When chatting with my fiance recently, she said to me, with a smug face 'I'm so much younger than you and already earn the same income'.
I was like 'er... not... really'.
On paper, she earns more than me. I get taxed less in my salary so my raw income is higher, but her family bought her a house she now rents and gets a nice monthly wad of cash - ah, the luxuries of family wealth I shall never experience.
But I was quick to inform her that, in terms of work per hour, she's earning significantly less than myself.
I arrive at work at 8:30, start working at maybe 11:30. Teach a class at 12 for 45 minutes, then chill out until about 4:50 when i go home. The second I clock out, any thought about work is out of my head. From 4:50, it's me time. I'm getting my podcasts on, reading my book, or whatever else. When I get home, I play my game, or do the usual duties like cat cleaning/feeding, watch videos, make a bit of music, food, yadda yadda.
On alternating days I work a bit more, I have 3 classes. Classes that I absolutely enjoy and because they are already my passion, very little preparation is needed: Choir, Guitar and Composition. I also have various meetings, band club and such, but I probably have more free time at work for myself than anyone I've ever known. (This, to be clear, isn't just sheer luck or white privilege, I carved a path directly to this outcome over many years, starting from 10-hour work days with zero breaks and 5-days off per year)
During that downtime, I play/learn the piano, guitar, write music, chat, videos, enrich myself, work out a bit, or just do absolutely nothing. I slowly, over the week, keep up with all the necessary paperwork but it's so routine now it takes no time at all.
If I translate my income to the hours of work I put in, it's a pretty fantastic return.
The fiance, on the other hand, has zero work-life balance. Long story short, the workload gets taken home, can occasionally go into 3-4am, weekends, holidays, any time. There is no clocking out. Well, there is, but you're expected to continue regardless for free.
Translate that lifestyle into an hourly wage and you're on far less than minimum wage.
This is by no means uncommon in Asia. In fact, this is basically the way of life here. Shops are open until 10 or later as standard, and can be a shock to many going to England when the sun is still up for another 5 hours and yet all the shops are closed.
Japanese people are famous for being culturally required to stay as long as possible at work, even if they're not doing anything, because if they come home 'on time', it's an embarassment to your family who think you're not working hard to provide.
I understand that you have to climb ladders to get anywhere in life beyond a basic livable wage, but I also understand that nobody ever got rich on a salary. Very few, anyway. Doctors, Lawyers and the like.
But even these high flyers for the most part inherently understand true wealth comes from elsewhere. While the young and naive save up, locking their money into their banks for a little return, people with some financial knowledge turn to investment, real estate, that kinda thing, or maybe starting their own business if they have that kind of skillset.
Money doing nothing is money lost. Even in normal times, your money depreciates in value 2% per year. It's like stuffing your money under your bed, and every New Years' Eve, you throw 2-5% of your cash bed out the window (or recently, 11-20% in UK... jesus christ).
Money has to do something. Money has to be generated while you sleep if you want to make your time as valuable as your perceive it. Everybody here knows this already of course.
Well, I'm not that good at financial stuff myself, but my money is diversified, at the very least: In Hive, HBD savings with 20% APR, Bitcoin, UK savings account with 4.6% APR, liquid, forex, and in smart portfolios tracking Berkshire Hathaway and such - Not to forget stakes in 
I watch this stuff every day, but its generally left to generate its own income. Still pretty small at this point: $40 profit here, $45/month there, $300/month over there. But it's all compounding, it's all adding up to something bigger.
This is what our conversation concluded with, as I once again try to encourage her to make her money active, rather than passive. It's an exciting prospect, although to be fair it's really hard to get your money involved in things when you're a Chinese citizen, which is why generally everybody puts things in real estate, since every other method is heavily controlled and restricted for the average 周 blogs, and coated with a thick goo of shark loaning legal scams and the like. But it's worth a try!
Anyway, in the meantime, I keep earning my little salary at work, doing the bare minimum of something I truly enjoy doing - until I no longer have to, and I can go my own path. How long that will take depends on how smart I am with the money I have I suppose.
I don't have the credentials, the experience, the charisma nor the willpower to become a narcissistic, sociopathic workaholic who will stop at nothing to climb to the top of the pile of corpses I leave in my wake, and I think it would be foolish to kid myself in thinking I could just one day slap myself, wake up, and just find a new, permanent drive to become a financial powerhouse with 3 masters degrees in business, start my own multi-million dollar enterprise and so forth.
It ain't happening. But silently accruing wealth? That can happen. I technically have enough for a downpayment on a property in the UK, but while I'm not there physically, it's nigh on impossible. But that is my next step. It's probably for the best that I wait anyway since the market is a bit... shaky at the moment. Not as predictable as it usually is.
China meanwhile has its own economic problems, giving out 0% inflation as the entire society decides they simply can't afford to buy anything, as 80% of their entire wealth is in housing, so having money in the UK while the interest rate is high and inflation rate has dropped almost to normal, and in crypto that I trust (literally just Hive, HBD and BTC, fuck the rest), it feels like the best of both worlds.
Anyway like I said, I'm not confident that I'm even a level above a n00b when it comes to this stuff, so if anyone wants to recommend paths to take that aren't shitcoins and dodgy get rich quick ponzi schemes, hit me up!