Sorry, I should have said the metric of a millionaire as defined buy $1M in a 401k is not saying much.

Having $1M after decades of working at or near retirement age is the bare minimum one needs for a “decent” retirement if they want to continue their lifestyle. I know 90% of Americans don’t come close to it, but if you want security of quality of life and not worry about medical expenses, $1M will not go far in many of the places in the US that are popular.

On the other hand, when I’m putting together a real estate deal and I need a few hundred thousand dollars, I have many doctors I can call who might be able to pony up, but no teacher is going to be able to come up with that kind of investment. I know a couple of outlier engineers and CPAs who can come up with that that, but nowhere near the amount of doctors, especially as a percentage of all engineers and CPAs.

It’s just crazy to me to hear of the profession where all members are higher earners that are at $200k on the low end be put in the same bucket as teachers whose median might be $60k to $80k, in high cost of living areas.

Some doctors can get the several hundred thousand dollars, but many of them fall for scam investments and lose it all in them. Teachers are more likely be investing in safer things than a real estate deal. An index fund (or similar) will give you more diversity for the same investment and so is a lot safer, it won't grow as fast in the best case, but it won't drop nearly as far in the worst case. (I recommend target date retirement funds these days for even better diversity).

Not that real estate is a bad investment, but a single high value deal has no diversity and so it a bad investment. If you are putting several hundred thousand into a single investment your net worth really should be closer to ten million than one.

Note that I said some doctors above. If only 1% of doctors are good with money/investments, that is a lot of doctors, and they will in general have more money than any teacher.