John Jacob Astor, a penniless German immigrant, set foot on US soil in March 1784.
By 1800 he amassed almost a quarter of a million dollars. Soon after he became the first self-made millionaire in the United States.
At the time of his death on March 29, 1848, John Jacob Astor was worth $20 million (today the equivalent of $115 billion according to Forbes, making Astor the fourth wealthiest person in American history).
According to speaker Brian Tracy, in the year 1900 there were approximately 5000 millionaires in the USA. The interesting thing is that the vast majority of them were self made millionaires.
By the year 2000 there were 7 million millionaires in the world, 5 million of whom were residing in the USA. Again, the majority of these millionaires were all self made.
Over the 100 years between 1800 and 1900 in the USA we see a remarkable increase from no millionaires to 5000 millionaires. For the sake of our mathematics, lets assume we had one American millionaire in the year 1800 (untrue, though it was soon there after when Astor cracked the millionaire mark). Thus we can say the number of millionaires increased by 5000 times.
Over the following 100 years between 1900 and 2000 the number of millionaires in the USA increases by 1000 times. And this was despite an American economy that went through many rocky patches over those 100 years.
From no millionaires in 1800 to 5 million millionaires in 2000.
It took Astor 48 years to increase his net worth from a quarter million dollars to $20 million. Today however, living in the age of the internet, we have people like Larry Page and Sergey Brin who over a few short years amass a fortune of several billion dollars.
The interenet is ripe with examples of people creating fortunes over a short space of time using this billion dollar technology that we all have access to at a minimal investment from our side.
Perhaps you will awaken to the awesome power of today’s wealth creation medium – the internet- and find your own way to create an amazing fortune for yourself online.
Themillionpoundman.com
Tags: becoming a millionaire, billionaire, Brian Tracy, Google, internet, John Jacob Astor, Larry Page, millionaire, Sergey Brin, wealth creation
May 9, 2008 at 5:20 am
Many feel that in order to become a millionaire and have a successful business you will need to start strong and make all your money right away so you don’t have to wait. However, the best millionaire businesses are willing to start out small sized and grow at a slower rate.