Poll:Self Made or Not Self Made

[razztazz]

We have never yet experienced an inheritance.

Some of my relatives are still costing me from beyond the grave

 

[scrinch]

Cumulatively we have inherited about 5% of our current networth over the past 15 years or so from deceased grandparents and parents. The inheritances haven't had much impact, as we were well on our way to FI before that. Luck, on the other hand.....

 

[MichaelB]

Often when DW is angry with me she points out all the things I inherited from my folks.

 

[Ronstar]

I inherited about 3% of our net worth in the 1990’s from parents and grandparents. They were savers, so I saved the money like they did.

 

[street]

I inherited about 3% of our net worth in the 1990’s from parents and grandparents. They were savers, so I saved the money like they did.

I beleive I would of saved it all as well. It would be hard for me to spend an inheritance because of something given to me and would not want to sell or use it.

 

[pb4uski]

I like to tell the story that when we got married we passed on a 2 bedroom condo that we wanted to buy for $40k because we didn't have the $2k needed for the down payment (it actually may have been less than $2k).

We had our college degrees and $10k of student loan debt and negative net worth.

The rest is history. DW received a small inheritance but it was a pittance compared to our net worth at the time.

Now, if the monthly credit card bill is less that that $2k that we needed for the down payment I am doing the happy dance.

 

[karen1972]

My honey got an inheritance that he completely blew before I ever met him and was a major contributor to him going bankrupt and divorcing. He falls into the typical lottery winner category. Actually its probably the best thing that could have happened to us, because we wouldn't be together otherwise and by the time he met me he was ready to change his spending habits and get serious about having money in the bank, not just money to buy stuff.

I haven't received any inheritance and hopefully wont for a few more decades.

Though I credit my first million on a random blog I was watching that did charts every day and correctly called the bottom of the market. My brother and I had agreed to pull all our money out of the market when we hit 30% down, then we sat in cash until that call and I remember it was like .. ok we are going to Vegas and putting it all on Red. He said if the S&P 500 got to 666 and closed above we had hit the bottom. At the time it seemed like the most insane thing ever, now I'm a genius. I know no luck, but ok I'm saying mine was luck.

 

[Senator]

No luck was in my plan, unless you count crossing the street without getting hit bay a car, not getting killed by a violent teen gang, lucky I was born healthy, or lucky I was not miscarried.

I worked 100+ hour weeks rehabbing apartments for rentals, being able to identify good opportunities in real estate and creating a cookie-cutter approach to making money on rentals.

Luck is wining the lottery, not getting the same opportunity as 99% of all other Americans.

 

[braumeister]

Often when DW is angry with me she points out all the things I inherited from my folks.

That seriously made me laugh out loud. I've often heard DW say "You and your mother are probably the only two people on the planet who ..."
Both Mom and I were born and raised in Brooklyn, so that gives us a somewhat different weltanschauung than most folks around here in the Midwest.

No inheritance here, beyond about $30K when Mom died, long after I was FIREd.

But I was at least smart enough to get and stay with a job that had a good pension plan. Between that and SS we have all our basic expenses covered. What we've saved and invested is just used for fun stuff, mainly travel.

 

[ponyboy]

If you were born in american, you're probably not self made. Richest country on the planet, most opportunity. Just being born here already puts you halfway through the race. LEts notn kids ourselves.

 

[street]

I like to tell the story that when we got married we passed on a 2 bedroom condo that we wanted to buy for $40k because we didn't have the $2k needed for the down payment (it actually may have been less than $2k).

We had our college degrees and $10k of student loan debt and negative net worth.

The rest is history. DW received a small inheritance but it was a pittance compared to our net worth at the time.

Now, if the monthly credit card bill is less that that $2k that we needed for the down payment I am doing the happy dance.

I would bet that story is true for many folks in just a different scenario. Thanks for sharing that pb4uski.

As a young man I moved west and stayed the first place I had a job, and I'm still there today. At the time I had 400$ to my name and rented a spot on the floor at an apt. house, so I had a place to put a mattress on the floor for a place to sleep. I slept on the floor for over two years before I could get an apt. of my own. LOL
Anyway that was my start to a long journey of very hard work and many hours. I could go on and on about my humble start which most here have experienced also. LOL

 

[Rocky mtn high]

Definitely self made, negative net worth out of college, retired at 58 with few million

 

[Car-Guy]

I inherited over a million but I had several "self made" before that. My biggest fear now is that I won't have the time to blow it all, but I'm giving it a hell of try. If I only had this 20 years ago, I'd be a force to be reckoned with, of course then I would probably wouldn't still have millions now.

It reminds me of the commercial that asks, would you rather have a lot of time but no money, or a lot of money and no time? Been there on both ends and I can now say, I want both! Anyone know where I can buy some time.....

 

[ocean view]

Self made, but my parents paid for my college education, my first car and contributed about $30k for the down payment on my first townhouse. Each of these alone would be an advantage over many others. I count my self lucky in that regard. Thinking about it though, I think my parents were able to provide all of this because of an inheritance they received before I was born.

