“Normal” Americans can do this too if they have enough capital. The amount needed may be less than you think.

These outcomes are features of modern finance and there aren’t a lot of secrets about how it works. A lot of people could benefit by learning and using the same rules for their own benefit. These so called rich people know it because they talk about it with each other. Normies can look to forums like coastfire, expatfire, leanfire and similar for tips about how to similarly exploit the finance regulation in place today.

If you get a W2, and you spend most or all of the salary for living expenses - with no gap for significant savings, you’re trading a month of labor for a month of living expenses. It might feel ok because you sit on a leather seat or stay in the Hilton sometimes. But if there is nothing left over you’re perpetually running on fumes.

The only way out of this is by cutting expenses and creating as wide a gap as possible and pouring it into assets that grow, not shrink, in value. With the power of compounding returns nobody is more than a decade, decade and a half or so away from freedom. But yeah, you do have to live like a miser during that time.