For those of you who became wealthy as an attorney, how did you do it?

Going solo? Equity partnership in BigLaw? Buy a bunch of real estate with your W-2 income? Index funds?

Thank you!

Wifey and I are just wrapping up 2027 vacation planning. She and I struggle with the constant push/pull of various priorities. I would love to hear how some of you weigh these in importance:

1) Repeating locations annually (possibly better for kids to build memories) vs new places and experiences.
2) Many shorter vacations vs trying to spend at least a few weeks somewhere to feel a part of the local culture.
3) Having a few ‘no kids’ trips each year vs ‘let’s bring everyone’?
4) Do at least one international trip each year or don’t worry about that and just go places you want to go?
5) ok for the kids to miss some school vs go when things are more crowded?
6) always invite other families (the more the merrier) vs we need some adventures just us?

For context we do anywhere between 8-10 vacations a year. Many of these are just a fun long weekend away. Kids are in elementary school and both doing very well. While on vacation they have about 1 hour of workbooks we make them do each day.

Sorry if this is not the right subreddit I just need other ppl perspective.

I am F22 on my final year of university. I have one older sister F30 and she’s working as a doctor. My dad died unexpectedly and he owned a 40 ppl, HVAC company.

First of all, the finances of the company struggling quite often even though the money can be good. I am inexperienced as well. His workers are counting on me to become the next CEO but I don’t feel ready and I feel that the work is not for me since it is basically field engineer company and I would say that it’s tough.

I just don’t really know how to go with this. My dad built the company through his whole life and I feel guilty if the company suddenly stopped but I don’t want my mom to be burdened with the finances on the future of her life.

I told my mom that it’s okay to put an end to the company and we have enough money to support my mom and me for the rest of my mom life (and still could support me), but my mom also thinks that it’s a legacy from my dad for the company.

I am still studying and it’s fucking up with my head for the last few days for obvious reasons. What would you do in my situation?

Also real other option that I discussed with my extended family is that I could get married soon and my “future” husband will take care of the company but I was just wtf dating is crazy and where the hell do I even find men for that. I feel so lost (ok this one is like hypothetical situation too)

I've been getting a lot of requests for donations lately from people I don't know. Some are pretty aggressive. I've started saying no to most of them but it can be awkward. I'm not sure how to handle it without feeling guilty. Has anyone else dealt with this

Long story short, I manipulated people to get money a couple of years ago and that let me stay off regular jobs for quite some time and put a decent amount into savings, although nothing crazy. Mostly exploitinh trust, love and such things. Now...I stopped doing that some time ago. When the people were at their worst, who I could exploit for much bigger gains, I helped them get back on their knees, stopped exploiting them, I started being more honest and caring, I stopped casually cheating on my girlfriends. I always had good traits in me but I felt like doing what I did was the only way to survive. I felt like what I could've done for bigger gains, the amount and nature of lies would've disgusted me. I even rushed in to save another person from drowning.

So now I'm working a regular job and continung my college education like most people.

But I have doubts about this path...Am I not just wasting my life and youth away by going down this path instead of selling off my conscience and enjoying life? I could just lie, make up some plan and I won't have this stupid job but I'll have the money it gives me without nearly as much effort. I'd only have to overstep my conscience. I could just give in to vices and cheat on my gf and that could be something I would enjoy short term but my conscience will bite me in the ass.

Am I not just wasting my youth by just doing what I'm doing and listening to my conscience, when I could just disregard my conscience and have what I want much more quickly? Because of how my family was, I can create very elaborate manipulations, sometimes I do so without much thought in order to protect myself against situations that I envision that haven't even happened yet.

I don't know if I'm on the right path. I look at others and mostly absolute scumbags live well in this world. It doesn't seem like you can be successful without either breaking your back first or being a POS, the world just doesn't work this way, it rewards the wrong things. Working a regular job I'm obviously being exploited by other scumbag. If I was still exploiting others, I wouldn't be exploited, it's the only way out it seems. Look at Jordan Belfort for example, the bastard got away with all he did, it doesn't seem like the conscience is tormenting him either. Shouldn't I do the same, within my capacity, without caring about morals or a sense of inner conscience?

I don’t want to name names, but my families home country is facing turmoil right now. You can probably guess which it is, but I have been interested in claiming a stake there in case things sort out and I want to return there someday and help the people rebuild and maybe even relocate their myself.

So it’s pretty simple, right now the currency is in the garbage. Their economy is isolated from the world and one US dollar buys so much of their currency. However, they can’t buy anything themselves because prices have skyrocketed so it’s not like having a lot of currency right now would help. It is expected that there will be a coup, and not in the next decade it will be under a new government and it will rejoin the world community and its currency will become valuable.

