Thread title made me think this would be about us, as it was almost the exact title the MadFientist used for our
podcast interview.
We went 0 to 1MM+ in 5 years, so I'll chip in.
First, our $0 NW though consisted of us owning several underwater properties, offset by a bunch of cash (six figures) which was used to buy more real estate. So zero, yes, but an almost artificial zero, primed to switch from hurting to helping. When RE rebounded, the new properties shot up, as did the old ones, rapidly skyrocketing our net worth.
We also were getting
returns of 15-20% during those 5 years, plus saving close to six figures each year (on base salaries of ~40k each--both public school teachers, but doing lots of side gigs to boost that).
We did have a few mortgages, but overall I'd put that as only about 10-20% of the explanation of how we did it. Overall, not a ton of leverage used, but some--we always put down 25%, and our current LTV is 20%--as if we put down an 80% down payment on our properties today, many of which are paid off.
His path was obviously different--he made way more than we did, and saved much less as a percent.
But it's totally doable, even in a job like "public school teacher."
1) Earn extra from side gigs.
2) Invest the bulk of what you make (we were in the 75% range).
3) Add value where you can (for us it was using real estate knowledge to value add and get properties that were undervalued--valued appropriate to the market at the time, but valued under what they "should" be based on their potential return--thus producing outsized returns for us).