Here’s our latest interview with a millionaire as we seek to learn from those who have grown their wealth to high heights.
If you’d like to be considered for an interview, drop me a note and we can chat about specifics.
This interview took place in March.
It’s a long one (which I love!) so I’m breaking it into two separate posts. If you missed part one, you can catch up by reading Millionaire Interview 480.
My questions are in bold italics and their responses follow in black.
SAVE
What is your annual spending?
While it has varied over the years, we have never exceeded $150k/year (excluding taxes) in fact last year was our biggest spending year at about $145k. I mentioned my PTO bank and last year was a year of raiding the PTO bank and having a lot of travel (probably a bit too much).
My spouse and I generally take bike trips with a specific tour company, which primarily tours in Italy and last year we enjoyed several weeks with that company. We both speak Italian pretty well and enjoy a different experience because of it.
Learning Italian was a hobby that I decidedly chose once I stopped working extra and now 10+ years later, I am approaching a level I never thought I would achieve. I am by no means fluent, but I can certainly hold a conversation and am proud of this accomplishment as I never thought I would be able to learn another language–it CAN be done!
What are the main categories (expenses) this spending breaks into?
I’ll exclude payroll taxes here. Keeping the lights on costs around 30k/year.
This includes maintenance, HOA, real estate tax, electricity, internet, streaming services, mobile phones, insurance policy (with umbrella) for car/apartment. While it looks like the next 110k of the $140k budget looks like spending, we automate contributions to our taxable brokerage account at Vanguard.
Between the two of us that is about $70k/year and the rest is pure spending on entertainment/clothes (minimal), meals/dining out/groceries, bicycle maintenance (we ride bikes EVERYWHERE) and a great portion to travel.
Do you have a budget? If so, how do you implement it?
After so many years of automating and being aware of spending–conscious spending, one gets an idea of when the limits are reached with regard to the budget.
While there is no “official” budget we do try to be reasonable with costs that can be excessive like dining out, buying designer clothes (rare) or driving expensive cars (we have a 7 year old corolla).
To paraphrase Ramit Sethi, we chose to mercilessly cut the budget on things that have little value to us and spend consciously on the things that bring the most satisfaction–travel, time with each other and friends, whether that means meals out or visits to museums or events.
In NYC, there is little shortage of ways to spend money, so one truly needs to be aware and conscious of costs that add up quickly.
What percentage of your gross income do you save and how has that changed over time?
Roughly 35-38% is earmarked for savings/investing. We both max out our 401k’s and both receive a match (me 7%/ spouse 4%) on our total salary.
I have access to a mega back door Roth, and after my contributions and my employer match, there is space in the allowable IRS limits to which I add an additional 25k or Roth money.
For me the total to my employer sponsored 401k is 70k and for my spouse is around 39k, the HSA and then to our after-tax brokerage we add an additional 70k or so per year.
What’s your best tip for saving (accumulating) money?
Without a doubt, automate the saving at the maximum and get used to the paycheck at its pre-tax savings maximum…never see what the paycheck is without the maximum pre-tax saved.
I actually have no idea what my paycheck would be without the maximum pre-tax savings. At the beginning of my career, a very wise nurse anesthetist told me to just max out everything (at the time there was a 403b and a 457b), so I took the advice and learned to live on what my paycheck was after all the money was already invested.
There was still more money left after I spent on things I wanted so I started the after-tax brokerage and automated it every Monday, adding to VTSAX, and have never sold any of my investments unless it was to consolidate or simplify the portfolio.
What’s your best tip for spending less money?
This is certainly a habit one can look at from the perspective of James Clear. If you think you have a problem with spending money, work on it a little, chip away at it over time, and each small improvement in the “budget” will compound over time.
Identify small areas that need improvement and take steps to improve. There is no shortage on Mr Money Mustache blog on how to cut back on spending yet still have a rewarding life with all of the gadgets and toys available to us.
As an example early on in our marriage, I wanted to drive a Lexus, we did, was it nice? Yes, but it was expensive to gas, maintain and park.
Everything was more expensive driving a luxury automobile–plus in NYC, cars are in a pinball machine, they’ll be destroyed in no time. Neither of us cared about the so-called status symbol–though it was SO comfortable to ride in.
Additionally, we noticed the costs of the car were eating into the money we could invest or put toward paying off the mortgage, so it’s a Corolla now (going on 7 years), and I am fine with it.
What is your favorite thing to spend money on/your secret splurge?
