Mom was diagnosed with colon cancer when I was thirty. To clear the decks so that she could focus on beating cancer I paid off her credit cards.

She did not want me to. She protested profusely. I did it anyway because I was on a wealth creating plan that I knew would work. The money that I spent on her cards would be made up. I had more years. She didn’t. On my plan, all I needed was 25 years and financial self-discipline.

The credit card debt in 1995 was $7,000. Adjusted for inflation, it is the equivalent of $14,000 in 2023. I accumulated that inside of 401(k) and IRA accounts over the previous five years. My method was something called Dollar Cost Averaging, or DCA.

DCA is the process of investing a consistent amount of money over a period. It began as $50 per month with my first ‘real’ job. During the five years after that first job, I began to increase the amount I invested each month to an average of $300 per month. Then mom was diagnosed.

According to research reported in books such as, “The Millionaire Next Door” and “Everyday Millionaires,” some 90% of American millionaires created their wealth via DCA into growth stock mutual funds.

Beginning with that first job in 1990 I invested 400 months (about 33 and a half years) without interruption. Sometime in my late thirties my “blue-collar” portfolio of mutual funds hit critical mass. It became a self-perpetuating engine of wealth creation.

At age 50 I sold control of my engineering company for $55 million. When you sell a firm of that size, you don’t simply get a check to deposit. Over the years I had gifted equity to others who worked to help build the company. But enough of it was mine that I became an ‘instant’ multi-millionaire…except that I was already a multi-millionaire. Thanks to financial self-discipline with 300 months of DCA.

You might protest, “Pete, of course you are wealthy. You made all that money thru your engineering firm.”

Let us suppose that I had spent those 300 months investing a mere $500 per month. Be honest with yourself. You waste $500 a month on eating out and buying junk food.

What if you invested that?

$500 monthly – which is $25 per day for someone working Monday – Friday would have been $6,000 annually, or 20% of a $30,000 income. I could have earned that making sandwiches 40 hours per week. Add in 10 more hours of work, Christmas bonus’ and perhaps a part-time income from a spouse and you are doing some serious investing.

Many market indices such as the S&P 500 show an annual return of 10-12% over 25 years. There begats your $1,000,000 retirement portfolio. You become a millionaire without ever owning an engineering firm.