Becoming a millionaire is not usually an accident. Sure, you can win the lottery but the chances are 1 in 304 billion. And with modern medicine getting better and better your wealthy parents might just live longer than you do! You need a plan.
Now, I’m not pretending to be a millionaire. But I have had the privilege of growing up around a few. In this article I’m going to talk about some of the daily habits of the rich and successful. Hopefully you can apply them to your own business life and get closer to that magic number.
THERE IS MONEY EVERYWHERE YOU JUST HAVE TO GO FIND IT
Becoming a millionaire is becoming more common rather than the exception thanks to inflation. If you work for 40 years and save and invest just 20% of your after-tax paycheck a year, there is no doubt in my mind you will amass at least one million dollars in net worth thanks to historical compounding returns. Maxing out your 401K for 30+ years will also most likely lead to over $1 million dollars as well due to market returns and company matching as well. We’ve got financial planners, personal finance blogs, television, books and even free online wealth management companies like Personal Capital to help you build wealth. Much of the tools and information are free thanks to the internet. So many resources make building wealth much easier now than in the past.
A word of caution about millionaires
I grew up in middle-class family that enjoyed both prosperous times and really difficult times. I am part of a family where my uncles and my grandfather are exceedingly wealthy but my father isn’t. This strange situation gave me insights in to both the attitudes and habits of the rich and successful and those that didn’t quite make it.
I once heard someone close to me say that you can only become rich if you come from a rich family. And while it is probably statistically more probable, it is also a load of shit. Now, I am not going to pretend that growing up around people who have made massive fortunes does not give you an incredible insight in to how to behave and think like a successful person. It does. But it also cripples a lot of people with arrogance and laziness. And for every millionaire’s child who also became a millionaire, there is a millionaire’s child who squandered it all.
And then there are the countless number of self-made successful people. People who did it without the advantage of good advice from grandparents.
Genetic millionaires?
Becoming a millionaire is a lot like becoming a professional sports player. Sure, your genetic gifts and upbringing are a huge advantage but, for the most part, you would choose to have average genetic abilities but be hard working, diligent and smart as opposed to genetically gifted and none of the other things.
Millionaires are made by thinking and acting like a millionaire; not being brought up by one. Understanding this is possibly your biggest step.
How to shape & design your day like the rich
Let’s get into the juicy part of the post – what exactly can you do on a day to day basis that will help you become financially successful? Here are some things that I have noticed my family and other millionaires doing.
1. Get up early
Take 100 millionaires from around the world and I bet not one of them sleeps in til 8.30am. Most of them are up at six or seven working away while everyone else is still eating breakfast.
Getting up early is something that great athletes, history’s most remarkable saints and the world’s richest all do. Muhammad Ali would go jogging while it was still dark before starting his actual training. The Buddha and many of the Tibetan yogis would wake sometimes as early as 3am to start meditating. And most business people are up before the sun.
If you want to have both the energy and the time to fit in everything that needs to be done in a rich person’s day you need to start getting up earlier. Start small but gradually try and get moving as early as if healthy for you.
2. Exercise daily
Most of the rich people I know and have read about exercise on a daily basis. Now, whether this is a cause of being rich or a result of it I am not sure. It is a heck of a lot easier to play some tennis when you have several million in the bank.
Here’s the interesting thing; most of those rich guys and girls that play tennis and hit the gym every day also did so whilst their companies were still growing. It is not just a new-found rich person’s hobby. And the reason for this is that the more energy you expend exercising the more energy you create. People who are fit and health get sick less and they can work longer hours with better concentration than those who eat a high fat diet and just get by on caffeine.
So is it really easier to play tennis when you have millions of dollars? I’m not so sure. Most millionaires are busy as hell from sunrise to well after sunset dealing with new projects, day-to-day affairs and different commitments. They make time for exercise anyway.
3. Don’t entertain self doubt
If you are anything like me you will spend a good part of the day doubting yourself. It is something I am constantly working on. But the fact of the matter is that if you want to become a millionaire you need to start thinking like one. And they don’t waste time on thoughts about failure.