We rotate our splurges; at times it’s a specific bottle of nice wine, or a dinner out, which can run 5 digits, believe it or not, in NYC if you do it right. Sometimes we upgrade ourselves on the plane to ease the pain of flying if it’s reasonable (what is a reasonable airplane upgrade anyway?), perhaps adding an additional week to our vacations to slow travel.
We’re avid cyclists and take good care of our bicycles (good maintenance outsourced to a good bike shop), and on a vacation we could easily bike every day for 3 weeks at a time. Lastly, I’m a fan of “aiming the money cannon” at a situation to make my life easier if the path looks annoying, and I’ll be happier as a result–looking at you Delta Comfort+.
INVEST
What is your investment philosophy/plan?
As stated above, we save pre-tax to the IRS maximum, HSA if possible and post-tax until it hurts. I think our yearly contribution across all accounts is upwards of 170k.
What has been your best investment?
We have a few individual stocks left over from investing with Personal Capital/Empower, which I discussed in another section. Of those, we have a small position in Fortinet which increased over 300% since the time of owning.
Our position is small, so the dollar value is insignificant to our portfolio, but this stock pick was not mine, but rather the philosophy of the former investment firm. Thankfully, I never went down the road of trying to stock pick.
What has been your worst investment?
Our primary residence is probably our poorest returning asset.
For some reason, our neighborhood lags behind most Manhattan neighborhoods in real estate value, so the usual 2-3% is about all with the market value of our apartment–that is if you call a paid off Manhattan apartment a “worst investment.”
What’s been your overall return?
According to Vanguard, our overall ROI is 16%.
I am sure that will even out to the normal 8-10% as our years with them proceed.
How often do you monitor/review your portfolio?
I rarely tinker with the accounts. We use the Vanguard personal advisory service and am very happy with it.
I do not want to run the risk of making mistakes that have to involve the IRS or an expensive accountant, so I’m happy to pay the .3% advisory fee. I could do it myself, but I do not want to spend the time watching the market to tax loss harvest or rebalance, so I just send our weekly contributions (automatically, that is) and let them distribute to keep our 70/30 portfolio.
Additionally, my spouse has little to no interest in the accounts, so if I am gone or incapacitated, there is a fiduciary to help. That said, I look just to compare prior months on the 1st of the month.
Otherwise, I ignore the noise.
NET WORTH
How did you accumulate your net worth?
Our money is 100% hard work earning, self-made and purposeful investment–no inheritance, now it is just boring mutual funds set and forgotten.
Maybe I will receive an inheritance, I hope not, as I want my hard-working parents to enjoy their savings. They are frugal however, despite being in their 70s, they are still worried for a rainy day.
I tried to threaten my parents to spend their money, otherwise I’ll be flying 1st class after they die, alas, they wouldn’t budge.
What would you say is your greatest strength in the ESI wealth-building model (Earn, Save or Invest) and why would you say it’s tops?
Probably saving which then dominoes into investing for us. Yes, we have high incomes, but those are not without our valuable human capital slowly being extinguished.
So, carving out from our income a savings that will then be used to invest and what is left over is spent.
What road bumps did you face along the way to becoming a millionaire and how did you handle them?
As described earlier we fell into the 2nd home trap for a little while. Two of everything adds up, and it truly inhibited our ability to save aggressively for retirement and I found myself working overtime to afford all the wants associated with a country house–mostly unnecessary.
Also, early in my journey to financial independence and reading the FIRE blogs, I kept reading about Personal Capital (now Empower) and thought everyone was investing with them. Being uninformed and naive, I thought, “I guess that’s what I’m supposed to do,” so I let them manage my money for a while.
The platform was slick and the interface was excellent, but I did not really know how my portfolio was being invested (no one will take care of your money better than you). I later found out they buy individual stocks and manage them as a personal portfolio, which I did not want.
That, coupled with the .8% fee they were charging, persuaded (easily) me to move to Vanguard. Now we are still unraveling from the number of individual stocks, slowly selling and re-investing into various ETFs where appropriate and tax advantageous (rarely with our income) so we bite the bullet and pay the taxes to simplify the portfolio.
What are you currently doing to maintain/grow your net worth?
Both my spouse and I still work and still save aggressively, and I enjoy my work and have a great deal of satisfaction from the job and my colleagues. Next year, however, I hope to start a job share with a colleague in which we split the responsibilities and benefits of 1 job 50/50, which would provide me a salary and benefits for only working 5 months a year.
If that comes to fruition, I think I could do it until I keel over. My spouse, despite being 65, is still working.
The job environment is favorable and satisfies a basic need for creativity and connection through food–the perks I won’t list them all, but they count too. Next year will be a change in schedule as discussed with the family my spouse works for.
