Forget your salary—this space founder says a simple kids’ marshmallow experiment can reveal whether you’re destined to stay middle class for life.
The classic psychology experiment sees four-year-olds given one marshmallow and a choice: eat it now, or wait until the researcher returns and get two. Most kids can’t resist. And according to Dylan Taylor, philanthropist and CEO of Voyager Technologies, that same impulse is exactly what keeps most people stuck financially in adulthood.
“It’s this deferred gratification,” Taylor, who made his first million before hitting 30, explains to Fortune. “It’s like, do you have the mental discipline to defer your gratification?”
In his view, grown adults face the same choice every time they sign a car lease or tap a credit card for something they can’t yet afford.
“I see a lot of those things—cars and planes and boats and all that stuff…. I support all that stuff when you can afford it, but most people lean into it before they can afford it.”
The exception, he admits, is “good” leverage, like a mortgage on a primary home, which in the U.S. often comes with tax benefits and has historically been a decent long-term investment.
But car leases, credit card debt, recurring monthly payments on things that are sinking in value—these are the habits he sees keeping people stuck. And that, he suggests, is the adult version of eating the marshmallow the second the researcher leaves the room.
Dave Ramsey says he can 100% tell who will stay middle-class by their car
Personal finance guru Dave Ramsey has long argued that he can tell who will stay middle class by whether your driveway has the latest car (or two) on finance. “Those people are going to stay middle-class until they break that habit,” Ramsey said. “It’s a huge indicator.”
“We tell folks not to buy a brand-new car until you have a net worth of a million dollars,” he added.
But actually, even then, when you look among the ultra-wealthy, many opt out of wasting their money on status symbols that drain rather than build wealth. The youngest self-made female billionaire, Lucy Guo; the late founder of Ikea, Ingvar Kamprad; and actress Kiki Palmer all have a beat-up old car in common.
Mitzi Perdue, the billionaire heiress of Sheraton Hotels and Perdue Farms, doesn’t even own a car—let alone a flashy one. She gets around by riding the subway instead.
“The Hendersons and the Perdues did not encourage extravagance,” Perdue previously told Fortune. “Nobody wins points for wearing designer clothes.”
Perhaps most famously, legendary investor Warren Buffett has long adopted a frugal lifestyle: he never spends more than $3.17 on breakfast, he lives in the same house he bought for $31,500 in 1958, and drives a car that’s over 20-years old.
The man worth $144 billion is often quoted for saying: “I’m not interested in cars, and my goal is not to make people envious. Don’t confuse the cost of living with the standard of living.”
Dylan Taylor made his first million at 27 years old—but he wasn’t born into wealth
Building real, lasting wealth is perhaps harder than most people think. Research from the Resolution Foundation found that in the U.K., the average worker would need to save their entire salary for 52 years—with zero bills—to raise the £1.3 million ($1.7 million) needed to join the wealthiest 10%.
In the U.S., the bar is even higher: workers say they’d need at least $2.3 million to feel wealthy, and a staggering $4.4 million to achieve the full American Dream. At the average salary, reaching that figure would take nearly 70 years—longer than most people’s entire working lives.
And yet, rather than saving, many Americans are moving in the opposite direction. In fact, debt has been steadily increasing year on year since 2013 to record highs. Total household debt hit $18.8 trillion at the start of 2026, with vehicle loans alone hitting $1.66 trillion—up $18 billion in a single quarter.
Strip out mortgages, and total non-housing debt stands at $5.16 trillion.
Of course, resisting the urge to lease a Tesla won’t make you a billionaire overnight. But Taylor knows firsthand how hard it is for ordinary workers to move from “getting by” to comfortable.
He didn’t grow up wealthy. His mother was 19 when he was born. His father was serving in Vietnam. The early years were financially tight, and he says that shaped everything. “I think for me that’s why I was so focused on being successful, making money,” he says.
Before hitting 30, he was already making millions running public companies across electronics, finance, banking, and real estate. At 37, he had an “existential crisis” and started over—this time in the space industry, ticking off his childhood dream.
Voyager Technologies is now space technology and defense contractor that builds key systems and infrastructure for civil, commercial, and national security missions.
But it wasn’t until last year (at 53 years old) that Taylor became a billionaire, after taking Voyager public on the New York Stock Exchange. Proof perhaps that fortune favours those who wait.