This attitude shift is probably the hardest part of becoming successful. In today’s world we are pressured into doubting ourselves on so many levels. We worry about bills, taxes, healthcare, the terrorist threat level, the economy’s stability… we doubt everything. And that doubt trickles down to ourselves. We hate risk.
Rich people hate risk as much as us but they deal with it anyway. It is like bravery – bravery is said to be not the absence of fear but the mastery of it. Its not that rich people don’t have self doubt, they just deal with it better than most.
If you eat a lot of sugar and fat you will eventually feel lethargic. If you take a lot of drugs you will eventually wreck your brain. If you follow after self doubt all day you will eventually fail at what you’re doing. Often times before you even begin.
4. Exploit what works and what works for you
One of the best bits of advice I have ever been given is to exploit what is working. I talked about it a little bit in my Podcast on distractions and have mentioned it elsewhere. You need to be laser focused on what works.
The internet marketing world is a confusing place. You can work on developing a community, sell a blog, start some black-hat operation, sell affiliates and so on. The choices and options are endless.
And within all those endless choices there is lots of room to get lost, get distracted from what is working. So if you find something that you are obviously good at and something that is making you money you should try to exploit it for as long as you can. Don’t waste hours in the day looking for something new when you have something that works.
5. Take an hour for lunch
A lot of new business people will come in to the game thinking that they can’t afford to take breaks, ever. Well you can. You are not that busy. Unless you are a surgeon, a lawyer due in court or stuck in an inflexible shift you have time for an hour lunch break.
Most of the rich people I know stop for at least an hour for lunch. Its not that they want to head off for fancy lunches and goof around; its because they recognize it as important for efficiency. If you constantly strain your eyes they get sore and you get a headache. The same is true for your concentration. You need to relax it. You need to move your legs, get the blood flowing and get some sunshine. It opens your mind and rejuvenates your spirit.
Don’t fall in to the laziness of working through lunch. Be disciplined and make the time for a proper break.
6. When you stop work, stop work
One thing I remember about my father during his successful days is that he never brought work home with him. He often got home at 7 to 7.30pm but he never did any work after that. That was family time. Rest time.
As a self-employed business owner I often fall in to the trap of working long into the night believing that I will get more work done. The irony? I rarely do. I am usually so tired that I don’t function properly or completely wiped out such that the day after is a write-off.
Don’t do it. Stop work at 5pm or 6pm and don’t do anything (including checking emails on your phone) til the next morning.
7. Make time each day for study
The great thinkers, politicians, business-people, generals, etc. of history all took time out of their day to study. Every day.
This is an extremely important point that many people overlook. Your education is not done once you finish College. It is not done once you crack your first $100,000 a year. You need to constantly learn about new methods and ideas.
The most important thing, however, is to study people’s failures. Look at what people and company’s did wrong so you can avoid those mistakes. History need not repeat itself with your bank account or product launch. Find out where others went wrong so you can avoid it.
8. Review your performance each night
I once heard Muhammad Ali say that one of the reasons he was so good was because he thought about and “felt” each successful punch for three seconds after he had done it. Scientists later discovered that this method had helped his muscles remember how to do it such that it became natural.
Similarly, I once heard Buddhist lama say that every night he sat up in his bed before going to sleep and thought about his day. Had he done more good than bad? If so then he felt happy about that and then went to sleep. If not he thought about all the negative and lazy things and made a promise not to do them tomorrow.
This is really smart. If you want to become successful at anything you need to evaluate your performance all the time. What mistakes are you making? What are you doing right? You need to know all the time.
Three Reasons Why The First Million Could Be The Easiest
1) Tremendous energy. When we first graduate from high school or college, we have a tremendous amount of energy to show what we can do after all our education. We’re hungry, motivated, and need to prove to others and to ourselves our worth. Unfortunately, so many of us piss away our youth by buying new cars, getting into credit card debt, not listening to our elders, and thinking the world owes us something. Forget it folks. Nobody owes us anything. But we owe it to ourselves and to our parents who sacrificed all that time and money raising us to give life everything we’ve got.