Due to their large family and even larger staff, they hired an additional full-time chef to help and also let my spouse ease into retirement. So we’ll see what that entails.
Mostly, the desire is more (chunks of) time off–the only commodity we cannot earn more of–and if that means fully retiring, then that will be the choice. The family is very flexible and wants the extra help so I’m confident an agreement where everyone is happy will be achieved.
Do you have a target net worth you are trying to attain?
5 million investable sounds like a good number to me. However, with an annual spend of 150k, we are well within the parameters for the 4% rule of thumb and have a wide berth for cutting back to Alpo and Fancy Feast if needed.
I am awed by how our investments have accumulated over the years. Sometimes I worry it was some luck we got here, and the flip side it can evaporate in an instant, but I also realize our investment plan is just “working”.
Mr Money Mustache posted about the “shockingly simple math behind early retirement,” and we are on track with the chart (mostly). Obviously, there will be corrections every few months and years–these events are features, NOT bugs of investing in the stock market, not to mention bear markets and black swan events (worries about these covered later).
But I am confident I now as a seasoned investor have the skills to weather downturns and then also appreciate upturns.
How old were you when you made your first million and have you had any significant behavior shifts since then?
I was 38 in 2016 when the 6-digit club came for me/us. I like to read the post from ESI several years ago titled the 1st million is the hardest and then the amazing comments of those who showed their progress from 1 to 2 to 3+ million, and how long the 1st took and how comparatively fast the subsequent millions appeared.
It further reinforces that our investing success is not luck but rather a solid plan put into action, and a lot of time, patience, and discipline.
That said, the 2nd million came in 2019, the 3rd in 2022, and the 4th in 2025. Maybe in my follow-up interview, I’ll be able to report on whether the 5th arrived or not.
What personal habits and/or traits have you developed that have made you successful at growing your net worth?
Patience. I grew up in a religious household, I attended a religious school from kindergarten through high school graduation (my dad worked at the school) and it was associated with the church we went to.
One of the biggest lessons I learned in life was patience. Many of you here also have religious backgrounds and know the biblical references to faith, hope, love, patience and charity.
My parents reinforced this principle that patience in all aspects of life is valuable. And that is true for me, such that I apply various forms of patience in my life.
Argument with spouse? Have patience and let the feelings settle.
Work conflict? Take a pause and understand both approaches.
Patient in the OR displaying unstable vital signs? Gather more information (as fast as possible).
Stock market volatile? Ignore the noise, it won’t matter in a few months or years.
Annoying person nearby? Wait, they’ll eventually leave. I am a fan of taking time to gather more information before making decisions.
What money mistakes have you made along the way that others can learn from?
I covered that in detail, but in summary, I would not have invested with Personal Capital, I did not gather more information here and was ignorant to their investment philosophy not aligning with mine.
Further, the 2nd house trap were the 2 big mistakes. Thankfully, as the white coat investor says, a high savings rate covers a multitude of investing sins.
What advice do you have for ESI Money readers on how to become wealthy?
Depends on what kind of wealth. Monetary wealth is a balance of earning, saving, and investing–there should be an acronym for that!
Interpersonal relationships and spiritual wealth require similar discipline and commitment, and some amount of altruism in a self-centered world. After all, what good is material wealth without people to share it with?
While I am not a huge fan of Suzie Orman, I DO appreciate her phrase “people first, then money, then things.”
FUTURE
What are your plans for the future regarding lifestyle?
I mentioned above my potential job share in the coming years. I hope that will be possible for years to come.
My spouse is work optional at this point. An annoying aspect of Medicare we were not aware of came to realization this year.
Despite being Medicare eligible, my spouse’s work plan does not qualify under Medicare as viable since the employer is considered a small employer according to medicare rules; therefore, we have a family plan through my work that is 90% paid, and a secondary insurance comes through 100% paid through my spouse’s work.
It is far less expensive to be on my health care plan than to take medicare.
What are your retirement plans?
Financially, the picture looks promising. I do not see any major changes to our spending and consumption.
Thankfully, we live in a CO-OP, which means all major expenses are shared, so there is rarely a very large lump sum expense, but rather averaged out over months or years. For example, the roof is being redone at our CO-OP, and the cost is several million dollars divided by all the apartments over 3 years, which means a 150$ per month assessment for 3 years–totally manageable.
Activities on the pile of interests are language learning (Italian for both of us), music lessons (piano and clarinet for me), and drawing classes for my spouse (who has a calligraphy and fountain pen hobby).
Are there any issues in retirement that concern you? If so, how are you planning to address them?
I have a few worries that take up space in my mind. On the forefront, perhaps is a lack of purpose if my job share does not work as predicted.
