- The key to building wealth is living in a home you can easily afford , according to a researcher who studied more than 600 millionaires .
- She found that most of the millionaires she studied live in houses that cost below their means, allowing them to save and accumulate more wealth.
- Several well-known millionaires and billionaires, like Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg , live in affordable homes that cost little compared to their overall wealth.
A woman who studied 600 millionaires discovered most of the super rich have surprisingly affordable homes. Here's what some of those look like.
Melia Robinson/Business Insider
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The key to building wealth ? Living in a home you can easily afford.
That's according to Sarah Stanley Fallaw, the director of research for the Affluent Market Institute . She co-authored " The Next Millionaire Next Door: Enduring Strategies for Building Wealth ," in which she surveyed more than 600 millionaires in America.
She found that no factor plays as big a role in accumulating money as where you choose to live. Most of the millionaires she studied had never purchased a home that cost more than triple their annual income.Even some high-profile, ultra-rich people from Mark Zuckerberg to Serena Williams have purchased homes well below their means.
To compile the list below, we compared the cost of these homes to each person's net worth. We didn't have the data to determine their net worth at the time of purchase, so we adjusted the house purchase price for inflation using the US Inflation Calculator to compare against their net worth today.
For example, billionaire investor Warren Buffett bought his home in 1958 for $31,500. Adjusted for inflation, that's equivalent to $274,357 in today's dollars just .0003% of his $82.1 billion net worth .
Everyone on this list owns a home less than 5% of their net worth.
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