inflation, a $1 million net worth isn’t much of a milestone anymore.
Andrew Kennelly left a salaried corporate job a few years ago to become an independent consultant. He loves entrepreneurship, but he sees job-linked health insurance as a major obstacle to it. He wonders how many capable people hold back because they can’t do without the health benefits. Natasha H cited the finding that about 40% of children of the top 1% fall out of the top fifth of income. Heirs counting on an inheritance, she reasoned, have less reason to push.
Read together, the letters make a quieter point. Wealth usually builds slowly and without much glamour, and a paycheck’s only part of what a job pays. Before trading a salary for independence, price the health coverage and other benefits you’d give up. You don’t wait for the first raindrop to find the umbrella; fifteen minutes with your latest statement can put that math on paper.