As someone who comes from a lower working class, was close to become homeless once and now being able to buy almost everything I like I think I may can answer this.

I got born into a lower average social environment in a very small austrian city. The whole environment was working class, most folks working in the local steel mill and it´s suppliers. The apartment we lived in was small. The house were actually build be the Hitler regime for to provide accomodation for the poor working people, definately no luxury here. Imagine 4 adults and a baby in such an apartment, nowhere to hide if there are some arguments, no quite place. When I was about 6 years old our neighbors changed, a couple moved in and from that day on I could hear the guy beating the s*ht out of his wife 2-3 times a week. Very thin walls made it possible....

The whole story till now, may sounds worse than it was. Since I didn´t knew it better as a child, it wasn´t that bad. As a kid you see things different. I even had fun in 1986 when almost 6 foot of snow were falling over night and the adults had their issues finding their cars under the snow. My father was more used to live in such an apartment. My mother came from an even smaller village, but my grandparents had an own small house and she wants to have one too. Eventho she doesn´t has no postgrade she is a very smart woman, don´t know anybody who can solve difficult Sudokus faster hehe Born and raised on the countryside, her parents didn´t gave much about better school education. It was waste of intelligence but thats how it was after the war, going to work was more important. Similar situation with my father, he finished his master craftsmen diploma with age 42, nobody cared when he was a child so he had to educate himself as an adult.

Back to the apartment. The situation become worse with the neighbors and my mother urged to buy an own small house which they eventually did. Already that changed a lot! Especially the greedy and narrow minded neighborhood. In my last days there, I even got beaten up once because "you are rich folk now", just by buying a small house! The change made it also possible for me to have an own big room for myself. In this one I was able to work on my music career in the following years, as well as start to learn about the finance business.

I´ll jump forward a little here. I tried many things, working in the music business for years without much success, eventho I made it to the semi finals of the Grammy Awards in 2010. No money gained here. I was so desperate that I joined a friend to move to Norway with my last money I had back than. I talked to the embassy in forefront but when arriving in Trondheim everything was different. Didn´t knew how to pay the rent for the next months at that point. The threat of becoming homeless in a foreign country where you don´t speak the language good enough is aweful! Fortunately my mother lend me some money to get back home, eventho she herself had some troubles back than. Back in Austria, I decided that this kind of life has to end and I need a restart.

The finance stuff always stuck in the back of my head, so I decided to focus on this more and worked on both business which ended up in a burn out in 2012. The music business was still just devouring money so the decision was necessary, getting rid of it, eventho it was my reason to live for almost 10 years! I recovered pretty soon because of the fact that I already have seen that it is possible to succeed with daytrading and swingtrading... .

In the past years, I build up my own business, still worked for other people sometimes but knowing that there is an end in sight.

2017: Am I wealthy compared to billionaires or even multi-millionaires? NO! Am I feeling wealthy? YES - I can live a life with the freedom to not have to work for someone elses dreams and be able to buy whatever I want without needing to think about the effect on my bank account. I don´t need a Ferrari car, tried it once. It´s probably one of the most uncomfortable cars you can sit in, especially when in a traffic jam.... Same goes for a 300K watch. At a certain point the price is no longer about quality, but just about exclusiveness.

My suggestions for everybody who wants to "make it"

1. Get a wealth mindset - (book recommendation: Robert Kiyosaki - Rich dad, poor dad)

2. Work on your success (book rec.: Jack Canfield: Success principles)

3. If you struggle, read biographies to stay motivated (rec. e.g. a not so well known gem: Bill Cullen "It's a Long Way from Penny Apples", but there are many others that are good)

4. Read also the classics from Napoleon Hill, W Clemens Stone, Dale Carnegie, Charles Haanel or David Schwartz - The magic of thinking big and many others

5. Never give up!

What made me succeed in the end? Fighting for the goal, seeing at a certain point that it is possible to gain riches with a good idea, showing persistancy and a unbending will to succeed.

You just have to stand up one more time more often, than life could beat you down ;-)

Regards

PS: German newspaper FAZ, posted a survey with a statistics in 2016 about how the rich became rich. 3/4 of them were heirs, over 1/3 of the wealthy woman said they are rich because of marring a rich man. To a certain extend it seems if you got born into a certain caste (or social environment) you grow up, live your life and die there. Another statistics said that only a few percent of people whoms parents "just" have elementary or even average high school garduation won´t make it to big earners. However, I and many others are the living evidence that it is possible.(FAZ Article in german Wohlstand: Woher die Reichen ihr Vermögen haben)