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A comment on Americans Now Need at Least $500k a Year to Enter Top 1%. Parent comment

Re:Americans Now Need at Least $500k a Year to Enter Top 1% by onlyrealcuzzo on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @08:57PM (#21277923)
More realistically, if you get a 5% return on your investments (or ~2% after inflation), in 43 years you'd have $14,663,123.

I'm lucky enough to be making ~$400k at 30. At 21, I was lucky enough to be making $65k. Virtually no one starts off making $500k. Even if you start at the top 1% of income earners and stay there your entire life, live relatively frugally, never have kids, never take a break from work, and invest well -- even then, you're still unlikely to accrue $10M in wealth.

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Re:Americans Now Need at Least $500k a Year to Enter Top 1% by gitgudnubs on Thursday October 24, 2019 @03:49PM (#21348496)
Geometric average returns for stocks are over 7%, and that accounts for inflation. The scenario presented to me included no investments, and a flat career.

I think the high cost of living in San Fransisco was a reasonable assumption for someone in the top 1% of income. I think the complete absence of investment in my analysis more than makes up for a flat career. It's not even clear that modeling a flat career growth increases the number, since income tends to peak around 48.

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