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Comment by kyleschiller | Hacker News Reader

"Valedictorians often go on to be the people who support the system they become a part of the system, they don't change or overthrow the system."

I really don't buy this explanation at all. Valedictorians might tend towards conformity, but you don't need to be a revolutionary to hit 1M. Anyone with a 20 year career in finance, consulting or tech and reasonable savings can hit a million dollars without doing anything crazy.

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You're right that a more accurate term in this context would have been "financially successful disruptors and entrepreneurs". $1M technically qualifies you to be a "millionaire," even though you can get there by simply making your mortgage payments for 30 years. However, the title makes sense for YouTube, as most of the population views generally defines "millionaires" as self-made people with many millions of dollars - not just those with $1M tied up in a house or other assets earned over a long period of time.

I think the conventional definition of millionaire in the financial world is a person with a million dollars in investments or liquid assets. A home does not count. Of course you may downgrade to a cheaper home (at retirement for example) and take some of the difference in cash.

The home does count, as you can either put the money into rent, investment accounts, or a mortgage. I'd consider a house more liquid than retirement accounts.

I still owe $170k on my mortgage but have $1M in net worth. It's all in retirement accounts; all on paper and subject to markets. I surely don't feel wealthy. I'm 45 and hopefully I can get it to $2M - $4M by late 60's. I still don't consider that rich since people woefully underestimate retirement needs.

I'm stating the Dave Ramsey steps to see if I can get the mortgage payed off over 4 years, and get $160k saved for 2x kids college.

I think that the term "millionaire" became synonymous with "rich" long before the Great Depression, when $1M was worth much more ($14M in today's dollars). Now, thanks to inflation, "millionaire" lost it's appeal.

I had a 2.0 in high school. Though in college I had a 3.56 due to the liberal arts requirements; 3.9 in STEM courses. 20 years in engineering, maxing out 401k and not blowing money on cars, etc. it's easy to have > $1E6 net worth.

>>Anyone with a 20 year career in finance, consulting or tech and reasonable savings can hit a million dollars

Yet most don't.

You are under estimating the amount of discipline it will take to sustain a frugal campaign several years to arrive at any decently high figure.

> without doing anything crazy

In other words, not overthrowing the system?

There are plenty of crazy things one can do that don't overthrow the system

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