Everybody wants to get rich. Almost nobody agrees on how.
Walk through any bookstore or scroll any feed and you’ll find a thousand paths to wealth — most of them nonsense, sold by people who got rich selling the book.
I’ve been a CPA since 1981, and here’s the truth after 45 years of watching who actually makes it: There aren’t a thousand ways to get rich. There are six. That’s the whole list.
Five of them come down to luck, timing, or somebody else’s money. Only one is fully in your control — and it’s the one that built my own fortune, a little at a time. Let’s take them in order.
1. Marry money
The fastest route to a fortune is to marry one. No degree, no business plan, no decades of saving — just find someone loaded and say “I do.”
Here’s the fine print. Marry the wrong person for the right reasons, and you’ll spend years learning there’s no dollar amount that makes one more silent dinner across that table worth it.
Money is a lousy substitute for actually liking your spouse. Plenty of folks have swapped their freedom for a big house and a bad marriage. That’s not getting rich. That’s a hostage situation with granite countertops.
2. Inherit money
Even easier than marrying money is being born near it. Pick the right parents, stay on your wealthy aunt’s good side, and someday a check lands in your lap.
Two catches. You can’t inherit from relatives you don’t have. And even with a rich one, this “plan” means waiting around for someone you love to die — then hoping they remembered you and not the cat.
It happens, sure. Fortunes pass down every day. But rooting for a funeral is a grim way to build a future, and the timing is never yours to pick. Be good to Grandma because she’s Grandma — not because you’re eyeing her silver.
3. Exploit a unique talent
Can you sing like nobody else? Drain a three-pointer? Make a room laugh until it hurts? A rare gift in sports, music, or entertainment can carry you straight to the bank.
But be honest about the odds. For every kid who signs the pro contract, there’s a stadium full of others who practiced just as hard, wanted it just as badly, and never earned a dime at it.
Talent gets you to the door. Timing, connections, and a mountain of luck decide whether it opens. If the gift is in you, chase it with everything you’ve got — just don’t bet your retirement on the world noticing.
One thing before we keep going — the financial world is louder and dumber than ever. Hot takes everywhere. Almost none of it is worth your time. I’ve spent 35+ years cutting through the noise so you don’t have to. Sign up for the free Money Talks Newsletter — 10 seconds, no spam, just the stuff that matters.
4. Get exceedingly lucky
Sometimes money just falls out of the sky. A lottery ticket hits. A lawsuit pays off. A stock you forgot you owned goes vertical.
I’d love to tell you to plan for this. I can’t. The odds of hitting the Powerball jackpot are about 1 in 292 million. You could play every week for a lifetime and never come close.
Luck is wonderful when it shows up. It’s just a terrible thing to schedule. Dream about it if you like — but don’t build a single day of your future on it.
5. Own or lead a successful business
Now we’re getting somewhere. Build a business that works — or climb high enough inside someone else’s to earn a real piece of it — and you create wealth instead of waiting for it to find you.
This is how a surprising number of rich people actually got there. In their classic study “The Millionaire Next Door,” Thomas Stanley and William Danko found the typical American millionaire isn’t a celebrity or a trust-fund heir. It’s someone who built an ordinary, unglamorous business and lived below their means.
The tradeoff is real. Most businesses fail, and running one can eat your nights and weekends for years. I should know … I started MoneyTalksNews.com in 1991 and have worked many, many 80-hour weeks.
But of the five ways that offer a shot at serious money, this is the one where your own effort and judgment actually tip the odds in your favor.
6. Spend less than you make and invest the difference
Here’s the sixth way — the only one on this list anyone can use. No rich relatives. No rare talent. No lucky numbers. You spend a little less than you earn and invest the difference, steadily, over a long time.
I know how dull that sounds next to marrying a fortune. Stay with me, because the math is anything but.
Say you set aside $10 a day. That’s a pack of cigarettes. A burger and fries. One thing you’d barely miss. Call it about $300 a month.
Now put that $300 into a plain index fund and leave it alone. Over the long run, U.S. stocks have averaged roughly 10% a year. Do that for 40 years, and you’d wind up with around $1.9 million.
Read that again. You put in about $144,000 — 10 bucks at a time. The market handed you the other $1.75 million while you slept. That’s compound interest, and it’s the closest thing to magic in all of personal finance.
No guarantees, of course — markets don’t move in a straight line, and some decades disappoint. But even at a more cautious 8% a year, you’d still clear a million. The long-run pattern is stubborn: Money left alone to compound turns into serious wealth.
You end up rich. Not lottery rich. The real, durable kind. That’s how I became a millionaire. Didn’t happen overnight; in fact, it took decades. But I’ve made millions in the market.
And if you don’t have the time or abilities to invest successfully, hire help. Free services like SmartAsset instantly match you with up to three fiduciary advisors — legally required to prioritize your interests.
The point is, start young and you’ll retire wealthy. Start late and you still hand your future self a far better retirement — maybe even the freedom to clock out a year or two early.
I watched this for 10 years on Wall Street. The clients who got rich and stayed rich weren’t chasing hot tips or gambling on options. They were the plodders — the ones who saved, invested, and left it alone. The gamblers? I never saw one come out ahead over the long haul.
And I’m living proof this works.
So which one’s for you?
So which of the six is your best shot? Let’s be honest with each other.
Chase any of the first five if you want to. Marry well. Hope for an inheritance. Bet on your talent. Buy the ticket. Start the company. There’s nothing wrong with swinging for the fences.
But look at what they share. Four of the five are mostly out of your hands, and the fifth is a long shot with your nights and weekends as the ante. Not one of them is a plan. They’re hopes.
The sixth asks for no luck at all. Just patience, and about $10 a day. It’s the only one on the list you fully control — which is exactly why it’s the one nobody brags about at parties.
So here’s what I’d tell someone I love. Swing for one of the first five if the dream is in you. But run number six in the background the whole time, automatically, no matter what. That way, if lightning never strikes, you still end up right where you wanted to be.
Five ways to get rich need the world to cooperate. One needs only you. If I were betting my life on getting you there — and in a way, that’s my job — I’d put it all on number six. It’s the one that never let me down.
Add a Comment