Wealthy people tend to associate with other people of wealth.
In other words, wealthy people are wealthy because they choose to be that way. That is all we are saying. Even a technician can become wealthy with the right attitude. $5/hr is all it takes of savings to easilly become a millionaire. But if you have the attitude that it can't be done, an attitude that you shouldn't invest in stocks, then of course you won't become one.
Now it occurred to me that so many people here, judging by the things they say, are nothing less than a full fledged financial whiz. Logically then, it would stand to reason these same people must be well on their way to becoming millionaires, and perhaps even billionaires.
Actually, many of us are well on our way. You are on a technical computer forum frequented mostly by the young, bright, knowledgeable, promissing, and hard working. Some people here are teens and you should take their advice with the proper skepticism. But even teens can be correct sometimes, so you should never just ignore them. Some people here are successful business men. You'd be wise to listen to those who have made it big. Heck, even I have sold off a business startup. But, most of us are just out of college in fields which do earn decent money. Many engineers, many finance people, many entrepreneurs. We often are well above the median wage and often are well on our way to being millionaires.
I would think anyone who is so incredibly intelligent in the art of finance so as to be able to take a person with little more than a minimum wage paying job and turning that person into a millionaire, would be someone highly sought after to advise the government, to head up a financial institution on Wall Street, or at the very least to be a professor at some ivy league university. But that doesn't seem to be the case with the "soon to be millionaires" who come to this forum to insult the rest of us...What would be the point?.
Some of us do work at universities (like me), some of us are in financial institutions, some of us have made it big. What is the point? Many of us enjoy coming here. Many professionals have jobs that come in spurts and have a minute here or there with nothing else to do. I do computer modelling and programming. When I run a computational fluid dynamics simulation, I have 10 minutes of work setting it up and then I have to wait at least 2 minutes for a result. When I'm uploading a program to an invention, again I have about 2 minutes to wait. There are only so many productive things I can do in under 2 minutes. So, I read a post on a forum. Sometimes I answer a post, but it usually comes in hours later as I only have 2 minutes at a time to write. Others of us have clients that come in sporadically and have nothing to do in between. Should we just turn on the TV instead?
Plus, I don't see much insulting here in this thread. What I see are honest discussions about mathematical facts. You are retired, so it may be a bit late for you to amass a great weath. But it isn't impossible to maximize what you have now. We'd be glad to help if you are willing to come in here with an honest discussion.
If you had done nothing but invest in a S&P 500 tracking index, you'd get 10.8% return on average in the last 35 years. That includes the big recent recession, massive inflation years in the 1970s, and the last decade with little to no stock market price gains. Someone who put in $10k/year ($5 per hour of working) into a S&P tracking fund (like VFINX) for the last 35 years would have $3.26 million today. I'll even be willing to cut that in half since they aren't likely to have had $5/hr available to invest back in the 1970s. But still that would make that person who invests just a little at a time a millionaire. That S&P index (or many similar ones) are just about the easiest investment possible. And millionaire status could have been many of your retired friends and/or family. Even the ones who lost big in 2008 would have more money today than before the recession if they didn't sell out. That is because the stocks are up from 2008 AND they still pay about 5% dividends per year even if the stock prices don't increase.
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