By working and investing. More successfully at some points than others. But you’re totally right that different people are better set up and more or less inclined to move on from a job than others.
The larger message is young people cannot get passive income in a short time. Sure there are a few born rich, and a tiny handful who by luck and skill (both are needed) get rich quick. However for the vast majority passive income is a long slog of saving a little here and there. (there is a third option - really lower your standard of living so you need almost nothing to live - get a good job but live in a tent city with the poor, cooking on a camp stove - everything you own fits in a backpack). The idea that you can in a few years get enough invested to live on a beach for the rest of your life is a fantasy that sells books but doesn't otherwise exist.
I agree with all that. I've known a couple of people (at least one was out of investment banking--think both were) who pretty much fully retired in their forties, which of course isn't really that young. Some people hit the startup or some other lottery early on and, even if you get a million dropped on you at 25 or 30, you should probably think long and hard about whether you can really just not work any longer. Gives you a lot of breathing room but isn't really a huge pile.
Certainly, there are degrees of frugality. I could probably spend more than I do but don't have a real interest in doing so and generally avoid expensive things that might give me some incremental pleasure but prefer to arrange things so that increment is pretty small and doesn't revolve around "stuff."
A LOT of Millenials were born rich. They may not have realized it, but now that boomers are dying off, it is stratifying Millennials through inheritance.
A lot of them have and continue to receive massive wealth transfers from their boomer parents through free-ish rent, gifts (aka pay for your down payment on a house), etc, etc.
Hard to keep up with what generations are supposedly uniquely disadvantaged. For Millennials specifically, houses would seem to be rather late in the game as they're probably mostly buying in their 30s maybe if they're buying at all and probably haven't been living with their parents for most of that period before.
