I did $10,000,000 net worth with home equity and it gave me 98.5%. Anyways, I'd say hard work, being clever and luck all factored into my success so far. Things that helped:
No student debt: Went to a state school for free. I qualified for a 100% scholarship through FL's bright futures program. Also, my mom, when I was a kid had purchased FL Prepaid program which locks you in for 120 credit hours at a low rate. She paid something like $3500 for the plan. Which ended up being a steal. So basically I had college paid for twice which allowed me to use the extra scholarship money for living expenses and food. I also finished in 4 years. Didn't fuck around like other people in my family who spend 6-7 years earning a bachelors.
Delayed gratification: I didn't do a whole lot my first 5 or so years out of college. Didn't travel. Didn't go out to eat often. I had moved away from friends for a job, so i didn't have a lot of options. Literally just saved every dime I could and put it in equities. I also didn't have any real serious girlfriends for probably 4 years after college. So i wasn't spending money on a significant other.
Real estate: This is part luck bc of the timing. By the time I had saved enough money to afford a down payment for a house, it was 2010. The bubble had popped and properties were cheap. I bought the most expensive place i could afford. It was 227K townhouse short sale that had sold for 575k 26 months earlier. I was so proud to buy that place. Since then, I've been able to pay it off. It's now worth around 475K and i've got in rented for 3k a month. With that income, I was able to buy my primary residence. Which is now conservatively worth 400k more than I paid for it. Sometimes you just get lucky.
Multiple streams of income: I make decent money at my primary job. 175-200k a year. It's solid not spectacular. So I've got the rental property, I've also got my real estate license in 2011 when everyone was saying the market was dead and wouldn't recover for years. I only do 2-3 deals a year but that usually nets me another 20-50k a year in extra income. Early on I also helped people with training and diet plans for money, valeted cars for extra money etc. Just anything extra I could sock away. I also invested in a friends business that has since taken off. That pays me a nice piece of cash every year. Again, maybe that was lucky. Born earlier, I could ahve been one of those people getting foreclosed on.
Stock market: I've been through the high and the lows of the stock market. I'm a conservative, steady investor. I basically just buy the market every month or when I see a crazy dip, like what happened during the pandemic. I didn't have a lot of money to invest in 2009-10 when the market tanked but I had gotten myself to position where I could take advantage of the corona sell off. I had already moved a bunch of money to cash before it struck and I was able to buy stocks for numbers I never thought possible. That was significant to my net worth.
Now this is all great now. If the market sells off and real estate crashes, my net worth could be cut in half but i have no debt, outside of my primary mortgage which is fairly small in comparison to most people. Oh, I also drive a ford explorer. No flashy cars for me yet. My goal was to save, sacrifice and invest early. Make my money work for me and then enjoy those fruits as I enter my 40's. Hoping Biden doesn't ruin that shit with his moronic policies.
Some of us do get lucky, that's for sure. But you were probably smart too.
After College my good friend started his own Landscaping business, the large commercial property type. He needed money to buy equipment so i loaned him $25k so he could buy without interest. He agreed to give me 10% of the company, which at the time seemed huge to me, but i'd known him my entire life and he was a good man.
Over the next 5 years his business grew like crazy, he had 10 different crews with some badass equipment. Trucks, trailers, zero turn mowers and even some large tractor style mowers. He had got in well with a few large commercial businesses, two of the largest private schools in Houston and some Ag land. In Houston most businesses mow once a week for 10 months out of the year, easy money. Even in the winter they still did work, just maybe once every other week. My friend would give his entire staff a full month off every year with pay, he was a nice guy and his employees respected him.
I had helped him a lot with the logistics of getting crews to locations efficiently. This was before Google Maps and we only had Mapquest and those Key Map books. I planned out all the weekly routes so that there was less down time, less driving and more mowing. It was a very simple system.
Anyway, after 10 years he decided to sell the company, a large state wide company offered him a ridiculous amount of money and his c
unt wife was greedy, so he sold the company for around $3m. Paid me my 10% and he started a new Landscape company in another City where he moved with his wife. He was a very successful guy, made millions off a very easy concept. Today he's worth at least 10m, not really sure. He has a few restaurants now and still does landscaping.
I took the ~$300k and bought two houses for $200k in College Station, Texas, near Texas A&M. Fixed them up and started renting them out to rich college kids for over $2k a month. Easy money. I still own one of them today because it keeps gaining value. The first one i sold for $350k about 4 years ago, had $160k in it.
Over the last 10 years i've bought and flipped a dozen houses all over Texas and New Mexico. But i gave it up recently because everyone does it now and the profits are not what they used to be. I own two rental houses in NM and that one in College Station, they bring me about $6k a month.
Plus i work as an Engineer and make a decent living. The most import thing i learned is it's not how much money you make, it's how much you spend. Live smart and don't spent money on stupid shit. I'm going to retire at 50-55 and travel the world until i die. I have zero debt, drive old cars and follow a budget.
Also, never get married or have kids.
