[nostrademons]

To add to that - financial wealth is in many ways illusory. If you save up $10M (which in 2000 would've easily been enough to retire on) and it's all in Google stock, that's great while Google remains on top of the world. It can quickly be worth ~$0 if Google's no longer the primary way people find out about things to buy. Employees of Sun Microsystems found this out the hard way - many went from comfortable millionaires to Oracle employees in a decade, if they didn't quit and sell their stocks in time.

The usual answer to this is diversification, but the normal "safe" investments - Treasuries, S&P 500 index funds - are all heavily dependent upon political stability in the U.S. If the U.S. erupts in Civil War, basically all American companies will become worthless. Their employees will be dead and their physical capital will be in rubble, so there's nothing to own.