There is no best way. There are many ways to skin a cat.
With that being said, there is only one way to get suitably wealthy.
That is to live below your means and invest the surplus well. If you spend 100% of what you earn, you will never become wealthy, no matter how much you earn.
This quote says it all.
It isn’t just in America that people get wealth and income mixed up. It is a global thing.
What is different about wealthy people is how the money was made.
Some got wealthy by “get rich slow”, in other words investing patiently on a middle-income for decades.
Others had a more aggressive wealth strategy and decided to scale a business online.
It really depends on your skills and desired lifestyle. If you want a work-life balance, then the get rich slow route is probably the best.
That is because you can get wealthy without working too hard. It just requires patience over decades.
With get rich slow, you also don’t need to take frugality to the extreme.
You can just patiently invest relatively small amounts for decades.
If you want something which is more aggressive then you either need:
To start your own business
Get paid on results and not time
Or take other kinds of risks
Or be much more aggressive with how much money you invest. More aggressive than is required to get rich slowly over decades.
To be willing to do things others aren’t willing to do.
In other words, a more aggressive wealth management strategy requires more sacrifices than the slow version.
Those sacrifices might mean time (working harder), being more frugal and/or taking more risks.
I have never met a person who has gotten wealthy relatively quickly without needing to make one of those sacrifices, unless they just got lucky via an inheritance or something like that.
So the best way also depends on what sacrifices you are willing to make.