I did the math, and 16 million dollars would be way more than enough for me to ride the rest of my life comfortably. And this is without interest, without starting businesses.
5 million could easily sustain me for the rest of my life without a family.
1 million could get me started to get me to not work ever again for somebody else.
The reason millionaires don't feel rich is because they never learned to live within their means and to deprive themselves of anything that isn't a bear necessity.
Help me understand your logic because I'm making assumptions here. I'm just picking one of your examples but how could you not afford to retire and have a family with a nest egg of 5 million?
My logic says 5 million invested in low cost index funds and following the 4% rule gives me about a $200,000 annual salary. I've earned that salary before and it gave me over 10k in monthly cash which paid for my city apartment, brand new car, and I had plenty of money to travel, eat out, and support a partner and still enough to invest and fill up my 401k. I'd have even more money left over not investing. I get kids are expensive but plenty of people live off less than that and have decent family lives. So maybe I'm just being ignorant somewhere in my thoughts process.
We are assuming I don't invest, just spend, spend, spend, and my money devalues because of inflation for about 50 to 60 years, give or take, until I croak.
I'm honestly curious, why even bother sharing an article that's paywalled? That limits people so I don't understand.
Non paywalled version:
http://archive.today/2026.04.13-132339/https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/04/13/more-american-millionaires-than-ever/
I did the math, and 16 million dollars would be way more than enough for me to ride the rest of my life comfortably. And this is without interest, without starting businesses.
5 million could easily sustain me for the rest of my life without a family.
1 million could get me started to get me to not work ever again for somebody else.
The reason millionaires don't feel rich is because they never learned to live within their means and to deprive themselves of anything that isn't a bear necessity.
Help me understand your logic because I'm making assumptions here. I'm just picking one of your examples but how could you not afford to retire and have a family with a nest egg of 5 million?
My logic says 5 million invested in low cost index funds and following the 4% rule gives me about a $200,000 annual salary. I've earned that salary before and it gave me over 10k in monthly cash which paid for my city apartment, brand new car, and I had plenty of money to travel, eat out, and support a partner and still enough to invest and fill up my 401k. I'd have even more money left over not investing. I get kids are expensive but plenty of people live off less than that and have decent family lives. So maybe I'm just being ignorant somewhere in my thoughts process.
We are assuming I don't invest, just spend, spend, spend, and my money devalues because of inflation for about 50 to 60 years, give or take, until I croak.
Ah, that will do it then! Probably something I'd recommend against if anyone ever found themselves with 5mil.
Same, but my point is that them multimillionaires protest too much