This is a website about how to become a smarter investor. Given this, it might seem like one's goal must be to become rich. That's only superficially correct. The real goal isn't making money as much as it is about gaining your freedom. The goal is to give you the freedom to say goodbye to a manager you don't get along with, or a workplace whose values don't align with your own, or to move to a different part of the country or the world you are drawn to, or to start a company yourself, or just to sit by the beach and read a book.
The goal is to have time to do what you want, rather than just money to buy what you want. Money is just a means to that end. A proxy. It's important to remember that at all times.
A "million dollars" is often the benchmark of being rich in the United States. As per a Credit Suisse report in 2023 there were almost 22 million millionaires in the United States alone. The very wealthiest of them play professional sports or are movie starts or have started businesses or made bold investments that succeeded spectacularly or inherited their wealth or were early employees at a company that went public or are supermodels and so on.
Does that mean you need to be similarly lucky or talented or brilliant or stunningly beautiful to get to a million dollar net worth? Sure, those things definitely help (luck, especially) but the goal of this website is to show how even "ordinary" people with "ordinary" jobs can create extraordinary wealth as long as they commit to being disciplined and patient with their own money. In many ways this is as much (if not more) about your psychology rather than about your current bank balance.
A few opening thoughts:
If all that sounds good to you, let's go!