Thoughts on Becoming a Millionaire at 35

Like my catchy title? 😉 I’m following the lead of YouTuber TechLead, who uses the word “millionaire” in almost all his video titles. He has some interesting videos, and I find his dry humor amusing but also full of wisdom.

After setting a goal 62 months ago to achieve a net worth of over $1,000,000, I achieved that goal just a few days ago. See my post here.

I have a lot of thoughts on becoming a millionaire that I’d like to share. I’m not the most organized writer, so I’ll share them with a bunch of bullet points as they pop up in my head.

TLDR: Following my parent’s hard work ethic, having good opportunities, having faith in God, taking time to increase my skills and knowledge about money, and being consistent with a goal over a long period of time helped me become a millionaire.

• In order to become a millionaire, I would say you need these two things: opportunity and a strong work ethic. Living in America, I believe I definitely had a good opportunity to succeed if I worked hard. I also believe I inherited a strong work ethic from both of my parents. Neither of them went to college, but they worked very hard to give me and my siblings the opportunity to succeed. My dad is blind, but he never took a disability check from the government. For decades, he woke up around 4am, five days a week, to run a coffee shop in a state office building in Rhode Island. My mom worked odd jobs until the late 1980s, when she got a job as a letter carrier for the Postal Service. She has bad knees from walking thousands of miles delivering mail through frigid, icy winters and hot summers. I don’t tell them very often, but I’m proud of them and thankful for the opportunity they gave me and my siblings in life.

• I learned frugality from my parents. When my parents came to the U.S. in 1980, they shared a small house with 8 other family members. 10 people lived in an old house and shared one bathroom. They were eventually able to move out, but they didn’t have much money for a while. They worked minimum wage jobs for those early years, making a little more than $3/hour. By necessity, they had to squeeze the value out of anything they spent money on and had to learn to live with just necessities for a long time. I’m more of a saver, and my wife is more of a spender. After 8+ years of marriage, we’re still learning to work together on our finances.

• I learned generosity from my parents. As frugal as my parents were, they were very generous. They’ve probably housed over 100 different people in their house, whether it was for a few days or a few months. During college and after, I felt like every time we went home, there was a different stranger staying in one of the rooms. Here’s the story. Through their church website, they put up a post offering help to people visiting from Korea (usually for college/grad/doctorate programs). They would help them get adjusted, find a place to live, buy a car, get a driver’s license, etc. I also learned the importance of generosity through Dave Ramsey’s teachings. My wife and I give regularly to our church and causes that we believe in. As our resources increase, I hope to be able to increase our generosity.

• Privilege is not necessary to become a millionaire, but it sure helps and makes it easier. I grew up with many challenges, but I would say that I was also very privileged. I was born and raised in America. I had two parents. My parents stayed together. My parents worked hard. My parents cared for our well-being. I was able to go to college. All these things I don’t take for granted. There are excuses we can make for our challenges in life, but finding things to be grateful for makes living life a lot better.

• When it comes to the stock market, I’m not the best investor. Investing in stocks has helped us to reach $1M net worth, but definitely not as much as real estate. I’ve made my fair share of bad mistakes when it comes to the stock market. Had I just invested in index funds the whole time, we would be in a much better financial position. Instead, I more than dabbled with individual stocks and options trading (WallStreetBets). I definitely learned a lot, but let’s just say I paid some “stupid tax.” Now, I try to be a lot more passive with stock market investing, and it’s been working out a little better.

• Real estate ended up being the main reason we hit $1M net worth. By owning real estate and being a real estate agent, our net worth increased by almost $300,000 in the past year. We own 2 single-family homes, and the real estate market has appreciated substantially over the past year, increasing our home equity. Also, as a realtor, I’ve sold over $12M in the past 12 months. Income from this side hustle has exceeded income from my day job as a patent examiner for the first time this year.

• A million dollars is a nice milestone, but it won’t change our lives drastically. Dave Ramsey says don’t buy a brand new car unless you have a net worth of at least one million dollars. Looks like I can buy that Tesla now! Just kidding. My wife says we can get one after we pay off our mortgage. Plus, I broke that Dave Ramsey rule 4 times already. We’ve only bought new cars. Anyway, most of the million dollars is tied up in illiquid investments, either in real estate or in retirement funds. Also, inflation continues to erode the value of a million dollars, so I realize it won’t make us feel wealthy. It is nice not living paycheck to paycheck. I do feel like I will be able to transition to part-time at my day job this year, which I’m seriously considering now.

• My faith in God helped get me to where I am. I haven’t really talked about my faith on this blog very much, if at all. I am a Christian. I believe my faith has helped me in so many ways. I was terminated/fired from my first job after college because I wasn’t “a good fit.” I was devastated for about a day. I was out in a small town in northwest Missouri, and I wasn’t sure what to do next. I was attending a church in Kansas, and the community there really helped me when I was down. I still keep in touch with some of those friends today. An older friend at church gave me a job helping him start up a company, even though I had no idea what I was doing. His startup (Data Locker) is doing very well, and I’m thankful for all he did for me. Another friend provided me with a place to stay for a year for which I’m very grateful. I also had and continue to have a lot of struggles in my marriage. Having community around me helped me realize other people were going through similar struggles and that older couples had gone through tough times too. There are tough seasons in life and in marriage, but they are seasons and seasons pass. My Christian faith gave me the hope and support I needed to keep pushing on in life and in marriage.