2) Less dependents. Most of us won’t have children by the time we graduate from college. As a result, we can focus 100% of our efforts on generating wealth by developing our careers or our businesses. Compare ourselves to middle aged adults with two children, a mortgage, and aging parents to take care of. We are like finicky Ferraris on a starting line ready to blow away our older model competitors.
3) Nothing to lose. When we graduate with nothing, we have nothing to lose. Compare that with people with property, stocks, and other investments during economic downturns, and they have everything to lose. With very little assets, we should be taking more risks. Now is the time to start a company, invest in that growth stock, take a new job opportunity, or move half way across the world on a hunch that good things might happen. If we don’t take risks while we are young, we certainly aren’t going to take them when we are old.
WOKE UP ONE DAY
I had no idea I became a millionaire at age 35 until two years later at the age of 37 when I did my first detailed net worth spreadsheet in 2007. It’s easier to achieve something when we don’t even realize what we’re doing. I was too busy saving, investing, working, and trying not to blow my money on things that I didn’t need. I was one of those “Super Motivated Boyfriends” (SMBs) who were impossible to lock down.
Like most people believe, 37 is a big milestone. Ever since college I told myself I was either going to make it, know that I was going to make it, or be an absolute failure by 37. The fear of being a failure at 37 with no job, no woman, no savings, no investments, and no world experiences made me so motivated to not mess things up. A painful two years of working 70+ hour weeks right out of college with difficult bosses also got me into overdrive to figure out a way not to work forever!
There was no fanfare when I discovered the seven figure milestone had been achieved, just the realization that time passes more quickly as we age. I had to make the most of my opportunities since nothing lasts forever. Years later, I’ve continued to grow my net worth with a variety of passive and alternative active incomes to keep me motivated to grow them into self-sustaining income sources on their own.
If you’ve been reading my posts from how to save for retirement if you don’t make much to people make much more than you think, there’s no magic behind wealth accumulation. Amassing wealth is about savings, discipline, perseverance, luck, the occasional X Factor, and the belief that you too deserve to be wealthy. Eventually you have more than enough so that you’ll either retire or keep on playing for fun.
It's Not Out of Reach for Many Persons
If the headline of this article "How To Become a Millionaire" sounds like an infomercial, don't be deceived. It's not. The advice on how to become a millionaire is based on proven tactics used by millionaires in the United States who did not inherit their money and do not earn millions of dollars a year.
In fact, you may not know it, but you may have one or more of these millionaires living next door to you. An important lesson learned from the book "The Millionaire Next Door" is the secret of how many Americans become millionaires: although they have nice homes and nice cars and take nice vacations, they are never extravagant. They do not have the largest house on the block. They do not drive the fanciest cars. Cars and houses are not status symbols to these millionaires next door.
So how do these people become millionaires? Many of them become rich by choosing a good career, working hard and advancing in that career, and using discipline to save and invest wisely.
You may be surprised at how relatively simple it is to become a millionaire. Here's how hundreds of thousands of others have done it:
Be cautious about spending money. Before spending money on large purchases, ask yourself:
Will I still be satisfied if I spend less?
Can I find a version of this product that costs less but is still good quality?
Would I rather have a TV with all the latest technology or would I rather be wealthy?
Would I rather buy a car that is so expensive that I have to stretch the payments out over five years or would I rather be wealthy?
Would I rather take a $5,000 vacation or would I rather be wealthy?
There's no secret to becoming wealthy. It's these day-to-day decisions that determine whether you will become a millionaire.
When people realize that they're making more money than they need to meet their expenses, they often decide to buy more luxurious cars or move up to a larger or nicer home. If they took the extra money and invested it instead, they could become wealthy.
So, here's the tried-and-true method of how to become a millionaire:
1. Have a written financial plan that includes your goals, your net worth, your debt-to-income ratio, your savings and investing plans, and your monthly budget.
