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$10 million isn’t that stratospheric, likely many older Mottizens already have that and many young Mottizens someday will.
$10 million can be attainable with boringly grinding it away at a high-paying but fairly normal W2 job trajectory. If you start with year 1 putting $50K into basic bitch equity funds, increasing by $10K each year, you’ll have $10 million pre-cap gains tax after year 26 assuming an 8% annual rate of return (historical US market returns have been 9-10%). More than half of that coming from investment returns.
Someone's age in relation to their net worth is also important to take into consideration. Based on birb's description of his interactions with these people, it's likely they are 35 or younger. Having $10 million in net worth at 35 or younger is the top 0.1% of people in that bracket. He also said they aren't working, if true, would be a different class of people than the people who build up their wealth by grinding away at a top 1% income job.
Like you said I do think a $10million net worth is within the realm of possibility for the average Mottizen. It would also entail never really spending the money that's compounding on anything until you reach near retirement age unless the income is much greater than is needed to achieve the investment value you indicated and I think most people would rather have that money go towards something like a home and creating memories than towards accumulating wealth just so you can say you are worth 8 figures.
To be able to reach $10million in net worth and also have a standard of living similar to people within that asset range would require even more income When you factor in how taxes have the function of lowering the amount of money you actually keep the more you earn, and that states where you can find these top 1% income jobs also tend to have state level income taxes, the amount of money you need to actually be earning starts to reach like half a million dollars. That's anything but normal. That's saying to be rich you just need to make a lot of money, or to be in the top 1% net worth of people you just need to make a top 1% income.
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My salary year 1 was rather less than that; I think it was Year 4 or 5 before I made that much. And it was a good salary for the time. Having an extra $50K to put away in year 1 would be very unusual even today. If you get a job at a FAANG out of college you can (maybe year 2 if you've got student debt), but in recent years your best bet there would have been to hold on to your RSUs -- but people who are old today didn't have that possibility.
A $10M net worth is a little bit more than the top 1% in the US.
I meant Year 1 as any arbitrary first year where someone has a decent chunk of change to save, not necessary first year out of undergraduate (or first full comp. cycle, treating the stub year as Year 0). Since one may do graduate school and/or have student loan debt, post-undergraduate ramp up times can vary.
Even if we start Year 1 at $10,000 positions and cap the eventual annual savings amount at a terminal $200,000, one can hit still $10,000,000 after 30 years given an 8% annual investment return.
My point is that your numbers are unrealistic for the past 30 years. Making enough to save $10,000/year 30 years ago (when median household income before taxes was $35,492, top quintile was $78,324) would have been quite difficult, especially when you consider the person would be no later than early-mid career. Making enough to save $200,000 takes a phenomenal salary -- top 20% in 2024 was $219,281.
Realistically, if you want to get to $10M you need to do better with investments, or have an extremely high salary early on.
My first role out of undergrad, the TC was about twice the US median household income at the time. It was on the high-paying side but unremarkably so. It allowed me to invest an amount that easily cleared well above $10,000 (in 1996 dollars, 30 years ago from today).
I still self-identify as young, but I’ve been yeeting six figures annually at index funds for years now, and I’ve had plenty of similarly-aged male friends and acquaintances who have been working higher-paying jobs, have seen faster career progression than I have at their jobs, or have been working higher-paying jobs and seen faster career progression than I have. Benchmarking off the median isn’t that relevant for a group of people disportionately composed of those from high-paying professions.
Making twice the US median HHI straight out of undergrad 30 years ago would in fact have been quite remarkable. It's pretty remarkable now, in fact. Sure, there's a few roles where you can do it; big tech (at least if they start hiring again), some of finance, biglaw. But very few.
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