I started out with nothing. My parents started out with nothing. My grandparents started out with less than nothing, coming from a farm that went bankrupt.
Don't give me that whiny crap about how "it's easy for people with money to talk"... A lot of "people with money", like my entire family, started with zip, zero, nada. Nothing. Everything they got they got by carefully saving everything they could, shopping bargains and sales exclusively, and not being mindless consumers, spending every dime they got on luxuries. They saved what they didn't spend, and carefully worked their way up from nothing.
My Dad started as a seasonal roofer and bottom of the pay scale assistant bottle washer at dupont. Then he made the big career decision to become a cop... Not exactly a luxury salary there. 4 kids and a cop salary, no big gifts from their parents or anything, but they refused to buy into the consumerism and saved instead. They paid into their first house ahead of schedule, and when they had a third kid they were able to remortgage the first house to make the down payment for the new larger house in a nicer neighborhood. When they had the 4th kid and needed a bigger house, they sold the first two to come up with the down payment on the new big house, also in a nice neighborhood. All of our neighbors drove mercedes and lexuses, and my Dad drove a 14 year old beat up pickup truck while my Mom drove a used hotel shuttle station wagon... Still could read "hilton" on the side where they took the stickers off. We ate spaghetti or some other ground beef meal 15 days a month, ate chicken of some sort for the other 15, because the supermarket had a ground beef sale and a chicken sale every month so they stocked a large deep freezer with sale items once a month.
My Mom made me shirts from bargain bin cloth until 6th grade.
By age 10, I started noticing my Dad browsing through money magazine and "mutual fund investor" magazine. I'd overhear him talking about his schwab account with my Mom. We were still eating sale food, but they had a schwab investment account. They finally bought a new car... With CASH, after they had saved enough to buy it without a loan. That decision alone, buying a $6,000 new car for cash instead of a loan, saved them over $2000 in interest charges.
Yea our TV was a used TV the neighbors were going to throw away when they got their big new sony, but it cost $40, not $400. $360 more into savings.
Don't cry and whine about how it's easy for people with money to talk about this stuff... People like me and my family started with less than EVERY ONE HERE and now we're all fairly comfortable. Heck, my older brother had 5 kids and is living on that same cop salary, and he owns a 3500 sq ft home and has no major debt but the house. How does he do it? He doesn't waste his money on consumer junk. He invests his income where it matters. If his kids need soccer shoes, he invests in new soccer shoes (the $40 ones, not the $200 nike air ones). But every single dollar he spends is an investment in his family and their future.
So quit whining about how hard it is, and take a long hard look at what you consider "essential" expenses. Got cable? Heh. Shaddup whiner. Ditch the cable and save the money. Got a shiny new computer? Heh, shaddup whiner. Nurse along your old computer and save the money. Eating out all the time? Heh, shaddup whiner. Buy some cheap chicken, rice, and veggies and eat healthier for 1/5th the cost, and save the difference. That's how I got my money, how everyone in my family got their money...
Oh yea, we didn't whine about not having money... We just worked and saved.