2. Save money automatically by having at least 10% of your salary automatically deposited in your savings account each pay period.
3. Contribute enough to your 401(k) plan to maximize your employer match.
4. Educate yourself about investing.
5. Live below your means. Remind yourself that he who hesitates when it comes to shopping often decides he doesn't need the item after all and doesn't want it as much as he thought he did.
6. Avoid using credit cards unless you can, and will, pay the balance off in two months.
7. If you have credit card debt, concentrate on paying it off as quickly as possible. The interest you're paying is money you could be saving.
8. Invest in mutual funds and have money deducted from your bank account automatically every month to invest in these funds.
9. If possible and feasible, own your own business.
Millionaires are rarely created by constantly seeking out the highest returns on investments, or constantly moving money from one investment to another to chase higher returns.
Millionaires educate themselves about investing and seek professional advice, choose high-quality blue chip stocks or mutual funds with good long-term performance records, invest consistently, and hold onto these quality investments over a long period of time.
As you can see, this proven method of becoming a millionaire is not rocket science, and it really is attainable for many Persons.
Why all of this is bulls$t
Here’s the truth. Becoming a millionaire is a total waste of time unless you are going to use that money to help people. Warren Buffet (2010′s richest man in the world) once said that the greatest sin of all is to die rich. He has since convinced hundreds of other billionaires like Bill Gates to donate the majority of their wealth to charity when they die as opposed to leaving it in a family trust.
He is right.
Owning a successful business is hard work. It takes a massive amount of energy and time. While other people are out having fun and traveling or seeing shows you are in your office with a coffee and a computer working hard. So make sure you are doing it for the right reason. If you do it so you can have a nice car or house or so you can impress someone you hardly care about then I have the sad suspicion that you will have a lot of regrets on your death bed.
If, on the other hand, you want to make some money so you can help those less fortunate than you, contribute to charities and genuinely make a difference in people’s lives then chances are you will feel pretty happy about what you have had to sacrifice.
If you take anything away from this post I hope it is this. I hope you will work for the benefit of others or else turn off the computer and go and spend time with your kids.
Now, I’m not pretending to be a millionaire. But I have had the privilege of growing up around a few. In this article I’m going to talk about some of the daily habits of the rich and successful. Hopefully you can apply them to your own business life and get closer to that magic number.
THERE IS MONEY EVERYWHERE YOU JUST HAVE TO GO FIND IT
Becoming a millionaire is becoming more common rather than the exception thanks to inflation. If you work for 40 years and save and invest just 20% of your after-tax paycheck a year, there is no doubt in my mind you will amass at least one million dollars in net worth thanks to historical compounding returns. Maxing out your 401K for 30+ years will also most likely lead to over $1 million dollars as well due to market returns and company matching as well. We’ve got financial planners, personal finance blogs, television, books and even free online wealth management companies like Personal Capital to help you build wealth. Much of the tools and information are free thanks to the internet. So many resources make building wealth much easier now than in the past.
A word of caution about millionaires
I grew up in middle-class family that enjoyed both prosperous times and really difficult times. I am part of a family where my uncles and my grandfather are exceedingly wealthy but my father isn’t. This strange situation gave me insights in to both the attitudes and habits of the rich and successful and those that didn’t quite make it.
I once heard someone close to me say that you can only become rich if you come from a rich family. And while it is probably statistically more probable, it is also a load of shit. Now, I am not going to pretend that growing up around people who have made massive fortunes does not give you an incredible insight in to how to behave and think like a successful person. It does. But it also cripples a lot of people with arrogance and laziness. And for every millionaire’s child who also became a millionaire, there is a millionaire’s child who squandered it all.
And then there are the countless number of self-made successful people. People who did it without the advantage of good advice from grandparents.
Genetic millionaires?
Becoming a millionaire is a lot like becoming a professional sports player. Sure, your genetic gifts and upbringing are a huge advantage but, for the most part, you would choose to have average genetic abilities but be hard working, diligent and smart as opposed to genetically gifted and none of the other things.
