CORRECTION: Since the publication of this story on Nov. 4, new details have come to light which have made Anton Ivanov's claims of becoming a self-made millionaire highly suspect. On Monday, Ivanov admitted to Yahoo Finance that 75-80% of his wealth consists of an inheritance that was left to him by his parents, who died several years ago.



Yahoo Finance regrets these errors. We are continuing to update this correction as more facts about Ivanov come to light.



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Anton Ivanov isn’t your average millionaire.

For starters, he’s barely 27 years old, he doesn’t work in Silicon Valley and he isn’t heir to a family fortune. He doesn’t live in a tiny house or get his food from a compost garden in his backyard, either.

Ivanov, who shares wealth-building tips on his blog, Financessful.com, made his million the old-fashioned way: He read books. He saved early and often. And he started planning his rise to millionaire status before most kids his age had their driver’s license.

“I’m a testament that if you want something bad enough and you keep working towards it ... you will get to where you want to go,” he says. "It was my habits and my principles that made me rich."



Here’s how he did it.

Starting young

A decade ago, Ivanov was like any other teenager in the U.S.. He went to high school, earned decent grades, and held down a minimum-wage job at Subway. His parents, who had moved his family from their native Russia in 2002, both worked full time — his mother as an attorney, his father as an accountant. They lived a moderately middle-class life in the suburbs of San Diego.

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But Ivanov realized early on that there was something different about his new neighbors — they all seemed a lot wealthier than his family. His parents were heavy spenders and harbored a deep mistrust of financial services. He couldn’t quite blame them — they had moved to the U.S. just a few years after living through one of the worst depressions in Russian history. But at the same time, he felt like he was missing something.

“In high school, there was pretty much no financial education and my parents wouldn’t talk to me about money,” he says. “Everything I learned about money I had to learn myself.”

He devoured books on wealth building. An early favorite was “Think and Grow Rich,” the 1937 classic by Napoleon Hill, which details strategies that can be used to overcome psychological barriers to wealth.

“That book was extremely influential,” Ivanov says. “It wasn’t a ‘how to get rich’ book but it gave me a vision and a mental system that I could use to achieve pretty much anything I wanted.”

At age 16, he had one goal in mind: become a millionaire.

College or career?

Photo: Courtesy of Anton Ivanov More

Anton opened a savings account at a local bank and socked away 100% of his Subway wages over the course of three years. By the time he graduated high school, he had saved about $10,000. He might have used the cash to cover part of his college tuition, but he knew it wouldn’t be enough to cover all of his expenses. He didn’t relish the thought of taking on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to make up the difference, either.

"My family wasn't really prepared to pay for my college tuition, so I knew I would have to rely on at least some student loans to get me through, which I was very much against,” he says.

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