[throwaway18678]

I have about $1.5m in my investment account heading into my late 30s. I would say about half of it came from regularly investing leftover income in index funds, 25% from a condo that I bought and sold in the bay area, and 25% from my parents. Despite spending the majority of my career working as a developer at startups, very little of it came from equity.

I think if I had worked a little harder, I probably could have made a lot more money by just chasing after higher paying gigs. But on the other hand, I don’t cope well with stress and I don’t regret sticking to lower paid (but still pretty good in the grand scheme) and more relaxed jobs. I even took a fairly large pay cut once to get out of a stressful job.

$1.5m certainly does not feel like a lot of money, especially with a single income family and kids. I drive a used car, fly economy, etc., so I definitely wouldn’t say I’ve made it big. Maybe if I had $10m... but even then there are going to be a lot of things you still can’t afford.