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Maybe there are people with such a skewed worldview that they consider anything short of a billionaire 'unsuccesful' but building wealth of few million is perfectly within reach for average middle class person and simple life-style changes like this are a key part of getting there. No fraud needed. If you want to stay middle-class then by doing middle-class things is how you stay there and buying $5 coffees daily and financing a car are good examples of that.
If you make a couple million dollars as a middle class person, without familial connections, you've at best committed fraud on a massive scale, or been involved in something highly illegal.
Median income in the US is between 37K and 80K depending where you look and what figures you use. At 80K, it would take a person 12.5 years to make a million dollars. That's not paying taxes, not paying living expenses, and generally somehow living in a bubble where you owe nothing and get to keep 100% of the check. In a more realistic scenario where half that income is taxed or expended on living expenses, that's 25 years per million.
Between inflation and price gouging by vendors and retailers of popular products, nobody alive today with a middle class job is ever going to have a hope of saving up a million dollars, there is no 'lifestyle' choices a person can make even with a well paying job that's ever going to see them become a millionaire in their lifetime, let alone a multimillionaire without fraud or illegal activity.
Yeah if you're going to save money from your wage and store that on your bank account, then you can forget it.
This is where investing and index funds come in. To reach $1 million by age 65 with a 7% annual return, a 25-year-old would need to invest approximately $5,009 per year, or about $417 per month. That's perfectly within reach for average middle-class person.
It was within reach 20 years ago, but not today. Median hourly wage in the US is about $23/hr. Median rent is about $2000/month. That's more than 50% of gross wages, and along with inflated prices on everything else, it's no wonder that half of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck.
The "average middle-class person" you're referring to is now upper-class. Not because they're extremely wealthy, but because they can afford to invest (which was once quite common, but is increasingly out of reach for the "average" person).
Right but inflation will eat at that. If they have a million in 40 years it won't be worth a million of today's dollars.
It takes inflation into account. 7% is the average long-term stock market return after adjusting for inflation. Without inflation the rate would be closer to 10%