bill, Since you asked, here is my story, it is boring.
Born/raised in avg middle class family in midwest.
Was an academic jock in HS, all-conf QB in football, #1 in my class.
BSEE from traditional Big Ten school.
Job fresh out of college with Allied Signal.
Made first stock trade at age 15.
Married at 30, have 3 kids.
As soon as I got to the point where I had enough "stock trading" money to live on, I quit work. Now I have about half my money in stocks and about half in real estate.
If you assume you can make 20% per year, it really doesn't take all that much money to retire. I have averaged 24%/year for a really long time. But I hated the valleys (2001, 2009) so much that I forced myself into real estate to smooth things out.
I am bull headed, persistent, confident....and sometimes spectacularly wrong.
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