I don’t need fo to speculate. I am someone that needs these qualifications. My partner and I are in our mid thirties and have a net worth over $1 million. And we crossed the threshold over $1 million in our early 30s.

My day today is going to be pretty mundane. I’m going to get up, feed the cats, and medicate the old one. Then I’ll make some breakfast. After giving the spoiled rotten cats some after-breakfast treats, I’ll eat my own rapidly cooling breakfast.

I’m not leaving the house today. The bulk of the day today will be spent working on some data analysis for my research work and cleaning up around the house. This evening, it’s my husband’s turn to make dinner, so he’ll probably cook. Ideally, this evening I would like to spend some time in the wood shop working on this small wooden chest I’m making, but I might just end up spending most of the evening doom scrolling. Regardless, after our dinner, the old lady (our old cat) will get medicated again. And I’ll go to bed between 10 and 11. My partner tends to stay up a bit later, especially on weekends. We have a big friend group on discord, and we do a lot of gaming with them on desktop. At the end of the day, I’ll crawl back in bed. The bed is a big solid wood king sized wooden bed. It’s of the Ana White school of design. It’s made of Douglas fir and southern yellow pine. I know this, because I literally built my bed and sleep in it.

So commentary. Aside from the odd amount of woodworking, my life is pretty normal. We are objectively millionaires. Our net worth is between $1-2 million. But we have never inherited a penny, won a lottery, or been part of some corporate IPO. We did this the hard way. Hard work, frugality, and luck. That’s how we’ve made our modest fortune. If you understand how we got it, you’ll understand why we don’t live some incredible lifestyle.

My husband and I are both from STEM backgrounds. My background is in structural engineering, his computer engineering. He’s worked continuously since finishing undergrad. I worked in industry and teaching for quite awhile before coming back to school to get my PhD. I’m currently working on a PhD in Civil Engineering and Wood Science. My username is very much literal. Currently my partner is our main breadwinner, but we both worked, saved, and invested prior to me starting my program.

I got on the property ladder relatively early in life. In 2012, a year out of college, I bought a townhouse in a rough neighborhood in the big city we in at the time lived in. I bought it for $92k and about $3k total down. It really was that ridiculous. The builder had gone bankrupt and was offering incentives to offload units in this half-finished townhome development. It was weird, but it got me out of renting. That development is weird; I think there are still big concrete foundations of unfinished buildings sitting out in the rain there to this day.

For several years before meeting my now husband, I lived with roommates. I rented out the two spare bedrooms. My roommates paid the mortgage. I had some major medical expenses at the time, $60k or so, that I had to work my ass off to pay for. For a long time I essentially worked two full time jobs. I worked at an engineering firm by day and tutor at nights and weekends. And in those years, I lived on very little. But I did get past the medical expenses, and afterwards that frugality allowed me to really ramp up savings. Eventually I met my now-husband. After dating for awhile, we sent the roommates packing, and he moved in. While we were living together pre-marriage, he chipped in to the household expenses, though less than what the roommates together had been paying. And when he moved in, he was paying less than what he had for his one bedroom apartment before.

But yeah, we’ve just continued to chug away at it. He’s always maxed out his 401k and IRA purchases. I’ve often maxed out my 401k and always my IRA. And before we got married, I even managed to pay off the mortgage on that townhouse. I paid off a mortgage before I was 30. We moved states for me to pursue my PhD, and now we have a house with a mortgage on it, but it’s quite manageable. We entered our marriage each with a net worth of about $300k.

The thing to understand about the wealth we have is that it’s basically all in our house and retirement funds. We sold the townhouse for about $130k when we moved out to the West Coast. We bought a house, a nice but pretty modest 2000 ft^2 bog standard suburban house. We bought it for $360k, which seemed insane at the time, but we were able to put over 50% down. Now it’s gone up in value to near $600k, and we have a mortgage for about 1/4 of its value. We’re not paying the mortgage down early, as that thing is locked in at an interest rate on a 15 year note at a rate lower than the inflation rate. We’re riding that thing til it’s over, or we have to move.

Overall, our balance sheet is pretty basic. We have about $100k in a taxable brokerage account. That’s kind of our emergency emergency fund. Then we have our house. And the rest is in various retirement accounts. We have less than $20k in actual cash at any given time. We’re millionaires, technically, but all that wealth is just dedicated to securing our future, not to living lavishly.

In addition to keeping our housing costs low, we’ve always been cheapskates when it comes to vehicles. For years my only vehicle was a Taiwanese scooter. And the only car we have now is the mid 2000s Toyota that my husband has had since college. He works from home. I don’t even have a parking permit on campus. My main way to get there is an old e-bike I bought secondhand on Craigslist a decade ago. That or the bus. I am quite literally a millionaire that rides the bus.

And that is the key. We have certainly gotten lucky. We finished school at a time where the property market was at its lowest. We’ve had some luck in getting jobs, etc. But we’re talking regular everyday luck, not win-the-lottery luck. And that, combined with grit and frugality, has allowed us to sock up a decent nest egg.

But again, if you met me on the street, you wouldn’t know it. You might even meet me on the bus. I’ll be the mid 30s woman, wearing an old backpack and clothes from a local thrift shop, clothes I’ve sewn holes up in.

I don’t look like a millionaire, but I am one. The reason I am one is because I do not look like one.

TL:DR: I am The Millionaire Next Door.