Matt Sedenski, AP National Writer
NEW YORK (AP) – As a child, Heidi Barley saw his family pay for food stamped food. As a college student, she dropped out because she couldn’t afford tuition. Already rubbing in her 20s, she was forced to cut her salary by reducing her salary to just $34,000 a year.
However, this summer, the 41-year-old hit a milestone that he felt out of reach for a long time. She has become a billionaire.
The number of everyday Americans is rising rapidly, with celebrities and CEO territory boasting single-digit net worth. But as billionaires grow thicker, the importance of status changes with perceptions of what is needed to truly become richer.
“We’re looking forward to seeing you get a lot of money,” said Michael Ashley Schulman, chief investment officer at Roning Point Capital Advisors, a wealth management company in El Segundo, California. “It’s no longer a behind-the-scenes path to the palace estate and uplifting of caviar. It’s a new mass of positive middle-class, financially secure, two zeros that are lacking in the territory of the private jet.”
Inflation, balloon home value, and decades-long pushes by the average investor to the stock market have raised millions to billionaires. A June report from Swiss bank UBS found that about a tenth of American adults are members of seven-figure clubs, adding 1,000 newly created billionaires every day last year.
Thirty years ago, the IRS counted 1.6 million Americans and has a net worth of over $1 million. UBS – Using data from the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and central banks of countries around the world, the US last year reached 23.8 million, an increase of almost 15 times.
As the Gulf spreads between the wealthy and the poor, an expanded rank of billionaires arises. According to the Federal Reserve, 10% of Americans hold two-thirds of their household wealth, with an average of $8.1 million each. The bottom 50% holds 3% of their wealth, with an average of just $60,000.
Federal Reserve data also shows that there are differences between races. Asians outperform US whites in median wealth, while blacks and Hispanics are chasing their net worth.
Barley worked as a journalist when the newspapers ended its pension program. A colleague persuaded her to invest in a retirement account, and since then she’s hiding everything. Investment was initially soaked during the Great Recession, but eventually began to grow. Eventually, she accumulates her savings, goes home and checks her account balances to find catharsis while she’s had a tough day at work.
Last month, after such a day, she realized that the moment had come.
“Did we know of a billionaire?” she asked her husband.
“Good job, honey,” Barley says he replies.
It didn’t make any change anytime soon. Like many billionaires, much of her wealth is in her long-term investment and her home, not easily accessible cash. She still lives in the modest Orlando, Florida, where she holds half of her pay to socks and fills her napkin holders with takeaway napkins and trash cans with grocery store bags.
Still, Barley says he feels it’s powerful to cross a threshold he never imagined to reach his childhood.
“But it’s not as appealing as the ideas in your head,” she says.
All wealth is relative. For 1000 Air, $1 million is a dream. For a billionaire, it’s a rounding error. In any case, you need twice as much cash as today to match your purchasing power 30 years ago.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, $1 million in 1995 is equivalent to about $2.1 million today.
Because seven-figure net worth is an outdated measure, like six-figure salary. Nevertheless, “billionaires” are all over the place, from politics to popular music, as a shorthand for the rich.
“It’s a great round number, but it’s a long journey,” says Dan Woden, 41, from Providence, Rhode Island. “It definitely gives you some room to breathe.”
UBS was a huge number of billionaires and none of the US close to the UBS, compared to its population, but we found that Switzerland and Luxembourg had higher rates.
Kenneth Carrow, a professor of finance at the Kelly School of Business at Indiana University, says commonalities emerge among today’s billionaires. The majority own stocks and homes. Most live under their means. They value education and teach children financial responsibility.
“The dream of becoming a billionaire,” says Carrow.
Jim Wang, 45, a software engineer-turned-to-soft blogger in Fulton, Maryland, says he gained weight for him as the son of an immigrant who saved fever and money on winter nights, even if hitting a million dollars was essentially a “non-event” for him and his wife.
The private jet he imagined as a child may not have been realized at a million dollar threshold, but he sees it as a marker that brings a certain level of security.
“Even in normal work, that’s possible,” he says. “You just have to be hardworking and consistent.”
The resilience of the financial markets and ease of investing in broad, low-cost index funds have driven the balances of many billionaires who do not earn large pay or inherit family wealth.
Among them is a rapidly growing community of young billionaires born from the movement known as fire, as financial independence retires early.
Jason Breck, 48, of the Fishers, Indiana, accepted the fire and reached the million-dollar mark nine years ago. He quickly quit his job in car marketing, generally earning around $60,000 a year, but managed to stolen about 70% of his salary.
Now Breck and his wife travel for several months a year. Despite resigning, they continue to increase their balances by sticking to a tight budget and maintaining their expenses of $1,500 a month when they are in the US and hundreds more when they travel.
To achieve their goals is not translated into luxury. Grass crews, don’t eat Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Uber. They fly the economy. They drive a 2005 Toyota.
“It’s not the golden ticket like the past,” says Breck. “For us, $1 million will buy us freedom and security. We are not yacht rich, but we are wealthy for us.”
Original issue: July 29, 2025, 8:59am EDT