• Money really isn’t that important to me. With a blog that obsessively tracks my net worth, I’ll understand if you don’t believe me. But I don’t really have any grand ambitions to acquire a vast amount of wealth. I just want to be a good steward of the resources we have, and I want to have the ability to make time for my wife and kids when I want. I also want to keep my wife happy, so I need to be able to provide some basic things (and some nice things). I think if we work hard at serving others, serving society, or creating value, the money comes naturally.

• I believe everyone (or just about everyone) should learn about personal finance. Somewhat contradicting my statement above, I’m going to say learning about money should be important to almost everyone. For those who say money isn’t important, try going a month without spending any money and see if you miss it. Or try giving up your income for a year and see how life is. You’ll realize that money is a necessity that is woven into our lives. I think it’s important for everyone to learn how to manage their finances, especially as the amount we manage tends to get larger as we get older. For most of us, we spend a lot of our time working for money. If time is important to you and you want to be more in control of your time, then learning to manage money should be important to you as well.

• Daily habits are more important than short sprints. Whether it comes to building wealth, losing weight, or working on our spiritual life, I think this quote by Bill Gates is true: “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” For example, I think making a change like limiting myself to one sugary drink per day will help me to keep weight off better than going on a temporary diet for 30-60 days. I was a part-time real estate agent for about 6-7 years before my business started to really take off. Consistency over time is much more valuable than a temporary change. I actually started tracking my net worth well before I started my blog. I tracked it in detail from 2010-2012 (see below). My net worth was negative in 2007 when I graduated from college with about $26,000 in student loans and a $12,000 loan on a new car. From a negative net worth, it probably hit zero sometime in 2009. From there, it took another 12 years to get to $1M. This was a long, long journey.

Date	Net Worth
5/25/2007	-$38,000
5/25/2010	$31,833
6/16/2010	$39,206
7/6/2010	$42,388
7/9/2010	$44,403
8/3/2010	$46,912
8/9/2010	$48,419
8/16/2010	$48,654
9/9/2010	$51,413
10/13/2010	$54,283
10/21/2010	$52,689
10/24/2010	$57,235
11/4/2010	$58,340
12/6/2010	$57,260
12/29/2010	$59,422
1/27/2011	$61,409
2/7/2011	$64,021
3/1/2011	$67,319
4/21/2011	$71,734
4/25/2011	$73,922
4/28/2011	$75,280
5/1/2011	$77,280
5/20/2011	$80,364
6/2/2011	$88,339
7/5/2011	$87,171
9/27/2011	$77,134
11/9/2011	$78,361
1/5/2012	$74,579
1/26/2012	$83,903
2/25/2012	$89,753
2/27/2012	$90,753
2/29/2012	$91,657
3/12/2012	$95,454
3/19/2012	$98,647
2/19/2016	$311,584
3/19/2016	$333,822
4/18/2016	$339,161
5/17/2016	$345,978
6/20/2016	$358,075
7/19/2016	$375,311
8/22/2016	$379,916
9/20/2016	$409,754
10/27/2016	$418,966
11/21/2016	$429,096
12/19/2016	$438,004
1/19/2017	$467,147
2/17/2017	$478,511
3/17/2017	$487,023
4/19/2017	$491,247
5/15/2017	$491,487
6/19/2017	$502,712
7/17/2017	$516,971
8/17/2017	$530,417
9/19/2017	$538,639
10/19/2017	$541,275
11/20/2017	$550,340
12/19/2017	$556,081
1/18/2018	$560,064
2/20/2018	$568,162
3/20/2018	$577,223
4/19/2018	$594,608
5/16/2018	$604,185
6/19/2018	$621,889
7/19/2018	$632,207
8/20/2018	$628,155
9/19/2018	$631,483
10/19/2018	$635,660
11/19/2018	$642,829
12/19/2018	$642,177
1/18/2019	$650,115
2/19/2019	$663,881
3/19/2019	$691,734
4/22/2019	$704,614
5/17/2019	$706,596
6/18/2019	$699,508
7/19/2019	$714,050
8/19/2019	$723,554
9/19/2019	$728,081
10/21/2019	$736,159
11/21/2019	$749,414
12/19/2019	$755,396
1/23/2020	$767,705
2/19/2020	$774,651
3/19/2020	$677,476
4/20/2020	$731,885
5/20/2020	$747,363
6/19/2020	$761,134
7/21/2020	$785,891
8/19/2020	$793,504
9/22/2020	$794,214
10/19/2020	$795,498
11/19/2020	$830,562
12/21/2020	$846,606
1/19/2021	$867,223
2/19/2021	$895,003
3/19/2021	$971,274
4/19/2021	$1,023,474
6/30/2021	$1,080,987
12/31/2021	?