Quick Take- Why Your First $100K Is Brutal (But You've Got to Do It)

It took you 13 years to save your first $100,000.

It'll take 5 years to turn $500K into $1M.

Same savings rate. Same investment returns. Completely different experience.

This is the inflection point Charlie Munger wouldn't shut up about - and the most underestimated milestone in personal finance. Before $100K, YOU do all the work. Your discipline. Your sacrifice. Your willingness to keep grinding while progress feels glacial and everyone else seems to be living their best life.

After $100K? Your money finally starts working for you.

At 8% returns, $100K generates $8,000 a year - more than most people are even saving annually. That's when compounding stops being a concept in a spreadsheet and becomes the force that takes over the heavy lifting. The boulder you've been pushing uphill suddenly has momentum.

In this Quick Take, I break down:

• Why the first $100,000 feels impossibly slow (because mathematically, it is)
• The exact timeline: how $100K to $250K compresses to 7-9 years, then $500K to $1M happens in under 5
• How compound interest fundamentally changes the experience of building wealth after six figures
• Why this milestone unlocks CoastFIRE - and how $100K at age 30 becomes $1.5M by 65 without another dollar saved
• Why getting there fast deserves genuine urgency: longer hours, every bonus saved, delayed upgrades, even living with parents
• What Charlie Munger really meant when he called this "a b*tch, but you've got to do it"

If you're early in your FIRE journey, this is your permission - your mandate - to be unreasonable about reaching six figures. Make it your guiding star. Accept that this phase is hard, because it is.

And if you're already past it? This episode explains why those early years felt disproportionately brutal and why everything seemed to accelerate later. You weren't imagining it. The math changed.

The first $100K isn't glamorous.

It's not Instagrammable.

It's not passive income.

But it is the foundation that makes everything else possible.

Get there. Then let compounding take over.

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