Who would have ever thought we’d make it to 200 millionaires interviewed?
When I started this process almost four years ago, it was a concept that I had initially developed for another site.
I liked it, so I made millionaire interviews a part of ESI Money.
I figured we’d get to 50 or so and if things went really well maybe 100.
We’re now at twice that and more are coming.
It’s been an awesome ride. I love, love, love hearing from people who have actually become wealthy talking about how they did it (in contrast to the mainstream media where we often see people who have little to no wealth writing about how to become wealthy.)
These millionaires take significant time and effort to share their stories with us and for that I thank them.
The principles are almost always the same (as we’ll see), but their journeys are unique, which makes them interesting.
In today’s post, I’m going to detail the stats behind the 200 millionaires as well as list three main learnings from them all (I bet you can guess what those are).
Just for the Record
As I’ve done throughout this process, let me make a few things clear. Here are my caveats/clarifications before we get started:
- The data I’ve collected is not scientific information. It was never meant to be. It is simply a series to learn from the wealthy how they became wealthy. The millionaires I’ve interviewed are not a random sample so we can’t extrapolate our findings and say they represent all millionaires.
- That said, having read The Millionaire Next Door
, The Next Millionaire Next Door, and Everyday Millionaires, I can say that the findings from our 200 interviews are very, very similar to what large-scale, professional surveys have seen. - The information I’ve gathered is directionally correct but not precise. People answer my questions in different ways. Plus sometimes there’s conflicting information within an interview (for instance, what interviewees give as their savings rates rarely matches the calculations when reviewing their spending and income.) Given this, I had to read between the lines many times and make some judgements about what’s actually going on. I’m fairly good at this and think I’ve come close to getting it right, through there is surely a margin for error here.
- Not every question is answered by every interviewee, so some of the numbers don’t line up perfectly. Sometimes interviewees forget a question or simply don’t want to answer it. And we’ve changed questions a few times over the series, so sometimes a question didn’t pop up until we were many interviews into the process. If there’s a discrepancy in reconciling some of the numbers, this is likely the cause.
- I won’t address every question every reader might have about the interviews. I focused on the questions/answers I thought were most meaningful and in which I was most interested. If you see something you’d like to know, feel free to plow through all 200 interviews and get the info. 🙂
- I’ll generally use median numbers throughout this review. Averages are almost always higher as a few very high individuals skew averages upward. That said, I’ll use the word “average” because it’s more common in English but the numbers are actually the medians. And in some cases I’ve listed the average numbers just for fun/perspective.
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, I can say that the findings from our 200 interviews are very, very similar to what large-scale, professional surveys have seen.With that said, let’s get into the facts…
The Numbers from 200 Millionaire Interviews
It’s almost scary how closely the numbers for the 200 millionaires are identical to the numbers we saw when I summarized 100 millionaire interviews. They are almost identical.
Here are the averages/totals based on various measures from the 200 millionaire interviews:
- Age: 48.5
- Sex: 171 of 200 men
- Married: 175 of 200 currently married (many were divorced and remarried)
- Children: 2.0
- Net worth: $2.3 million ($3.1 million average)
- Household Income: $250k ($363k average)
- Main income source: 183 of 200 worked a job/career (most of the others owned a business or invested in real estate)
- Over half had a side income of some sort with real estate being the top choice
- Annual spending: $90k ($112k average)
- 91 of 150 did not have a budget
- 65 of 147 reviewed their portfolios daily
- Age when they reached $1 million net worth: 40
- 87 of 148 most worried about healthcare in retirement
- 119 of 148 gave to charity
- 96 of 148 have an estate plan
- 81 out of 142 named “travel” as their secret splurge
- Their favorite books remained the same
Some interesting stuff, huh?
Details and Thoughts on the Numbers
Here are some general thoughts on the numbers above as well as some color commentary:
- Yes, the vast majority of interviewees have been men, but the vast majority are also married, so we really have as many women millionaires as we do men (I would consider that a couple with over $1 million makes them both millionaires).
