Profiles in Wealth

This post focuses on several sources of inspiration and tips on how real people have made it to (or are working on) millionaire status. The USA Today website isn't the easiest to navigate but they seem to have a fairly regular installment that profiles people who are taking control of their financial lives. This is similar to the millionaire in the making series on the Money.com website but this one is more realistic. The people are further down the economic ladder but what they're able to accomplish is much more significant than the millionaire in the making people who often earn into the six figures.

I'm specifically thinking of a profile from Feb. 5 of a single mom in Louisianna who went from $26,000 in credit card debt, to bankruptcy, to now being almost debt free and saving $50 a month in a Roth IRA. But it was this quote that says it best. "Before, I was like, 'I'm never going to be able to buy a house; I can't save.' But in actuality, I did have money to save, but I was spending it on things that aren't important." Amen, I couldn’t agree more.

A recent article on Kiplinger.com profiles 11 people who they say started out just like you. But really from all the people this article profiles only one stood out as being most like you, if by you I mean someone making an income that is at or close to the median income in the US. This person and what he accomplished also demonstrates that you can do much more than one would expect with a typical salary.

Francis Rasmus never made more than $45,000 in his 40 year career and yet he amassed a fortune of over 2 million dollars. His secret was "Saving carefully and investing wisely." Of course if you believe Robert Kiyosaki it's not possible to get rich earning a salary working for someone else. Mr. Rasmus proves that you can.

The lesson the Kiplinger.com article atributes to Mr. Rasmus is to be patient. Mr. Rasmus invested wisely and the article points out an investment in Johnson and Johnson in the mid 1980s for $3 a share that today is worth $66 a share. This indicates that he held the stock, if not until now, for a long period of time. What was absent was any story of quick gains from investments in technology in the late 1990s. This was because Mr. Rasmus didn't get rich quickly with high flying stocks, he did it over a long period of time with well researched investments.

Profiles of people who started out "normal" and made it are all over the place but the ones that stand out most to me aren't about people who really hit the jackpot, it's about those who worked hard, were smart, patient, and realistic. I hope one day they'll be profiling you.

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