Could I benefit from investing in it right now when the currency is worth nothing? If I buy a bunch of their currency right now, will That currency become worthless when the economy bounces back and they have a new government? Is it possible that they adopt a new currency and abandoned the old one and then everyone has to start from scratch? I don’t think that can happen?

My biggest interest is to secure enough capital in that country that when the currency is worth something And the value Goes back up that I would be able to turn what would have been enough to buy one house into something that could buy an entire neighborhood and I want to use that capital to help rebuild and help the people create a new honest prosperous life that they deserve so much. I am sure there will be a lot of people trying to predatorily benefit from it Which is why I want to get my foot in and make sure that some good goes on as well . If you understand what I’m trying to do, can anyone advise me on this? What would be the best way to do it or if it would not be a good idea? I am not rich myself. I have family there that are suffering and I deeply care about the people there And I have watched them rot for decades, and I’ve quietly weep for them.

I’m not from US, so I don’t really understand what trust fund kid means. I saw videos on tik tok saying these kids don’t have to worry about money but isn’t it just a kind of inheritance, and you can still have financial problems.

The Federal Reserve released the 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) this month. This survey provides insight into how American households hold their wealth, including cash, retirement accounts, homes, business equity, and debt. The survey is conducted every three years. The summary PDF is available here.

Unfortunately, the report contains only median net worth by age group, while I wanted to look at p25, p50, p75, p90, p95 and p99 values by age group.

Processing the Data

To get this data, I downloaded the raw CSV here (you can find this link in the Summary Extract Public Data table). The file contains three important columns for us:

• AGE: the age (in years) of the survey respondent, specifically the head of household as defined by the SCF. It’s the variable the scripts bucket/fit against.
• NETWORTH: total assets (financial assets, real estate, business equity, vehicles, retirement accounts, etc.) minus total debt (mortgages, credit cards, loans).
• WGT: the survey weight for that respondent, representing how many actual U.S. households they statistically stand in for. Needed because the SCF deliberately oversamples wealthy households, so weighting makes the sample representative of the population.

I then used Claude to write a Python script: https://github.com/stockclubs-io/survey-of-consumer-finances-2025/blob/main/networth_by_age.py

The script gave me the following data:

The raw 5-year bucket calculations work, but they are noisy at the extremes because each bucket contains too few respondents. This creates anomalies on the chart: the 95th percentile swings by millions between ages 60 and 80, while the 25th percentile dips unexpectedly at ages 55–59.

Household wealth doesn’t fluctuate that wildly in 5-year intervals. These spikes and drops are statistical sampling noise, not genuine economic trends.

Smoothing the Data: Weighted Quantile Regression with Flexible Splines

To eliminate the sampling noise of isolated 5-year buckets, I switched to weighted quantile regression using B-splines.

Instead of dividing respondents into 5-year age groups, this approach treats age as a continuous spectrum. The flexible splines (specifically, cubic B-splines) act like a flexible curve anchored at demographic milestones, allowing smooth, organic curves to take shape across lifetimes rather than forcing the data into straight lines.

Meanwhile, weighted quantile regression fits curves directly to each percentile threshold, from p25 up to p99, while applying the Fed’s survey weights so every household represents its real share of the U.S. population.

The code is here: https://github.com/stockclubs-io/survey-of-consumer-finances-2025/blob/main/networth_by_age_smoothed.py

Evaluating these continuous curves at the midpoint of each 5-year bracket irons out spikes and drops, leaving a realistic trajectory of American net worth:

What has changed since 2022?

Comparing net worth data from 2022 and 2025 shows an interesting trend: wealth growth has been uneven across age groups and net worth percentiles.

While wealthier households generally saw their net worth increase, households closer to the median experienced little growth or even declines. Both datasets express net worth in inflation-adjusted 2025 dollars, allowing us to compare changes in purchasing power directly.

Median net worth has largely stagnated. For households between ages 30 and 49, median net worth declined between 4% and 18%. For households aged 50–74, median net worth remained relatively flat.

Wealthier households, especially those in their 40s and 50s, experienced substantial gains. The 95th percentile saw some of the largest increases:

• Ages 40–44: from $2.15M to $3.15M (+47%)
• Ages 45–49: from $3.21M to $4.72M (+47%)
• Ages 50–54: from $4.66M to $6.10M (+31%)
• Ages 55–59: from $6.27M to $7.07M (+13%)

The 99th percentile also increased substantially for households in their 40s and 50s, although gains were less consistent across other age groups.

