Forget your salary — this space billionaire says a simple childhood marshmallow experiment could reveal whether you’re destined to remain middle class for the rest of your life.
The classic psychology experiment puts four-year-old children in front of a marshmallow and a choice: eat it now or wait for the researcher to return for two. Most don’t resist. And, according to Dylan Taylor, philanthropist and CEO of Voyager Technologies, this same drive is exactly what keeps most people financially trapped in adulthood.
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“It’s this idea of delaying the reward,” explains Taylor, who made his first million before he was 30, in an interview with Fortune. “It’s like asking: Do you have the mental discipline to delay immediate gratification?”
In his view, adults face the same choice every time they lease a car or swipe a credit card to buy something they can’t yet afford.
“I see a lot of that — cars, planes, boats and all that stuff… I support all of that when you can afford it, but most people get into it before they can afford it.”
The exception, he admits, is “good” debt, such as financing the property where you live, which in the United States usually has tax benefits and has historically been a reasonable long-term investment.
But car leasing, credit card debt, recurring monthly payments on things that only lose value — these are the habits he sees keeping people in the same place. And that, he suggests, would be the adult version of eating the marshmallow the second the researcher leaves the room.
Personal finance expert Dave Ramsey has long argued that he can predict who will remain in the middle class by observing whether the person’s garage has the car (or two) financed for the year. “These people are going to stay in the middle class until they kick this habit,” Ramsey said. “It’s a huge indicator.”
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“We advise people not to buy a new car before reaching a net worth of US$1 million,” he added.
But in practice, even among the ultra-rich, many prefer not to waste money on status symbols that drain wealth rather than build wealth.
The youngest billionaire to build her own fortune, Lucy Guo; the late Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad; and actress Kiki Palmer have something in common: they all drove or drive old, worn-out cars.
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Mitzi Perdue, billionaire heiress to the Sheraton Hotels and Perdue Farms groups, doesn’t even own a car — much less a flashy model. She travels using the subway.
“The Henderson and Perdue families did not encourage extravagance,” Perdue previously told Fortune. “Nobody gets points for wearing designer clothes.”
Perhaps the most famous example is legendary investor Warren Buffett, who has maintained a thrifty lifestyle for decades: he never spends more than $3.17 on breakfast, lives in the same house he bought for $31,500 in 1958, and drives a car that’s more than 20 years old.
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The man worth an estimated $144 billion is often quoted as saying: “I’m not interested in cars, and my goal is not to make people jealous. Don’t confuse cost of living with standard of living.”
Dylan Taylor made his first million at age 27 — but he wasn’t born rich
Building real and lasting wealth is perhaps more difficult than many people imagine. Research by the Resolution Foundation concluded that, in the United Kingdom, an average worker would need to save their entire salary for 52 years — without spending anything — to accumulate £1.3 million (R$8.8 million), the amount needed to enter the richest 10% group.
In the United States, the bar is even higher: workers say they would need at least US$2.3 million (R$11.5 million) to feel rich and an impressive US$4.4 million (R$22 million) to fully achieve the American dream. With the average salary, reaching this figure would take almost 70 years — longer than many people’s entire working lives.
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And yet, instead of saving, many Americans are heading in the opposite direction. In practice, debt has been increasing year after year since 2013 and has reached record levels. Total household debt reached US$18.8 trillion at the beginning of 2026, with vehicle financing alone reaching US$1.66 trillion — an increase of US$18 billion in a single quarter.
Disregarding real estate financing, the total debt outside the housing sector is US$5.16 trillion.
Of course, resisting the urge to lease a Tesla won’t turn anyone into a billionaire overnight. But Taylor knows firsthand how difficult it is for ordinary workers to move from the stage of just “making ends meet” to achieving financial comfort.
He didn’t grow up in a rich family. His mother was 19 years old when he was born. His father served in the Vietnam War. The first few years were financially difficult and, he says, that shaped everything. “I think that’s why I became so focused on being successful and making money,” he says.
Before he was 30, he was already earning millions running publicly traded companies in the electronics, finance, banking and real estate sectors. At 37, he had an “existential crisis” and started again — this time in the space industry, fulfilling a childhood dream.
Today, Voyager Technologies is a space and defense technology company that develops critical systems and infrastructure for civil, commercial and national security missions.
But it was only last year (at age 53) that Taylor became a billionaire, after taking Voyager public on the New York Stock Exchange. Perhaps proof that luck favors those who know how to wait.
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