I accumulated it mainly from my salary and bonus. I did not manage to make much money from stock market as I did not increase the asset allocation sufficiently to stocks early enough. I also missed the property cycle, although I did manage to buy a place quite cheaply for staying. The US$1mil networth excludes my residential property.

I made about $500-600K in the last 4-5 years, I used part of the money to fully pay my house and my car. I had been pretty prudent with spending and therefore most of the salary/bonus went into savings.

I used to be an accountant in an MNC before switching to banking. I was only making $60K/year when I was an accountant and figured out that accounting will not take me anywhere, that's why I took a pay cut and started fresh in banking.

From my personal experience, starting out on the remunerative career is critical in accumulating a certain networth. If I continued with my accounting job, I would probably be making only $100-120K/year now. I don't think I could have invested my way to a US$1m networth by mid 30s.

James