- If you add the net worths of the millionaires we’ve interviewed it comes to $629 million! That’s pretty impressive! The actual numbers are a bit higher as some interviewees didn’t include the value of their home and/or only counted liquid assets. Can we get to $1 billion? I hope so!!!!
- If you add the annual salaries of the millionaires we’ve interviewed it comes to $71.6 million! Again, pretty impressive. It’s worth noting that many are dual income families, not just one person bringing home the entire income. Also, these numbers do not include bonuses as those can’t be counted on in any given year. That said, when they do happen, they can be substantial.
- Everyday Millionaires surveyed 10,000 millionaires and found that most became millionaires working in a career/job, not as a business owner. We found the same thing (this is why I focus so much on growing a career).
- Millionaires added to their high salaries with side incomes. They earned their initial money through their careers, saved a good amount of it, then invested it in ways that helped them earn even more — and the earn-save-invest cycle thus became even stronger.
- There’s a huge gap between earning and spending — as you might imagine. Savings rates were very high, though probably lower than these numbers imply. Some interviewees didn’t count taxes and other expenses, making the numbers a bit muddy.
- I was very surprised that so many didn’t have a budget. These probably fell into the same pattern we did. We had a budget for the first several years of our marriage. But we eventually became so good at earning and controlling our spending that a budget wasn’t needed. Could we have saved more with one? Probably. Was it worth maintaining a budget once we had things under control? Probably not.
- I was also surprised that millionaires checked their portfolios so frequently. Generally that’s a problem as people who watch too closely often make emotional market moves that end up not being in their best interests. But these millionaires seem to be ok with it.
- Everyday Millionaires found that the average age when people became millionaires was 49. Our group was significantly younger.
- Healthcare issues are by far the #1 concern millionaires have about retirement. I’m thankful that we’ve found a good solution to this. If millionaires are so concerned about this issue, imagine the challenges it creates for the average American.
- Yes, most gave to charity, but some of the percentages were low. Overall, I was surprised that millionaires didn’t give more considering their higher incomes.
- Most have an estate plan. And yet there’s a pretty large percentage who don’t.
Those are my thoughts/conclusions, what do you get out of these numbers?
Three Big Findings
After 100 millionaire interviews I posted 13 Surprising Facts from 100 Millionaire Interviews and What We Can Learn from Them.
Today I’m going to comment on three. The main three. We’ll do this in typical E-S-I fashion, focusing on what millionaires have taught us about earning, saving, and investing…then adding in other thoughts at the end.
1. Millionaires earn.
They not only earn, but they earn a lot and in multiple ways.
Most started their careers at the bottom, earning salaries most people would consider low.
But from there they applied themselves, worked hard, grew in skill and knowledge, and turned their careers into money making machines.
Then they added extra sources of income like real estate, side hustles, and dividend stocks to have multiple sources of income.
These all combine to produce large sources of income that allow them to live great lifestyles and still save and invest a ton.
2. Millionaires save.
Yes, millionaires save, but they aren’t exactly living a frugal existence.
Because they have high incomes, millionaires are able to save a large percentage of their incomes (over 50%) and still live a very nice lifestyle (spending $90k a year). Many of these have no debt at all, so $90k without a house payment is a very high level of spending indeed.
We have to step back a bit because someone (I know they are out there) will say something like “I can’t save 50% of my income so I guess I’ll never be wealthy!”
Just remember that the numbers these millionaires are reporting is where they stand now — not where they stood 30 years ago.
Most started out the same place I did. They had a decent (not great) job, watched their pennies and dollars, and saved whatever they could on a tight budget.
Then as time went on their incomes increased at a faster rate than their spending. That’s how they got where they are today. They didn’t start out earning or saving a ton. It was years of work and discipline that got them where they are now.