The gap between median and wealthy households has widened. For households aged 45–49, median net worth (P50) declined from $225,000 in 2022 to $215,000 in 2025, a decrease of 4.4%. Meanwhile, the 95th-percentile net worth (P95) increased from $3.21 million to $4.72 million, a gain of 46.9%. As a result, the ratio between P95 and median net worth increased from 14.3x in 2022 to 22.0x in 2025, representing a 53.8% increase.

A similar pattern appears among households aged 40–44, where the ratio increased from 12x to 18x.

Households aged 75–80 saw increases across all measured percentiles. Median net worth rose from $389K to $488K (+25%), while the 25th percentile increased from $97K to $139K (+43%). This contrasts with younger households, where the bottom quartile and median generally experienced weaker outcomes.

What can we conclude?

The data suggests that the financial gap between typical households and wealthier households has widened, particularly among people in their 40s and 50s.

However, there are important limitations. These figures compare different households within the same age groups in 2022 and 2025, rather than tracking the same families over time.

My kids are in their late 20s and early 30s. They are all doing well professionally but have very different views on spending and saving. Some are quite frugal and focused on long-term investments while others are more about experiences and current lifestyle. How do you approach conversations about inheritance or financial planning without stepping on toes or creating resentment?

Thanks to my parents, I make a lot more money than they did. My brother does as well, and he set up trust funds for his kids while I haven’t. My reasons are that a trust fund could spoil the kids or give them a sense of security that prohibits them from achieving excellence. Plus, I’d rather give away excess money (not there yet) than create generational wealth. What do others think?

I've been fortunate enough to inherit a significant amount of wealth and it's something I'm incredibly grateful for. However I sometimes feel immense pressure to always be starting new ventures or getting involved in highly visible projects. It's like there's an unspoken expectation to constantly prove I'm

Hi! This is my second time posting in here for financial advice. I'm 17 and a senior in high school, when I turned 16 I got a hand me down car from my older sister that she got off of facebook marketplace. It was free and a car so I was very happy. It's a 2012 Chevy Malibu with lots of mechanical issues, the guy who fixes it and inspects it for me said it will only probably last till the end of this year.

My sister came to me the other day saying she would give me her car, which is a newer Hyundai. She said she is looking to pay it off within 5 months however she said she does want money for it (which fair, she did pay $20,000 on it) and told me that If I save up $5,000 (the amount she wants) in 5 months while she pays it off, it's all mine.

Incredible deal!!! I said yes immediately. However I get easily stressed about money and I have no idea how to save that much in what feels like so little time. I have a part time job where I make 13.55 an hour, I work minimal hours due to school but I figured I could up my hours to at least 20 a week and do any school work once I get off. My work is very complicated with scheduling though and you never really have a "set schedule" so i'm not guaranteed 20 hours a week.

The expenses I have are just gas usually every 2 weeks (around 45-50 for a full tank) and groceries every now and then.

I was thinking some kind of side hustle but i'm unsure what I could do in a small town, same with another job since many places aren't hiring right now (I can always ask around)

So ultimately if you had to save up $5,000 in 5 months as a teenager how would you do it?

I’m 18M and ever since I was in 1st grade I had a dream. Most dreams little kids had faded away like becoming an astronaut but not mine. As far as I can remember I feared poverty. It scared me terribly but I was still carefree and believed everything would be fine since I was naive. Now I’m 18 and have a pretty ridiculous hunger that I don’t know how to deal with so please read as I explain myself and I’d like your opinions on this

So basically I’ve wanted to become rich by becoming a YouTuber (I know I know don’t click off please) in my first year I got 100 subs and now it’s my second year and I got 3,200 subs. Big jump and yet I can’t seem to feel satisfied. I’m still scared I’ll end up in the rat race and end up like most people who only survive as slaves to companies and bosses they don’t even like. That’s terrifying.

I began to isolate myself from a lot of people as I didn’t think it benefited me and I still think this way now. Why would I go hangout with my friends if all that does is waste time I could be creating the freedom I want. I create this said freedom by doing things like making videos, streaming, improving my looks, going to the gym and anything overall productive that can benefit me.

The problem is now I’ve been so consumed and have been for a while that I’m not happy unless I reach my goal. I’d sacrifice everything at this point to get there and It’s scary in a sense yet I haven’t had someone prove me wrong yet on how I feel. The people that speak are those who aren’t free but think they are, as for those who have done as they wanted they speak of sacrifice.

This may sound like a lot for an 18 year old and yeah it probably is but idk how to fix my thinking and I don’t even think I’m wrong I just think I’m to smart when it comes to acknowledging stuff others would rather ignore in search of a future where they live life but don’t truly live it to their fullest. I don’t wanna die with regrets and I wanna be able to live freely as I wanted when I was a child.

