So what’s the best way to get rich in America? The answer is the same one as always.
Own your own business.
You can do this by starting one from scratch and growing it or buying one–or a few.
Here is hard data from the IRS backing this:
The Rich Guy
The IRS Statistics of Income Division, a place where fun surely must go to die, published “400 Individual Tax Returns Reporting the Largest Adjusted Gross Incomes Each Year, 1992-2009,” or in non government-speak, “400 People Who Earned a Freaking Boatload of Money.”
In 2009 it took $77.4 million in adjusted gross income to crack the top 400. (That just barely got you in, though. The average income of the people on the list was $202.4 million.)
Where it gets interesting is how the top 400 made their money:
- Wages and salaries: 8.6 percent
- Interest: 6.6 percent
- Dividends: 13 percent
- Partnerships and corporations: 19.9 percent
- Capital gains: 45.8 percent
A few obvious conclusions:
- Working for a salary won’t make you really rich.
- Making only safe “income” investments won’t make you really rich.
- Investing only in stock of large companies won’t make you really rich.
- Owning a business could not only build a solid foundation of wealth but could someday…
- Generate a huge financial windfall — and make you really rich.
Source: Jeff Haden
A career on Wall Street is another option for getting rich but few of us will have the credentials necessary to obtain employment with a top tier form such as Goldman Sachs.
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