3. Millionaires invest.
Millionaires take the excess cash they have and invest it which…either grows or adds more income (or both) making them even wealthier.
Their preferred investments are index funds (for growth) and real estate (for growth and income). But they also invest in dividend stocks and have side hustles now and then (most don’t currently have side hustles since their careers are so lucrative).
These continue to compound over time to create a substantial level of wealth.
Is Anyone Surprised?
Regular readers should not be surprised at these findings.
After all, this is the framework for the entire site — earn, save, and invest. (For those of you who don’t know, that’s what “E-S-I” stands for).
I didn’t come up with the name by accident. I had two advantages when I started this site that helped me get the concept right:
- I was already a millionaire and had talked to enough wealthy people to know the “formula” for success.
- I had written about finances for 20 years and had sorted out the must-dos from the other noise.
This is how I came up with the site name and philosophy which we have all discussed throughout the years.
That’s why it’s no surprise (to me at least — and likely to many of you) that this is what the millionaires we interview did to become wealthy.
As we go past 200 interviews and work our way to 300, I don’t see much changing. The stories will all be different, but the principles are going to be consistent. Earning, saving, and investing (over time) is the tried and true path to wealth.
Interesting numbers! Thanks ESI!
Congrats and thank you! Having insight and milestones are invaluable—— you are sincerely appreciated.
Interesting stuff! I’m below average in several categories, I better get to work 🙂
Here’s too the results at 300! Looking forward to it.
Interesting indeed. We hit 1M a few years ago. It’s eery how many of the stats line up with ours. Our income was much lower than the median and we never had a side hustle. Of course, our annual spending was also substantially lower. I suppose that makes me a little prouder of our achievement. Ironically, I didn’t really budget until the last 2-3 yrs leading up to retirement. I wanted to make sure I knew exactly what we needed to live on before I left employment. Healthcare is definitely our biggest concern of the future.
I consider myself a novice when it comes to finances/investments. I still read a learn from sites like yours.
Keep up the good work.
Would love to interview you! 😉
I will think about it.
Great summary, ESI. I was thrilled to participate in the interview series, and fit everything you named. Travel secret splurge, health care as biggest concern, and career growth as the primary driver of wealth. I was a little late to my first million (43 instead of 40), but that’s my own fault!
Reading these interviews was an important part of my financial progress. I look forward to the next 100.
Thanks, awesome summary. I’ve been very concerned with our annual budget and needing to get it lower as FI is upon us. Comforting to see that our annual spending is in line with many others but still wonder how we used to live on so much less 30 yrs ago.
I can’t even remember what I put down as my splurge, but I will get to re-read it in a week or so.
Wow. The stats are spot on. I guess I’m a slightly above average — retired– millionaire!
I previously wrote about my dilemma of accepting a CEO role. You quoted me on one of your articles and it was a good take on my struggles at that time. It has since been resolved. I decided my life time was worth more and passed on the opportunity. I eventually pulled the trigger. No regrets.
Thanks for all your posts and I especially enjoy your “retirement” series.
Yes, interesting. But I would NOT consider that a couple with over $1 million makes them both millionaires. My rationale is, if they get divorced, they immediately lose that financial status. Would love to hear from readers on why there is such a discrepancy in numbers between male/female. Also, is the sex financial discrepancy the same in high earning careers with doctors, lawyers, etc? (…as a mature adult, I fully appreciate the dedication my mother, who divorced when I was very young, on a secretary’s salary, and raised three children. I missed my initial target of 30yrs old into the double comma club by a little over a decade. I helped mom manage to grow her retirement finances to the surprise of my siblings.)
I bet if you asked each of them individually they would both say they are millionaires. 😉
Correct! A married couple would need at least 2 million dollars in order to call themselves millionaires individually, since the husband would lose half of all his stuff in a divorce…
…I kid, I kid. LOL
On a serious note, the following advice is purely financial: Marry well, and marry once.
