[ghaff]

I can't speak to Germany, but in the US saving from a good but not extremely high-paying job over the past few decades, investing prudently but not too conservatively, maybe having a few moderately good stock wins from RSUs/options or otherwise, having bought and paid off a house in a not outrageously expensive area, gets you into that range. Depends of course on how you spend your money, educational expenses for kids, etc.

In any case, it doesn't require winning the startup lottery or having a $400K salary at Google.

ADDED: ~$2m + paid-off house is the sort of range people (typically engineers, non-software) I've had discussions about "targets" with have in mind.

[pc86]

I agree with everything you said but just wanted to add RSUs/options are only even offered to a slim minority of software developers nationally. I am well paid for my job generally, and particularly for my area, but even something like an employee stock ownership program is extremely rare around here and outright RSU/option grants are unheard of. You'd get laughed out of any interview for even suggesting an ESOP to most places that don't have it.

[ghaff]

That's certainly fair and many ESOP plans are not really an especially good deal. Over the past few decades, in spite of a couple significant downturns, even index funds would have done pretty well for you with regular contributions. But having some good stock wins in addition to that certainly can help.