Looking for a wealth expert.

Saving salary alone could not turn a standard job into £6 million in five years. A graduate architect starting out earns a modest salary, so reaching that kind of money requires huge investment gains or big risk.

Putting small savings into one super-successful stock like Nvidia, or catching a massive wave in crypto like Bitcoin, could turn thousands into millions over five years. It is like buying a winning lottery ticket: it is fast, but it relies on taking huge risks that usually fail.

As for whether this is realistic for current students dealing with the graduate crisis: no, it is not realistic or normal. Turning a standard degree into £6 million in five years requires rare luck or extreme risk, and relying on high-risk stock or crypto bets is never a reliable career plan for graduates.

It’s virtually impossible for a graduate to have made £6m in five years from salary alone. Allowing for income tax and NI, you’d probably need gross earnings of around £12m — roughly £2.4m a year.

Aside from inheritance, a lottery win or building/selling a business, the obvious alternative is taking very aggressive investment risk and being extremely lucky.

I’m also not sure about the five-year claim, as 2017 to today is nearly nine years. Someone buying Bitcoin in 2017–19 could have seen extraordinary returns by the 2025 peak, while Nvidia investors buying before its surge also made multiples of their money.

So a combination of concentrated bets could conceivably turn a relatively modest starting sum into millions.

But I’d be wary of confusing the outcome with genius. For every person who backed Bitcoin or Nvidia and became wealthy, many others made equally aggressive bets that failed. That’s survivorship bias: we see the winners and forget the losers.

A Leeds Beckett architecture grad making £6m in five years almost certainly did it through building equity, not salary: a start-up, property development, consultancy, or a stake sale. Architecture doesn’t pay that quickly. The leap comes from ownership, leverage, & timing. But the factor we often underestimate is luck. You can make your own luck by working hard and being open to opportunity, but being in the right place at the right time still matters enormously. For every grad who turns an open door into millions, there are countless talented people who never got the same opportunity. That’s what makes these stories exceptional rather than repeatable. For students, the takeaway isn’t “aim for £6m”. Focus on what you can control and improve the odds. Build skills and experience, create as many opportunities as you can, and own some equity where possible. None of it guarantees a windfall, but it puts you in the room when opportunity appears. When it does, be ready to take your shot.

You don't get to £6m on a graduate salary, you get there by owning a slice of something, not renting out your hours. Great story, but a terrible template: for every one that pulls it off, plenty more bet the same way and we just never hear about them. The bit worth stealing isn't the number, it's the instinct of owning something early, however small, instead of just working for a wage. Most of us left uni with a degree and debts, but this one apparently left with a brilliant business plan.

The usual route to a very big number five years out of university is owning shares in a company you built. A headline like that normally describes what someone believes the shareholding is worth, not money that has reached a bank account. Such a figure is hard to check: a small company need not send Companies House a profit and loss account, and micro-entities, a smaller category still, need only file a balance sheet. Capital gains tax is charged on chargeable gains accruing on a disposal, so a valuation on its own creates no charge. For students, the graduate market is hard and starting a business is a fair answer to it. ONS figures show 38.4 per cent of the UK businesses registered in 2019 were still trading five years later, and still trading isn't the same as profitable or valuable. Getting there is possible, and it's still reckless to plan a career around it. Start something because you want to run it, and judge it on what it pays you.