Millionaires are made by thinking and acting like a millionaire; not being brought up by one. Understanding this is possibly your biggest step.
How to shape & design your day like the rich
Let’s get into the juicy part of the post – what exactly can you do on a day to day basis that will help you become financially successful? Here are some things that I have noticed my family and other millionaires doing.
1. Get up early
Take 100 millionaires from around the world and I bet not one of them sleeps in til 8.30am. Most of them are up at six or seven working away while everyone else is still eating breakfast.
Getting up early is something that great athletes, history’s most remarkable saints and the world’s richest all do. Muhammad Ali would go jogging while it was still dark before starting his actual training. The Buddha and many of the Tibetan yogis would wake sometimes as early as 3am to start meditating. And most business people are up before the sun.
If you want to have both the energy and the time to fit in everything that needs to be done in a rich person’s day you need to start getting up earlier. Start small but gradually try and get moving as early as if healthy for you.
2. Exercise daily
Most of the rich people I know and have read about exercise on a daily basis. Now, whether this is a cause of being rich or a result of it I am not sure. It is a heck of a lot easier to play some tennis when you have several million in the bank.
Here’s the interesting thing; most of those rich guys and girls that play tennis and hit the gym every day also did so whilst their companies were still growing. It is not just a new-found rich person’s hobby. And the reason for this is that the more energy you expend exercising the more energy you create. People who are fit and health get sick less and they can work longer hours with better concentration than those who eat a high fat diet and just get by on caffeine.
So is it really easier to play tennis when you have millions of dollars? I’m not so sure. Most millionaires are busy as hell from sunrise to well after sunset dealing with new projects, day-to-day affairs and different commitments. They make time for exercise anyway.
3. Don’t entertain self doubt
If you are anything like me you will spend a good part of the day doubting yourself. It is something I am constantly working on. But the fact of the matter is that if you want to become a millionaire you need to start thinking like one. And they don’t waste time on thoughts about failure.
This attitude shift is probably the hardest part of becoming successful. In today’s world we are pressured into doubting ourselves on so many levels. We worry about bills, taxes, healthcare, the terrorist threat level, the economy’s stability… we doubt everything. And that doubt trickles down to ourselves. We hate risk.
Rich people hate risk as much as us but they deal with it anyway. It is like bravery – bravery is said to be not the absence of fear but the mastery of it. Its not that rich people don’t have self doubt, they just deal with it better than most.
If you eat a lot of sugar and fat you will eventually feel lethargic. If you take a lot of drugs you will eventually wreck your brain. If you follow after self doubt all day you will eventually fail at what you’re doing. Often times before you even begin.
4. Exploit what works and what works for you
One of the best bits of advice I have ever been given is to exploit what is working. I talked about it a little bit in my Podcast on distractions and have mentioned it elsewhere. You need to be laser focused on what works.
The internet marketing world is a confusing place. You can work on developing a community, sell a blog, start some black-hat operation, sell affiliates and so on. The choices and options are endless.
And within all those endless choices there is lots of room to get lost, get distracted from what is working. So if you find something that you are obviously good at and something that is making you money you should try to exploit it for as long as you can. Don’t waste hours in the day looking for something new when you have something that works.
5. Take an hour for lunch
A lot of new business people will come in to the game thinking that they can’t afford to take breaks, ever. Well you can. You are not that busy. Unless you are a surgeon, a lawyer due in court or stuck in an inflexible shift you have time for an hour lunch break.
Most of the rich people I know stop for at least an hour for lunch. Its not that they want to head off for fancy lunches and goof around; its because they recognize it as important for efficiency. If you constantly strain your eyes they get sore and you get a headache. The same is true for your concentration. You need to relax it. You need to move your legs, get the blood flowing and get some sunshine. It opens your mind and rejuvenates your spirit.
Don’t fall in to the laziness of working through lunch. Be disciplined and make the time for a proper break.
