How the Average Person Can Become Wealthy

This blog will be boring.

This is not get rich quick. There's no meme coin, no hot stock, no secret trick. What I talk about here is closer to a recipe than a hack: a handful of boring, repeatable moves that, done consistently for decades, turn an ordinary income into real wealth by the time you're ready to retire.

The wild part is that most of what actually works in wealth building is deeply unexciting. It's math, patience, and not messing it up. Here's the framework.

How Compound Interest Actually Works

This is the concept that ties the whole thing together, and I think it's more interesting than it sounds.

Imagine a video game where as your character levels up, it becomes easier and easier to level up. It's slow at first, almost boring, but then it starts to snowball and eventually it goes exponential. That's compound interest. You're not just earning returns on the money you put in, you're earning returns on your previous returns too, and that stacks and stacks, year after year, decade after decade.

Here's a simple way to see it. Imagine someone invests $200 a month starting at age 22, and just keeps doing it consistently until age 65, without ever increasing the amount. Assuming an average historical market return, that person could end up with well over $500,000 by retirement, and the wild part is that the majority of that total isn't even money they put in. It's growth on growth, compounding quietly in the background for 40+ years.

Now imagine that same person waits until age 35 to start, same monthly amount, same rate of return. Even though they're only missing 13 years, their final total could end up less than half of what the early starter has. Same effort per month. Wildly different outcome. Time isn't just a factor in compound interest, it's the entire engine.

That's the real "hack," if there is one:

Buy the Whole Market Instead

Most people's first instinct when they think "investing" is picking individual companies, trying to spot the next big winner before everyone else does. The problem is that professional fund managers with teams of analysts and infinite time still struggle to consistently beat the broader market over the long run. If they can't reliably do it, the odds aren't great for the rest of us either.

The alternative is an ETF, short for exchange-traded fund. Think of it as a basket that holds a slice of hundreds or thousands of companies at once, and you buy the whole basket with a single purchase. Instead of betting on one company, you're betting on the entire economy moving forward over time, which, historically, it has.

A few flavors of ETFs worth understanding, without needing to memorize any specific fund names:

• Total market funds. These aim to own a piece of basically the entire U.S. stock market at once, thousands of companies, big and small, in one purchase. It's about as diversified as investing gets within a single country.
• Funds tracking the 500 biggest U.S. companies. These focus specifically on the largest, most established businesses in the country, the household names that make up the backbone of the American economy. Historically, this has been one of the most reliable long-term growth engines available to regular investors.
• Sector-specific funds. Some funds narrow in on one part of the economy. Utilities, for example, tend to be steadier, more dividend-focused, and less dramatic than the market as a whole. These aren't usually where you'd put all your money, but they can round out a portfolio if you want some built-in stability alongside your growth-focused holdings.
• Small-cap funds. These focus on smaller, earlier-stage companies rather than the giants. Historically, smaller companies have had higher growth potential, paired with more volatility along the way. A little of this can add some extra long-term upside if you can stomach the bumpier ride.
• Socially responsible or ESG-screened funds. These apply environmental, social, and governance filters to which companies make it into the basket. If you want your investments to reflect certain values, without picking individual companies yourself, this category exists specifically for that.
• International funds. Almost everything above focuses on the U.S. A common mistake is putting 100% of your money into U.S.-only funds. Adding a fund that covers international or global markets means you're not betting your entire financial future on one country's economy. If the U.S. has a rough decade, international exposure can help smooth that out.

You don't need all of these. A genuinely simple, historically effective approach for most people is: one U.S. total-market or large-company fund, plus one international fund, held for decades. That's it. That's the whole trick that most people overcomplicate.

Real Estate: The Second Lever

Once you've got investing basics in motion, real estate is the next classic wealth-building tool, and there's more than one way to use it.

The most familiar version is just buying a home to live in. Instead of paying rent to someone else forever, buying a home allows you to build value and ownership in something that (historically) tends to appreciate a lot over time.

A more aggressive version, worth knowing about even if it's not for everyone, is buying a property specifically to rent out, a condo, or a duplex where you live in one unit and rent the other. This is sometimes called house hacking. The rent from tenants can cover part or all of your mortgage, meaning you're building equity in a property while someone else is effectively helping pay for it. It's more hands-on than buying an ETF, and it comes with real responsibilities (maintenance, tenants, vacancies), but it's a genuinely powerful lever for people willing to put in the extra effort.

The Third Lever: Owning a Piece of a Business

The third path, less talked about but just as real, is business ownership. That might mean equity or stock options at a company you work for, or eventually starting your own business. Unlike a job, where you trade hours for a paycheck, ownership means your money (or effort) keeps working even when you're not directly trading time for it. This is a longer, riskier road than the first two, but it's how a huge portion of real wealth gets built over a lifetime.

Putting It All Together

Get rich by 65, not by 30. Buy the whole market instead of guessing at individual stocks. Add real estate when you're ready for it. Consider ownership stakes over your career. And start as early as humanly possible, because the entire system runs on time, not timing.

None of this is exciting in the way a hot stock tip is exciting. But it's the version that actually works, quietly, boringly, and consistently, for the people who stick with it.