My two older siblings were given the same financial support as me and they are still working hard at 60 & 57. They, however, didn’t inherit the LBYM gene.

 

[Midpack]

Often when DW is angry with me she points out all the things I inherited from my folks.

DW tells me I get more like my (ex-military type A) father all the time. IMO she gets more like her (scatterbrained) mother every year. We’re probably both right

 

[yorick]

I’m pretty sure “millionaire”, if it has to have any meaning left, would need to mean “yearly income stream of 1 million USD or greater, gross before taxes”.
The term is from the robber baron era when a million in assets meant something. These days, depending on your age, you might not even be able to retire on a million in assets.
One could I guess try for “inflation-adjusted million in assets compared to 100 years ago” - I haven’t done that and would not be shocked at all if that correlated neatly with “income of a 1 million or more yearly”.

 

[Perryinva]

Wow, so many people with multiple millions!

My parents divorced a few years before my mother passed away and she was not a saver, or really good with any type of financial planning, as she had a gambling habit, but she made herself purchase a small ($10k) life Insurance plan so that she could leave each of us $2k. She died in 2008, so her house had dropped a ton in value. Ironically, we found an IRA that they had opened in her name so many years ago, that neither one remembered it, and we each ended up with an inherited IRA of about $14k. Of the five of us, I am the only one with any of it left, having only taken the RMDs, and invested fairly well, so today worth about $40k. Didn’t make a difference of course in my retirement but I thank my mom regularly for it.

 

[aja8888]

No inheritance here as I grew up in a real poor family with alcoholic parents. I left at 17 and charted my own course. Used the GI bill to go to college. Etc, etc.

I think I ended up with a "reverse inheritance" as I paid the funeral and burial expenses for my parents when they died.

 

[Walt34]

All those midnight shifts are paying off

I did receive an inheritance from my mother's estate when she passed but it certainly wasn't a life-changing amount or near enough for anyone to retire on. After a couple of years we did use it to pay off the house but we were well on track to do that anyway. Similarly when DW's father passed, there was enough to be a hefty down payment on a new car but that was about it.

Like some others I just stuck with an employer that had a good pension plan and didn't change it while I was working. A lucky part was that I didn't give the pension plan a thought when I applied. Who thinks about retirement when they're 22? I guess maybe now the brighter kids do, but I sure didn't.

Today I picked up a prescription at the drugstore that has a list price of $277. I paid $5 because I'm grandfathered into the health insurance plan that I had when I was working, now secondary to Medicare. I pay 30% of the premium. Yeah, that's luck, I didn't give prescription costs a thought either when I was 22.

 

[NW-Bound]

No luck was in my plan, unless you count crossing the street without getting hit bay a car, not getting killed by a violent teen gang, lucky I was born healthy, or lucky I was not miscarried.

I worked 100+ hour weeks rehabbing apartments for rentals, being able to identify good opportunities in real estate and creating a cookie-cutter approach to making money on rentals.

Luck is wining the lottery, not getting the same opportunity as 99% of all other Americans.

I do count luck. I was diagnosed with a serious disease that could have killed me 6 years ago. Many people with the same or less severe diagnosis could not be saved. Some were young too, in their 20s and 30s.

I am luckier than many billionaires. None of their money could buy them another minute.

I don't understand why people always look to money as a proof on one's having luck. Why are they not grateful for other things that they have, like longevity, health, and lack of suffering from pain?

 

[stepford]

I had no inheritance whatsoever - unless you count the rabid desire for financial security that I inherited by observing my financially feckless parents. When they died they didn't have a dime left to their name.

BTW I agree with other posters here: Multimillionaire may sound impressive, but these days (with rare exceptions) it pretty much just means the same thing as FIRE.

 

[Midpack]

I don't understand why people always look to money as a proof on one's having luck. Why are they not grateful for other things that they have, like longevity, health and lack of suffering from pain?

No one is looking at (accumulating) money alone as the only place luck is a factor, nor are they not grateful for other blessings of life. We (should) all know luck or outside factors can influence every aspect of life...

Glad you’re OK.

 

[dtbach]

Made a couple mil on my own and then inherited another mil. Life is good.

 

[NW-Bound]

No one is looking at (accumulating) money alone as the only place luck is a factor, nor are they not grateful for other blessings of life. We (should) all know luck or outside factors can influence every aspect of life...

Still, the truth is that people have an envy of wealth more than anything else.

Yet, wealth is something that people can work on, compared to other aspects of life that we have less control over. I am specifically talking about people born here in the US, not in a third-world country. There is abject poverty in the US, but the majority is not that unlucky that they cannot work themselves out of it.

 

[38Chevy454]

I feel very fortunate that for my retirement savings I have approx 20% due to inheritance, and the remaining 80% due to my hard work. I worked my way through college and got my engineering degree, and then made basically good financial decisions most of the time. The inheritance probably enabled to retire 2 years earlier than I would have otherwise.