6. When you stop work, stop work
One thing I remember about my father during his successful days is that he never brought work home with him. He often got home at 7 to 7.30pm but he never did any work after that. That was family time. Rest time.
As a self-employed business owner I often fall in to the trap of working long into the night believing that I will get more work done. The irony? I rarely do. I am usually so tired that I don’t function properly or completely wiped out such that the day after is a write-off.
Don’t do it. Stop work at 5pm or 6pm and don’t do anything (including checking emails on your phone) til the next morning.
7. Make time each day for study
The great thinkers, politicians, business-people, generals, etc. of history all took time out of their day to study. Every day.
This is an extremely important point that many people overlook. Your education is not done once you finish College. It is not done once you crack your first $100,000 a year. You need to constantly learn about new methods and ideas.
The most important thing, however, is to study people’s failures. Look at what people and company’s did wrong so you can avoid those mistakes. History need not repeat itself with your bank account or product launch. Find out where others went wrong so you can avoid it.
8. Review your performance each night
I once heard Muhammad Ali say that one of the reasons he was so good was because he thought about and “felt” each successful punch for three seconds after he had done it. Scientists later discovered that this method had helped his muscles remember how to do it such that it became natural.
Similarly, I once heard Buddhist lama say that every night he sat up in his bed before going to sleep and thought about his day. Had he done more good than bad? If so then he felt happy about that and then went to sleep. If not he thought about all the negative and lazy things and made a promise not to do them tomorrow.
This is really smart. If you want to become successful at anything you need to evaluate your performance all the time. What mistakes are you making? What are you doing right? You need to know all the time.
Three Reasons Why The First Million Could Be The Easiest
1) Tremendous energy. When we first graduate from high school or college, we have a tremendous amount of energy to show what we can do after all our education. We’re hungry, motivated, and need to prove to others and to ourselves our worth. Unfortunately, so many of us piss away our youth by buying new cars, getting into credit card debt, not listening to our elders, and thinking the world owes us something. Forget it folks. Nobody owes us anything. But we owe it to ourselves and to our parents who sacrificed all that time and money raising us to give life everything we’ve got.
2) Less dependents. Most of us won’t have children by the time we graduate from college. As a result, we can focus 100% of our efforts on generating wealth by developing our careers or our businesses. Compare ourselves to middle aged adults with two children, a mortgage, and aging parents to take care of. We are like finicky Ferraris on a starting line ready to blow away our older model competitors.
3) Nothing to lose. When we graduate with nothing, we have nothing to lose. Compare that with people with property, stocks, and other investments during economic downturns, and they have everything to lose. With very little assets, we should be taking more risks. Now is the time to start a company, invest in that growth stock, take a new job opportunity, or move half way across the world on a hunch that good things might happen. If we don’t take risks while we are young, we certainly aren’t going to take them when we are old.
WOKE UP ONE DAY
I had no idea I became a millionaire at age 35 until two years later at the age of 37 when I did my first detailed net worth spreadsheet in 2007. It’s easier to achieve something when we don’t even realize what we’re doing. I was too busy saving, investing, working, and trying not to blow my money on things that I didn’t need. I was one of those “Super Motivated Boyfriends” (SMBs) who were impossible to lock down.
Like most people believe, 37 is a big milestone. Ever since college I told myself I was either going to make it, know that I was going to make it, or be an absolute failure by 37. The fear of being a failure at 37 with no job, no woman, no savings, no investments, and no world experiences made me so motivated to not mess things up. A painful two years of working 70+ hour weeks right out of college with difficult bosses also got me into overdrive to figure out a way not to work forever!
There was no fanfare when I discovered the seven figure milestone had been achieved, just the realization that time passes more quickly as we age. I had to make the most of my opportunities since nothing lasts forever. Years later, I’ve continued to grow my net worth with a variety of passive and alternative active incomes to keep me motivated to grow them into self-sustaining income sources on their own.
