I should have named this post, “The Reason None of Us are Rich.” That would have been more appropriate because how many of us have the wherewithal to accumulate the first 100k of play (or investment) money? Not many. I can’t count how many friends I’ve attempted to guide toward investing income, only to wallow in disappointment years later after learning that their initial enthusiasm has waned into the abyss of nothingness. It’s a shame, really. Such a shame and I’ll tell you why below.
What I share with you next is going to annoy the snot right out of you. I’ve been snivelling in my own misery because I obviously, what some might describe as, missed the boat. I don’t feel too terrible because everyone else apparently has as well. Here goes:
- Did you know that if you invested $1,000 in Amazon stock at it’s IPO (initial public offering) in 1997, you’d have $2,371,114 sitting in your account today? And if you never touched a penny of it, you’d never pay a penny of tax on it. And if you only sold shares and withdrew less than the yearly taxable capital gains threshold ($48,350 today), you’d pay $0 in tax on your stock sales and withdrawals, forever.
- Did you know that if you invested $1,000 in Bitcoin in April of 2010 (two years after its launch in 2008), you’d have purchased, at $.01 per Bitcoin, 100,000 Bitcoins. Today’s Bitcoin is worth $120,000 EACH. So today, you’d have $12 billion.
If you ask me, just knowing this information is as annoying as all get-out. If you woke up this morning feeling good about yourself, you probably don’t anymore. Welcome to my world.
The question really is, how the heck are we supposed to predict the future to become wealthy like those who struck gold making the right (lucky) investments? The answer is, we’re not. We’re mere mortals and becoming wealthy like those others are just isn’t in the cards for us. Sorry, but it’s true. Luckily, there are other methods for us regular folks to become somewhat wealthy. You know, strategies for people like you and me.
From personal experience and from speaking with and knowing people who have tons of money, in order to become wealthy, a person needs to be four things:
- Willing to delay having fun today for riches tomorrow.
- Willing to be extraordinarily disciplined.
- Willing to seek out and recognize opportunities as they arise.
- Willing to be patient.
In other words, you need to be:
- Disappointed with your life today.
- Cheap.
- A visionary.
- Boring.
There are people who say, “Yeah, but can’t I have both? Can’t I still eat at restaurants and go on vacations and still become rich?” The answer for most average earning people is, “No, you can’t. You’ll need to be a shut-in who people don’t admire.” Don’t worry though. Eventually, you’ll be the one with all the money and they’ll be the ones with all the debt.
The rules of economics are brutal and seemingly unfair. If you’d like to eat at restaurants every night, you’ll be spending the very money you should be using to invest. You can’t have both nice food served to you as well as an investment nest egg simultaneously. If you’d like to go on vacations, you’ll be spending the very time you should be using to work to earn money.
I can hear it now. “But we have to live! What’s the sense of being alive if we can’t have fun?” Perhaps you aren’t the type of person who should become wealthy. Maybe you should stay poor while spending your paycheck on things that are unnecessary. I really don’t care.
For the rest of you, check this out.
In this next section, I’m going to use some terminology that you might not be familiar with. If you don’t understand what something means, simply type the word or phrase into Google to learn about it. That’s what I do when I don’t understand something.
There’s an ETF out there with the ticker symbol of VOO. It tracks the S&P 500. It’s inexpensive to own at an expense ratio of a mere .03%. There are no barriers to purchasing and owning this ETF. Anyone (even children, if they have an adult to sponsor them) can open a Schwab or Fidelity account today and have it funded by tomorrow. The account is free to use. Buying and selling stocks and ETFs is free too, meaning there are no commissions for doing so. So to sum up, there’s an investment ETF available to buy right now, a free account to open for making that purchase, and no trade commissions for buying and selling ETF investments. Again, there are no barriers that would inhibit anyone who’s interested in getting involved with what I’m going to discuss below.
The trick with becoming wealthy is to use any disposable income you have to invest in a vehicle (an investment vehicle is any product or method that investors use to grow their money) that will allow your money to work for you. The question is, how would a person acquire disposable income? But before that, what is disposable income? Simply put, disposable income is money that’s available to be spent or saved as one wishes. It’s what’s left over after personal expenses are paid. In order to have disposable income, a person needs to have an income in the first place and also have no, or very little, debt. Debt and interest is the evil that chews right through any extra cash a person may have. In order to acquire a disposable income, a person will also need to avoid wasting money on parties, morning coffee from Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks, weddings, vacations, cigarettes, dinners, pre-made sandwiches from the deli or grocery store, beer, travel, nights out, get-rich-quick schemes, and any other activity or thing you can think of that might part you from your hard earned cash.
Once a stream of disposable income is established, you’ll need to save up $100k, which isn’t as difficult as you think, considering how much money you waste every day on stuff you don’t need. When I was a kid, I had a friend who mowed residential and commercial lawns. He began with nothing and worked for four years to grow his business. After the fourth summer, he had earned $96k in profit, all the while, eating cat food to survive. If he could do it, you can do it.
Back when VOO was established in 2010, it cost around $107 per share. Today, VOO costs $585 per share. It also offers an approximate dividend of 1.5% per year that can be reinvested into the ETF. It has grown an average of 14.6% per year.
This is the situation: By 2010, you saved up $100k. You bought 934 shares of VOO through a free brokerage account. You also added $500 to the brokerage account each month and with that money, plus your earned dividends, you continued to buy additional shares of VOO. At the time of this writing (July 2025), if you did these things, you’d have a brokerage account with $1,042,927 in it. You’d be a millionaire by doing very little.
Some people don’t like risk. They say, “I heard that people lose money in the stock market. I prefer to keep my money under my mattress.” That’s fine. The problem is though, if you stuffed $100k under your mattress in September of 2010, because of the dollar’s depreciation (otherwise known as inflation), you’d need $147,666 today to buy what you were able to buy with your $100k back in 2010. You can see this yourself by using the BLS Inflation Calculator. So by saving your cash and not investing it, you’re basically paying interest to the universe for nothing. It’s far better to invest and earn.
By the way, if you thought you could simply save the $100k, plus all the $500 additions in a low-yield savings account, after 15 years, you’d only have $190k. So basically, by investing in VOO, you were able to garner a whole bunch of free money.
“But wait, I still think I could lose money in the stock market. What if the S&P goes down? I better stay away!” Yeah, right. Take a look. The best way to avoid losing money in the stock market is to avoid selling any stock during the downturns. This is VOO from 2010 through 2025. If you haven’t been investing, you HAVE been losing out.
Pretty cool, right? Remember, what I explained above isn’t the only method for making over $1,000,000. It’s just what I recommend. If you’d like to learn other methods from a guy who thinks about this stuff a heck of a lot more than I do, take a look at Mark Tilbury’s video below. And then after that, leave a comment at the bottom of this page describing your progress towards becoming wealthy. Thanks!
Why Net Worth Goes CRAZY After $100k! by Mark Tilbury
