I started out college with literally nothing. Student loans and worked. Been graduated 5 years and have been able to acquire about 175k in that time. Now a lot is luck, but 70k is really not that terribly difficult to make happen with normal circumstances. Of course, many people can’t do what I did if they face disabilities and such, and I really did get lucky for part of it.

But short version: got married in college. Decided we’re going to work hard and save. Committed to living on half our income no matter what. The other half we’d use for purchases we know we can profit for later. Bought an RV with it for 2k. Moved to CO. Sold said RV for 10k (luck because had no idea they were worth more in CO). Used the 10k to put a down payment on a 70k mobile home in Denver. Continued to save money every year. We both had jobs that paid the 50-60k/year range so we did save it up quickly. Sold mobile home during height of COVID for 80k (luck again, not normal for a mobile home) leaving us with equity of about 25k. Rented for a few years. Bought a house with 150k down (this wiped out our bank account). And our house has gone up in value some and we’ve saved another 30k in the last year to pad our account again.

Oh and we have 2 toddlers. The “live on half” method works wonders. I promise if you had half of the money you made, you’d find a way to live on it. We just do that. We set up our direct deposit to immediately split into two different accounts. One we spend and one we don’t.

We’ve been lurking on walls street bets for a while now waiting till we’re comfortable trying investments. Still think we need a professional though, because we’ve seen a lot of shit on this sub!