I concur — if splitting up means losing that status, the status only applies to the couple, not the individuals. Furthermore, if each person would no longer be financially independent after a split, the couple is financially DEpendent, on the marriage.
I love these stats. They push against the narrative that millionaires are “trust-fund babies” or “got lucky.” Nope – they’re just like you and me. They have a job. They work hard. They live below their means and invested that difference. And (on median) they become millionaires at age 40. Wow!
The only part that disappoints me is that although many give to charity to a degree, it seems to be a very low percentage of their income. You didn’t give a number here but from reading almost every single one, my gut feel is that it is in the single digits. We are still in our journey but a long time ago we committed to give at least 10% to charity. Yes, it makes the journey longer. But I can actually say that when I receive a promotion or a bonus, there is a part of me that is excited that I will do more for others who sincerely need assistance while also socking away more for our FI. So much potential in the group of millionaires.
Yep. They usually don’t give numbers either unless the numbers are meaningful which leads me to believe that the others are giving smaller amounts.
TF – I understand your thoughts on charitable giving. My wife and I gave to numerous charities that we felt were doing good work. We also were pressured to contribute to specific charities by our companies since we in senior mgmt. But, after looking them up on Charity Navigator we became disillusioned.
The final nail came I read an article “Meet the most generous tipper in America”
The gist of the article was a successful couple began heavily tipping (30-50%) “working” people for their hard work or even that they were just working. Think, cafe waitresses, lawn guys, pizza delivery folks, etc., etc., etc.
We become hooked on the concept. We started this 2+ years ago.
We love it. Working folks appreciate it. It changes their attitude toward work. I have had them chase me down to make sure I didn’t make a mistake. We had a breakfast server who worked three jobs break down in tears at the generosity. I even had my credit card company send me a reminder that we over-tipped the server and they would intervene if needed. (Nice service from a Bank, but the email surprised us)
Simply, these folks work for a living and hopefully they’ll pass it forward.
This may not be defined as charity, but we believe it changes people’s lives by rewarding effort. We have been blessed over our lifetime of hard work and success. This is our way of giving back. No, I can’t write this off on my taxes, but that’s not the point. Don’t discount what millionaires do by simply looking at their disclosed percentage of income to charity.
Would you be willing to write a post on this detailing what you do and the experiences you’ve had?
I LOVE this idea (and have used something similar on and off).
I might, let me think about it.
I think an article on this topic could be really inspirational. We use a DAF for our planned giving, but we don’t want to stop there. When tipping, or when receiving requests that can’t be handled through the DAF, we look at each other and say “we planned to practice generosity.” And if it makes sense, we give. Or tip.
I used to have a DAF but became so frustrated with the hassle of making a grant. The final straw was that they would only allow grants to US-based charities. Well, there’s a whole big world out there that needs help and I didn’t want any DAF to tell me I couldn’t grant funds to a charity in Africa (for instance) or elsewhere. So, we created our own 501(c)3 charity called Bring Hope to the World and now we cut checks to any charity anywhere in the world!
I absolutely love this! I do the same as I know I could never be a server! Its a hard job and they deserve some kindness. My daughter started her job journey as a server and I was so shocked, and sad, to see how little her and the other servers actually got tipped.
Oh, I also do my best to tip in cash as much as possible.
Right on. Continued tipping is our philosophy as well. Recently (since the March 2020 lockdown), people have been more thankful (surprised even) with the tips.
Good job! Agree! Thank you.
Great article and summary. No surprises. Have you done this for your Early Retiree interviews? Don’t recall.
Thanks
Stan
Nope. I will when I get to 100 of them. Long way off.
What constitutes an “early retiree”?
It’s really just “Retirement Interviews”. Doesn’t have to be “early”.
Looking forward to ESI doing a summary of the Retirement interviews someday when you have enough of them. I have always found the Millionaire and Retirement interviews my two favorite interviews.
