Just to add my two cents, I think on a relative scale that high earning jobs are not as great of a ROI as people perceive them to be. A good example would be to compare a UPS driver who had very little education with a surgeon. Assuming the UPS driver made 22 dollars an hour starting off and saved MMM style with the average 7% return on investment he could make similar amounts compared to the surgeon in a 40 year time period as he would be starting off with little to no debt, and an extra 13 years to compound that the surgeon had to spend studying. It should also be noted the surgeon would graduate with about 250k in the hole, even assuming he paid this off in a year, the UPS driver would still have a significant final amount. I plugged this into the compound interest calculator using a starting net worth of 0 for both. The UPS driver saves 24000 per year x 40 years and ends up with 5.8 million dollars. The surgeon we would say makes 350k per year, for simplicity let's just say after taxes he brings home 250k net. He also saves 50% and earns 7%, however he has to start 14 years later so he would compound 125k at 7% x 26 years which becomes 9.2 million at the same age as the UPS driver. So the surgeon ends up with a few million more, but this is comparing basically a super high paying field to a super low paying field, so the spread would be even less with a medium paying field that required a lot of time and debt to obtain. This also doesn't factor in risk, raises the UPS driver might receive, and the lower ROI based on the amount of time spent to make a few million more, for example, the UPS driver could casually work 40 hrs per week and enjoy life in his youth, while the surgeon might have had to average greater than 60 hrs a week including school time and other activities for those 40 years to end up with only a few million more. Any thoughts on this? I've brought this concept up with friends before and many have proposed that very few if any people are smart enough and motivated enough to be like the UPS driver and save 50% of income from the start and never stop, as well as have the investment savvy to generate passive income, but I'm sure someone has done this.