I Hit Seven Figures. It Still Wasn’t Enough.

The first time my net worth crossed $1 million, I thought I’d feel different.

For most of my life, that number meant one thing to me: you made it.

It meant not having to think twice every time an unexpected bill showed up. It meant knowing one car repair, one medical expense, or one bad month wouldn’t send everything sideways.

More than anything, it meant having the kind of cushion my mom never had when I was growing up.

But when I finally got there, something surprised me. I didn’t feel finished. And recently, I found out why.

According to the Federal Reserve, $1 million doesn’t even put a household in the top 10% of wealth in America anymore. You need closer to $2 million.

I had spent years chasing a finish line that had moved while I was running toward it.

Once I saw how far the goalpost had moved, I wanted to know what actually separates the people who keep building wealth from the people who spend decades working just as hard and still fall behind.

Teeka has spent months digging through Federal Reserve data looking for that answer. I’ll come back to it in a moment.

For me, though, the question is personal. I know what it feels like to grow up in a family living paycheck to paycheck.

Maybe that realization hit me harder because of where I came from.

I Thought $1 Million Meant You’d Made It