I am not sure if I would remain full-time if the job share does not materialize, and would lose my work connection, or rather, would I become an “as needed” employee?– which many in my profession have done their entire careers.
But I am convinced purpose does not evaporate, but rather it shifts and takes other forms whether more time for others, family, volunteering and hobbies. The short outlook is that I am optimistic about entertaining myself in retirement.
Further, I look around my friend circle and realize a lot of them are quite older than me, and realize I may not have a close-knit group when I am later in life.
So I worry for my network and support group as I age. Studies show how a support network is paramount later in life, and I know it is increasingly difficult to form friendships.
Further, while I do not worry per se about the age between my spouse and I–I do think of it from time to time, possibly leaving me single late in life, but I am an only child and have the skills to be “alone” without issue. Thankfully, the family of my spouse has longevity, so it’s certainly possible I might go first.
Lastly, I do worry from time to time that a true “this time it’s different” bear market will occur.
But if I go with my gut and remember all the past black swan events, they were all different in their own regard, but the Citrini research article published in February of 2026 paints a scenario in which the economic cycle is truly different and makes the typical economic cycle recovery impossible so I wonder based on that article what the future of AI and the economy could be–but the article is also a contributor of “noise” so I’m inclined to tune it out until I have more information.
MISCELLANEOUS
How did you learn about finances and at what age did it “click”?
I mostly learned about being frugal from my parents. But as we know it is MUCH more than that.
Getting finances to “click” requires some interest other than just being frugal; it does require a basic understanding of how to make the money, keep the money, and then put that money to work.
I think the “click” came when we had our 2nd house “adventure” and I saw TWO mortgages coming in each month and me working overtime to afford all the “stuff” and the anxiety that my ability to retire one day hinged on either working until I’m 70 to afford all this “stuff” or figuring out a better plan–you have heard it I’m sure…one house, one spouse and nothing that floats (or flirts) is a good rule of thumb.
Because of this realization, I applied my undergraduate and graduate studies principles to understanding finance and investing–absorbing books and blogs until I had a thorough understanding of how to keep the money I was earning.
Who inspired you to excel in life? Who are your heroes?
I have a friend who is a pharmacist. He inspired me to excel by this conversation.
He told me he worked hard as a pharmacist early in his career, and while it was rewarding he was still working for someone else. He later purchased 5 pharmacies (not all at one time) and worked for himself.
The end of that conversation was that he still worked hard–nothing about working hard changed, except it was now for himself. While I cannot work for myself, so to speak, I picture my present self working for my future self to provide options in the event that I cannot or do not want to work anymore.
However, if I did have a chance to do it all over again, I think I would be more risk taking and perhaps try to own my own business.
Do you have any favorite money books you like/recommend? If so, can you share with us your top three and why you like them?
The simple path to wealth is probably the most valuable for new investors. It provides a great birds-eye view of investing throughout life.
If someone wants more nuance (or younger perspective) I’d look toward Nick Maggiulli, Ramit Sethi or Ben Carlson. Just a few solid authors will point you in the direction of all the “major players” in the investing and financial independence arena.
I learned a lot of investing wisdom from the one liners of Warren Buffett embedded within these financial experts.
Books aside, I read and look forward to all the financial blogs to which I subscribe. I think it gives a more up-to-date perspective on the financial world from a perspective that is valuable to me–a wealth of common sense, the retirement manifesto, choose FI, and the white coat investor (not just for physicians and healthcare) to name a few.
Do you give to charity? Why or why not? If you do, what percent of time/money do you give?
We give to our church, and when possible, we give our time. I think time is more valuable for our church so we try to volunteer with ushering and various projects they ask for help with.
We are animal lovers and also donate to the local animal shelter, and when a friend loses a pet, we make additional donations in the pet’s name as a condolence.
Do you plan to leave an inheritance for your heirs (how do you plan to distribute your wealth at your death)? What are your reasons behind this plan?
Since we have no heirs, we plan to die with zero–at least that is how I approach the Monte Carlo simulations and rich, dead or broke calculators. That’s probably unlikely, so the plan will be for whatever is left to be in an educational fund for extended family members to access only for educational purposes.
I saw an advertisement one time that said, “become the rich uncle”, and I suppose I am, but my family does not know it yet. A chef and a nurse = multi-millionaires?–apparently.
Jokes aside, if there is one thing I want my extended family to remember my spouse and me for is not that we were rich but rather that we worked hard, and that we provided encouragement and acted as positive role models in their lives, and whatever is left over from our satisfying and rich life is there to help them build the same.
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