Nice summary! It was fun to see where the aggregate numbers are compared to our situation. While I use the $3.0M+ moniker, we’re clos to 4.0M without including any real estate. Adding the RE puts us well over 5.0M. We’re a lot older than your average shown above, and looking to retire in a few years (still before 65!).
I’m with Robert on the charity. We don’t give much specifically to charity, but do provide good tips to local businesses where appropriate. With the current COVID issue, I visit a local diner at least once a week and drop a hefty tip, telling the proprietor to “keep the change and pay the bills”, trying to help her and her staff keep going. That’s something more tangible to me than a PO box address on an envelope with a check in it for funds that I can’t track.
I would include that as giving and if someone included it in an interview, I don’t think anyone would object.
The fact is, wealthy people (who generally earn more) generally give at a percentage level similar to what others give. The net amounts are higher but they aren’t usually more generous than people at lower income levels.
I suspect the achievements of these millionaires are highly correlated with education.
ESI- Can you include a couple education related questions in future interviews?
What is your (and spouse’s) level of education?
Undergrad/grad school?
Undergrad/grad school majors?
These interviews ask about career progression, but choosing a good major and appropriate school is critical to landing that first job.
Most generally answer this in their career responses.
I can’t really add questions at this point. The interviews are so long as it is…
Can you summarize the educational information when you get to 300 interviews?
I probably won’t. I already spend hours collecting and analyzing what I do.
All the interviews are public, so you can do that if you like.
As someone that works at a college, yet none of her 5 children chose to go to a traditional college, I wonder this question also. I do pay attention to it when reading the interviews.
Some commentary guesses on the numbers:
The net worth of interviewers today is likely higher than $2.3M due to the incredible recent stock run. The older interviewers probably have much more today, pushing up the median and average if you could take a snapshot of all interviewer’s NW today. My point being is if readers want to benchmark against this population, my gut says $3M in today’s dollars is probably closer to the median now.
Although the count of interviewers largely skew towards those that made their millions via working their way up working for someone else, I suspect those at the highest income and net worth levels work for themselves. I’m sure there are many others that tried working for themselves and failed or never made it to $1M too. Bigger risk, bigger reward.
May not be a scientific quantitative study but you do have the beginnings of a great qualitative study if some Finance PhD was interested in continuing the study on.
Good use and decision to quote medians (50th percentile) and sometime means (=averages). useful information to see both measures of central tendency, and then be able to judge the amount of skewness of the distribution and the direction of it by seeing the distance between the median and the mean.
Nice job on this.
Really enjoyed seeing the consolidated information and pretty impressive what you have been able to achieve getting 200 self made Millionaires to share their stories.
Thought I was “late to the game” being number 73 but now feeling like an old timer (maybe that is because I just turned 50 as well) 🙂
M73
https://esimoney.com/millionaire-interview-73/
One thing that sticks out to me is that your interviews as well as Everyday Millionaires found most people became millionaires through their career and not as a business owner. Does this contradict the Millionaire Next Door book? If so, has there has been a shift on how Americans get ahead with money since the 1990s?
It’s been a while since I’ve read TMND but I believe it does contradict it and since other studies have shown similar results to mine, maybe there has been a shift.
Sarah Fallaw (Thomas Stanley’s daughter) is one of our guest experts in the Millionaire Money Mentors forums so I’ll need top ask her about this.
Thanks for the nice summary. It was interesting to see my own life reflected in your numbers even 2 decades after I crossed the threshold. I’m going to add this article to my Fawcett’s Favorites on Monday the 12th.
Dr. Cory S. Fawcett
Financial Success MD
Regarding the comments about donating to charity or tipping generously I would chime in and say to remember to tip housekeepers at hotels. I worked at a hotel for the summer before college and it was back-breaking work that was not very pleasant. Thirty years later I tip my housekeepers every time I travel for work or pleasure because it’s a very thankless and dirty job.