Quick Millionaire

What A Million Dollars Means To You?

Personal finance columnist Liz Pulliam Weston's story and reflection on becoming a millionaire is surely insightful and inspirational.

If you want to be a millionaire someday, I hope that our experience -- and those of millions of others who have achieved this goal -- might provide some insights and inspiration for getting there.

First, though, let's deal with the obvious: a million ain't what it used to be. But that's nothing new. Except for brief periods of deflation, such as during the Great Depression, the generally rising level of prices has always chewed away at the value of a buck. That means you need $1.85 million today to match the buying power of $1 million in 1986, or $7.44 million for the equivalent of a million in 1956.

Still, reaching the million-dollar mark put us in the top 10% of all U.S. households. (The minimum net worth to join that 90th percentile, according to the Federal Reserve's latest Survey of Consumer Finances was $831,600 in 2004.) In global terms, we're near the very pinnacle of wealth when you consider that billions of people live on just a few dollars a day.

Of course, we live here in the good old U.S.A., where a million-dollar net worth may be "enough," or not. As I wrote in "The myth of the $1 million retirement," some people need a lot less to say goodbye forever to work. Others, with more expensive lifestyles and expectations of living a long time, may need a lot more. Hubby and I have a bunch of long-lived ancestors as well as some costly goals ahead, so we're not going to retire just yet.

I'm confident, though, that the habits and strategies that got us to the million-dollar point will get us the rest of the way, regardless of what happens in the short run to the economy, the markets and real estate.