My grandpa is well off/rich and all he was is a cop, he made his money by investing smartly and not overspending. My boss at my current place of employment is rich and he started as a busboy and worked his way up and bought the resturaunt.  There is a local mcdonalds that was bought by a worker who started out as a janitor. I know plenty of contruction workers who are well off (heck some have jobs that pay 30-40 an hour, usually atleast 20). But i also know plenty of contrucion workers who blow their money on lifted trucks, alchohol and weed. Its their choice what they do in life the sooner people realise this the sooner they will make the smart choice and save their money when they are younger to reinvest that money and make more money later on in life. It is what i am doing, but many of my friends are not no matter how much i tell them to. Should I feel sorry for them when in 10-15 years i am starting to take off finincailly from them? I also started my job at min wage and quickly got raises becuase it was worth it to pay me more.

I think the problem is people want something for nothing. I see many people who can start a min. wage job, bust their but and prove themselves to be a value to a company and thus get a raise for doing more/beter work than their coworkers. Why is that wrong? It gives people a choice, you can work harder and for longer hours and save money to make something with that money, or you can work not as hard, not as long, not save money and not be rich. I have yet to see hard working people fail in life.

Actually, you can become rich in any of those careers. Likewise, you can make 100k/yr and never become rich.

I could easily see a bus driver or construction worker becoming a millionaire if they did the right things. Grocier at a store would be difficult, but I have a good friend that started as a stockboy at Wal-Mart that is now making his way up the ladder pretty nicely, and I know if he made the right decisions, he could be rich too. Another example could be that construction worker starting his own handyman service and growing it into a big business. Gary Johnson started out as a construction worker, and led it to become a multi-million dollar construction service over a 15 year period and retired from it rather wealthy.

When I was 20, I did a lot of right things with my $8/hr paychecks from my jobs. I know that if I kept those jobs I could be rich. Maybe not a multi-millionaire, but I know that its pretty easy to have a million dollars or more in assets. Before the real estate collapse, I was worth about $250,000 at age 22 simply by making the right moves in life. That was without getting a dime from my parents, who have been poverty-stricken their whole life. I'm worth about that much at 26, but I took a big hit during the real estate collapse, but if I continue to make what I make now, I am certain that by age 30 I will be worth about $500,000 or more.

The reality is that you have to make right decisions, tough decisions, and that is what a lot of people do not want to do, are not informed how to do, or simply won't do it. It also takes time, which many people do not want to give to compound interest or other wealth-creating strategies that aren't get-rich-quick schemes or quick rags to riches stories.

Then I'd move if I didn't have a good job :-p

If you spend less than you earn you'll probably become wealthy in the long run. People waste a lot of money on stuff that doesn't change the quality of their life. People are too concerned about what their neighbours have and overlook what's important in their lives.

People don't get rich saving.  They get rich owning assets that produce more money for them, and they leverage their time heavily.  And then, from this, there is a compounding effect that happens.  The saving is needed in order to be able to have extra resources that can be mobilized for more, and theoretically lead to an improved quality of life later.  Save to day, get more tomorrow.  But today, saving likely is running less than the rate of inflation.

What was discussed earlier in another post was about how America no longer had saved, and fell behind.  This CNN article goes into further details on this, on America getting soft:

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/09/america-is-getting-soft/?&hpt=hp_c2

You do realzie that your link totally disagrees with the arguement you've put forth right?

According to the book, Millionaire Next Door, there are 4 times as many millionaire entrepreneurs as there are employees:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.html

* About one in five of us is retired. About two-thirds of us who are working are self-employed. Interestingly, self-employed people make up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires. Also, three out of four of us who are self-employed consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs. Most of the others are self-employed professionals, such as doctors and accountants.

Individuals who are self-employed are not salaried.  And when you are self-employed, you are your own boss.  Being self-employed, and acting as an entrepreneur, you have more control over your environment, and are able to take more chances.  There are exceptions of course, heads of large corporations, but among the rich, they are in the minority.

Also, take the case of individuals in professions who work for each other and generally get to the top.  These individuals are in sales and not salaried.  They live off commission, and can make a lot of money.  They aren't salaried.

i'm rich compared to others, and i guess this guy is poor compared to others

People don't get wealthy from saving (much) anymore because inflationary monetary policies and consumption focused economic policies undermine saving money as a strategy ... Even contractions in the market, which represent huge buying opportunities for those who saved and have liquid assets, are "prevented" to protect those that are over-leveraged (and those backing this insane debt).

Look at the housing market collapse to see the truth in what I say, you can look at this as being a negative to the people who used horrible terms to buy more house than they can afford or as a positive for those who saved up and can now afford their dream house; but all policies and government action sided with those who overbought ...

Create a bubble in the middle of an area that impacts most Americans, and then you create a nice human shield that will result in mail outs for "pols with mechanations" (phrase from Fear the Boom and the Bust).

A big thing that causes liquidity to get stuck is to create very uncertain economic conditions also, which means no one knows where to stick money.  In case of immense uncertainty, you will even have people bailing from gold.