One million.
It’s a number a lot of us fantasize over reaching. For generations, a million dollars in net assets was the benchmark for” making it” and ensuring a comfortable retirement. And yet many of us continue to view that number as though it’s out of reach or only possible if our best estimates on our compound interest earnings over decade bears some luck.
But did you know that one million is also the number of newly minted millionaires last year? It seems incredible that we could still be generating this much new wealth in a time when all we seem to hear about are inequities and structural barriers that keep strivers from making progress. And yet clearly more and more are finding their way to vault themselves into the 7 figure club. Now I certainly believe that one million dollars is an excellent goal. You need benchmarks and ambitions to keep going and you certainly are entitled to pop open a bottle of something on that day that you cross the million-dollar threshold. But you should keep in mind that inflation has changed the world we live in today dramatically from when the concept of a millionaire first entered our lexicon.
It is certainly nothing to sniff at, but it requires having some geographic perspective. A million dollars is certainly not something that keeps you in the upper stratosphere in places like New York City or San Francisco. As with anything in life, it’s all a matter of perspective. It really depends what your lifestyle needs are for you to come up with the number for yourself and your family that spells out financial independence. Have a few kids in school? Want to stop working and begin living off of dividends and passive streams of income? Then in many parts of the country, that million dollars is certainly not a cue to stop working. The reality is that as a general rule of thumb, five million dollars is, these days, most likely the new million.
Again it all depends on what you want to do and what kind of lifestyle you want to lead. You may be perfectly happy with a simpler lifestyle for your family or you may be content to continue working. But I would project from everything that I’ve seen that five million dollars should really be the target if you re aiming for a top-notch lifestyle in which money is just simply not a concern anymore and you can be fully in control of what you do with your time.
There were about one million new millionaires last year. Having a million dollars in assets aside from your home is an excellent goal. It is enough for you? There are opportunities everywhere. It might not always be obvious or even polite to say it, when clearly many people are still struggling. But it simply is true than it never has been easier than it is right now to become rich. It doesn’t mean there aren’t still many challenges and hurdles to overcome. But just at look at the tremendous opportunities that the internet has opened up for businesses. In the past, you might have been limited to the reach of your geographic region or your personal connections to make sales.
Today the Internet gives you the entire span of the globe as your market place. If you can create a good or service that enough people around the world want and are willing to pay some premium price for, there really is no cap on what you will be able to achieve and generate in revenue for yourself. Just look at the example of Jack Ma. If the name isn’t familiar to you yet, it will be. He is the richest man in China and the man behind Alibaba, which is essentially China’s own version of an online e-platform like Amazon or eBay.
Jack was a school teacher with no formal business or technology training. What changed his life forever in the mid 1990s was his first encounter with the internet. He tried out a primitive version of our streamlined search engines that we use today. There wasn’t a Google back then, but you could still use the internet to search for whatever was on your mind. Jack, being a true man of the people, made his first ever internet search for the word “beer.” He found information about stories and beer products, but was strike by the realization that there were virtually no entries pertaining to China. All of the search results were for other countries. He immediately saw an opening and a niche in where the future was going. He made a big bet, leaving the comfortable and well-laid out path of teaching to launch an unusual new online market platform.
He ultimately created far more wealth than he could have ever imagined, both for himself and for others. I find this story so powerful because it could have only happened today. We often seem to worry as humans that the world is only getting worse and bleaker, but the truth is that this story would not have been possible for Jack in earlier times before the internet really came alive. He may have been come up with a good business idea or product to sell, but he would very likely have had a limited reach to get to customers. Today he can reach virtually every customer in the world at the click of a button. And so can you. It begins with taking a proactive look at what it is that generates major wealth. Not everyone should be an entrepreneur and there are benefits to learning the ropes to business as an employee, but you will always have a ceiling on your earning potential as long as it is in the form of a salary. You need to begin thinking, as Jack did, like an owner unleashed upon the biggest global marketplace that has ever existed. There has never been a more advantageous time to fully seize the opportunities. And a million dollars is a pretty good place to start. There were one million newly minted millionaires last year.
There will likely be another million joining their ranks in the next. Will you be among them?
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