25 years ago, my wife and I got together. I lost everything in a divorce except for a $5000 tab on my truck, and my clothes. My wife, had just had a fire and lost all of her possessions in a fire, and left her abusive boyfriend. Plus I had child support and alimony which after paying, left me with $40 for a 40 hour week. Luckily we had unlimited overtime, so both her and I worked as much as we could to get back up on top. My ex got married after a few years, so my alimony stopped. A few years after that, child support was over with. But we were now conditioned to working a lot of overtime. 80 hour weeks was not unusual. Each year when we got a raise, our raise went into our 401K. We were sitting fairly well until we were bought up and the new owners decided to take everyone's 401K and put it into their stock. Then 9/11 hit. I lost over $40,000 myself and my wife lost like $20,000 in the company takeover, then when 9/11 hit, it took another huge chunk out of our stocks. But we always played in the "aggressive market" with the 401K.
My wife retired at 59 1/2 because of the stress of the shop, and I had to go on disability at 55 due to a ton of surgeries. But because we worked so much overtime, and not ******* money away, we were able to build up our 401K. When we were both out of the shop, we rolled over everything into Edward Jones, and it has treated us well.
We both draw a small amount off of it each month. Myself, what I pull out a month pays for momma's '64 Cutlass that I bought for her, and gives me some change to play with. What she gets a month from the investments gives her spending money to play with, but we still gain in our investments. And granted, it's only a few hundred each we draw off each month. Plus with the overtime we worked, gave us a bigger pension, and gave me more on my disability.
Over the years with working so much overtime, gave us the opportunity to add to the house, build a building for my wife, and build myself a garage. We could have paid the house off as we only owed like $20 some thousand. The improvements built up a lot of equity in our house, so last year we decided to do one final thing and that was to refinance to add to my garage, and build a patio entertainment place with a fireplace and grille. An outdoor kitchen so to speak. Our house payment would have been lower as we only refinanced for 10 years, but we pay more on the payment, so we will be paid off in 7 years.
But to answer your question on how one does it........it boils down to one thing.......WORK. Then after the work, make smart choices. Talk to an investment counselor. I also took on other side jobs to make money. I roofed houses, I remodeled houses, I sided houses. It wasn't easy at times, and we were tired at times, many times, but we had a goal in mind. And we did piss some money away along the line, probably more than we should have. We went to restaurants a lot instead of cooking at home. We bought things that we didn't really need. My wife had over $40,000 worth of Longaberger baskets at one time because she was a Consultant, and got a good deal on them. Now we are stuck with a bunch of baskets that are basically worthless. That was her money though, and her overtime money after we got the house to where we wanted it.
I can't say that we didn't do some stupid moves at times when it came to money, but in the longrun, we put the money where it should go.......into investments, and someone to manage it. Am I a millionaire? Yes.....but only if we would liquidate everything and one of us dies. But for our location and our cost of living, we don't have to worry. If or when something tragic happens, we could sell our house, downsize considerably, move into town, and pay cash for a house on a postage stamp size lot and still have money left over.
The largest factor on "how do you do it" is to not want it right now, but to look at the future, look at what might happen, and plan around that. One's that live for the moment, or only live for today, or try to keep up with the "Jones's", will not get to where you want to be. I've worked with others that just because someone bought a new car, they think they need a new car. Or if they are renting and someone buys a house, they think they have to hurry up and buy a house. But the problem with that is, they buy a house in the wrong neighborhood that will not gain in value, or they make a remodeling job that does not add value.
All it takes is hard work, careful planning, and smart investing which mans put your money where it will make money.
You will make mistakes. Be prepared for them.