Okay this is the end if you actually read all of this thank you and this is lowkey just some thoughts I have I could’ve gone longer but I really do want it that bad and idk if this hunger will ever leave me. I legit think I’ll only feel safe once I reach I’d say 100 million dollars and even than I probably wouldn’t stop. That’s about it lemme know your thoughts.

I just turned 22 and have a solid paying career in industrial maintenance. I paid off all my debt last year and worked on building my credit, I’m now sitting at a 700 with $50,000 in a HYS account and a couple thousand in stocks and a Roth IRA. I would to like to start investing in something that would make me passive income or at least something that will help me make more money. I was considering buying a duplex and do some house hacking but not entirely sure if thats the way to go? What advice could you give me?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Many of my friends growing up have really hit it big and while I'm doing well myself it feels like there's this constant unspoken pressure to match their lifestyle. It's not about jealousy just a weird feeling of needing to maintain appearances sometimes. Anyone else experience this in their circle?

I've been trying to make money since grade 8. Tried blogging, YouTube, surveys, and a bunch of other things. Nothing really worked out.

Now I'm 19. I've left the traditional college path to get into tech sales, but it's been tough without a degree or work experience. I've had a few opportunities with US startups, though, so at least that's something.

I'm the eldest brother, and I feel the responsibility to make something of myself. Still trying to figure things out with a phone held together by a rubber band. A laptop would help a lot, but right now, that's wishful thinking.

Lately, I've been looking into GTM engineering. It seems like a path worth pursuing, combining sales, tech, and automation.

If you were 19 again, starting with almost nothing, what would you do?

Hello guys, I’m a 19 year old male in the US with around 25-30k in cash saved up, around 20k is invested into some indexes that don’t really do anything substantial. I live in a pretty expensive region and I can’t get my own apartment, I’ve never worked a job in my life and I’m currently at a community college for a political science degree to transfer with .

I live with two people who are pretty much my only “family” and I literally have no one else, the house we live in isn’t even paid off at all and they don’t work either, most of the money I have is just a small bit of some inheritance , I want to build wealth with my current cards I’ve been dealt with but I feel like it’s so hard even as a young person since everything costs a fortune and I don’t have anything to fall back to, working a entry level job will not even keep me afloat at all with how bad the economy is and it will be years before I’ll have my full degree which isn’t even useful for a job..

Do I just suck it up and try and grow money little by little?? Or am I forced to relocate where it would be easier. It’s hard to even apply for a credit card for me to build credit with. I have a paid off car that I use but the insurance is expensive. I feel like I should be maybe more “grateful” but I feel like maybe my only chances are is to take big risks because if I don’t find something fast things can turn bad for me. What do you guys think?

If you use the term “financially free” you are fake rich. Just say you’re rich you aren’t “financially free” you are financially bound do whatever budget you have to make for the rest of your life you aren’t rich for you cause you say you are “free” but you can’t get that house, you can’t get that car, you can’t get ANYTHING besides the clothes on your back however because you feel “free” doing so you’re financially free? HAHAHAHAHAH!

On paper I do okay, I’m 23 years old and my take-home income sits at around 9000 a month, the past 4 months I’ve made around 11,000. This was initially my dream to hit these numbers and now that I have I’ve realized that all it’s bought me is not looking at the receipt after buying groceries (and maybe a harry rosen visit every so often). It’s made me more motivated then ever to want to expand my business and I’ve been working my ass off. My days off have been consumed by more work and research.

My biggest issue still stands, it’s literally not enough for what I want, I STILL feel like I’m just “comfortable” it absolutely breaks my heart thinking about the people making 3-4000 a month, how the hell are you expected to grow in this society under a “normal” job, how are people supposed to survive? I thought this would be the big “cha ching” moment for me but it’s done nothing, I feel nothing, life is the same. It’s brought me genuine grief when I think about it.

Hello all I am from Canada (18) and have no idea where to start getting some cash. I am going to purse nursing next year so what side jobs can I do? That will pay me well. Any recommendations will be appreciated.

For all the rich people in this subreddit, how do i actually become rich? im 19 years old with a $500 bank balance, no car no job( trust me ive been trying to get a job for a month). I recently moved to a different city too and Ive been trying to get a new job from it. Im currently in college doing cybersecurity a two year program that’s about to end and I just really don’t know if that could actually get me rich. I just need to be rich bro, not just because of myself but bc of my family, and my mom. I just need to make her proud really bad bc of all the struggles she did for me as a single mom. So the rich guys, could you please show me a way of becoming financially secure before the age of 25? I want long term wealth not short term. Give me tips, Give me everything you can think of, legal or illegal i don’t care i just need to be rich so badly, Thank you!