If you’ve been reading my posts from how to save for retirement if you don’t make much to people make much more than you think, there’s no magic behind wealth accumulation. Amassing wealth is about savings, discipline, perseverance, luck, the occasional X Factor, and the belief that you too deserve to be wealthy. Eventually you have more than enough so that you’ll either retire or keep on playing for fun.
It's Not Out of Reach for Many Persons
If the headline of this article "How To Become a Millionaire" sounds like an infomercial, don't be deceived. It's not. The advice on how to become a millionaire is based on proven tactics used by millionaires in the United States who did not inherit their money and do not earn millions of dollars a year.
In fact, you may not know it, but you may have one or more of these millionaires living next door to you. An important lesson learned from the book "The Millionaire Next Door" is the secret of how many Americans become millionaires: although they have nice homes and nice cars and take nice vacations, they are never extravagant. They do not have the largest house on the block. They do not drive the fanciest cars. Cars and houses are not status symbols to these millionaires next door.
So how do these people become millionaires? Many of them become rich by choosing a good career, working hard and advancing in that career, and using discipline to save and invest wisely.
You may be surprised at how relatively simple it is to become a millionaire. Here's how hundreds of thousands of others have done it:
Be cautious about spending money. Before spending money on large purchases, ask yourself:
Will I still be satisfied if I spend less?
Can I find a version of this product that costs less but is still good quality?
Would I rather have a TV with all the latest technology or would I rather be wealthy?
Would I rather buy a car that is so expensive that I have to stretch the payments out over five years or would I rather be wealthy?
Would I rather take a $5,000 vacation or would I rather be wealthy?
There's no secret to becoming wealthy. It's these day-to-day decisions that determine whether you will become a millionaire.
When people realize that they're making more money than they need to meet their expenses, they often decide to buy more luxurious cars or move up to a larger or nicer home. If they took the extra money and invested it instead, they could become wealthy.
So, here's the tried-and-true method of how to become a millionaire:
1. Have a written financial plan that includes your goals, your net worth, your debt-to-income ratio, your savings and investing plans, and your monthly budget.
2. Save money automatically by having at least 10% of your salary automatically deposited in your savings account each pay period.
3. Contribute enough to your 401(k) plan to maximize your employer match.
4. Educate yourself about investing.
5. Live below your means. Remind yourself that he who hesitates when it comes to shopping often decides he doesn't need the item after all and doesn't want it as much as he thought he did.
6. Avoid using credit cards unless you can, and will, pay the balance off in two months.
7. If you have credit card debt, concentrate on paying it off as quickly as possible. The interest you're paying is money you could be saving.
8. Invest in mutual funds and have money deducted from your bank account automatically every month to invest in these funds.
9. If possible and feasible, own your own business.
Millionaires are rarely created by constantly seeking out the highest returns on investments, or constantly moving money from one investment to another to chase higher returns.
Millionaires educate themselves about investing and seek professional advice, choose high-quality blue chip stocks or mutual funds with good long-term performance records, invest consistently, and hold onto these quality investments over a long period of time.
As you can see, this proven method of becoming a millionaire is not rocket science, and it really is attainable for many Persons.
Why all of this is bulls$t
Here’s the truth. Becoming a millionaire is a total waste of time unless you are going to use that money to help people. Warren Buffet (2010′s richest man in the world) once said that the greatest sin of all is to die rich. He has since convinced hundreds of other billionaires like Bill Gates to donate the majority of their wealth to charity when they die as opposed to leaving it in a family trust.
He is right.
Owning a successful business is hard work. It takes a massive amount of energy and time. While other people are out having fun and traveling or seeing shows you are in your office with a coffee and a computer working hard. So make sure you are doing it for the right reason. If you do it so you can have a nice car or house or so you can impress someone you hardly care about then I have the sad suspicion that you will have a lot of regrets on your death bed.
If, on the other hand, you want to make some money so you can help those less fortunate than you, contribute to charities and genuinely make a difference in people’s lives then chances are you will feel pretty happy about what you have had to sacrifice.
If you take anything away from this post I hope it is this. I hope you will work for the benefit of others or else turn off the computer and go and spend time with your kids.
