Based on a survey of 150 respondents and 16 timeline interviews with first-year university mathematics students in Sweden, we explore how the material resources and conditions available to them —mathematics capital— connect to their mathematical identities. We found that mathematics capital has bearing on how early in life students start to consider doing mathematics. We also found individually different trajectories among students with low mathematics capital into university mathematics. The study expands both existing theoretical and methodological ways of researching the material bearings of identity and opens up for new ways of understanding and exploring the conditions that may facilitate access to participation and success in university mathematics. It contributes to understanding on the social and cultural resources that students bring with them to start mathematics, thus complementing the insights that Simon Goodchild’s work had provided on the context of access to university mathematics.