Building a $1 million nest egg may seem an impossible feat.
However, amassing such retirement wealth is within reach for almost anyone — provided they take certain steps, financial advisors say.
“You might think that, ‘Well, I have to become a Silicon Valley entrepreneur to become rich,’” said Brad Klontz, a financial psychologist and certified financial planner.
In fact, you can be a fast-food worker your whole life and amass wealth, said Klontz, a member of the Financial Advisor Council and the CNBC Global Financial Wellness Advisory Board.
The calculus is simple, he said.
Every time you’re paid a dollar, save and invest a percentage toward your “financial freedom,” Klontz said.
With this mindset, “you can work almost any job and retire a millionaire,” he said.
Saving $1 million may sound like a “Herculean task” but it “might not be as hard as you think,” Karen Wallace, a CFP and former director of investor education at Morningstar, wrote in 2021.
The key is to start saving early, perhaps in a 401(k) plan, individual retirement account or taxable brokerage account, experts said. This allows investors to harness the magic of compound interest over decades. In other words, you “let your investments do as much heavy lifting as possible,” Wallace wrote.
About 79% of American millionaires say their net worth was “self-made,” according to a Northwestern Mutual poll published in September. Just 11% said they inherited their wealth, while 6% got it from a windfall event like winning the lottery, according to the survey of 4,588 U.S. adults, fielded from Jan. 3 to Jan. 17, 2024.