The number of college students I meet these days whose life goals are purely to accumulate wealth is getting pretty distressing.

They pick their career paths based on the path of least resistance to "getting rich".  When they meet me and ask me questions, my answers tend not to be reassuring.

What I tell them is this: Do something you love that happens to make money. Because if you love what you do, you'll tend to get very very good at it.  And only through being the top of your career path, whatever that might be, will you ever make a lot of money.

There is, a second problem they have to face too -- to love what you do you can't have money be the object.  I got into computer game development and desktop utility software because I loved doing it.

For instance, back in the late 90s, when we were fiddling around with customizing the way Windows looked, nobody had any idea if anyone wanted to do this sort of thing.  The term "skinning" wasn't really known outside of Quake yet.  And there was, contrary to what some people have tried to argue, no "community" of skinners or developers out there.  But we loved tinkiner with how our computers looked and felt and over time found other people who felt the same and teamed up.  But we had no idea whether it would make money nor did we really care.

The problem with materialism as a goal is that it is ultimately empty.  The first problem is that money is a means. Not an end.  Personally, I tend to use money to buy me time.  That is, I'll purchase services to provide more time that I can then spend with my family (for example).

The second problem with materialism is that you get into diminishing returns more rapidly than many people (especially ambitious college students) realize.  The lifetstle of a billionaire and someone who has $50 million is probably indistinguishable.  By contrast, there's a huge difference in lifestyle between someone who makes $20k and $50k.

In my limited experience, I'd say the real point of dimishing returns hits somewhere after $10 million in liquid assets.  You can buy a dream home for $5 million (if you don't live in a super expensive area to begin with).  The best cars that aren't obnoxiously conspicuous are less than $200k.  And a chartered private jet costs about $10k per ride. 

In short, what happens after $10 million is you simply have more of the same.  It starts happening actually before that.  So the quality of life of the person who brings in $4 million a year and $20 million a year might be remarkably difficult to discern -- materially.

But the quality of life of someone who loves what they do for a living and has time to spend with their friends and family is very easy to discern.