My Path To 1 Million Dollars

I hope to look back one day on this post and remember what I was doing in order to achieve my goal of becoming the first millionaire in my family. I'm going to share a few things that I am doing in order to help achieve that goal.

The Rule Of 3

If you can't afford three of them, you can't afford one of them. You often hear phrases for things like "Can't buy it twice then you can't afford it". However, I like to take that further. The goal is to keep your money working for you and not spending your money on things you can't afford. I'm pretty sure I heard this concept first from Jaspreet Singh, but I don't know where it was originally thought of. Sometimes we have to break this rule in an emergency situation, but if we have our emergency funds setup, then we can ensure that this is always something we stay with.

Establishing An Emergency Fund

We have to setup an emergency fund to prevent derailing us from getting to our goals.The worst thing possible is debt, and paying more for something because you have to pay back interest. NEVER PAY INTEREST until you have a network of 1 million dollars. After that point it may make sense to take a small loan that has a smaller interest rate than what you would normally get on returns in your invested money. However, doing this too soon could set you back and delay your time of becoming a millionaire. We are going to save 3 months salary for this, but I would highly recommend having at least 3 months expenses saved.

Putting My Money To Work

Having money in cash or a savings account is not going to get you anywhere these days. For me, I invest my money in the traditional systems as-well-as crypto. The goal is to get a consistent 10% per year return on my investment. My crypto has seen more than 100% growth this year alone, but it is also a very risky investment class. This means that while the rewards have been amazing, so is the risk. I'm going to slowly be increasing my crypto holdings throughout the next decade, but I am not about to YOLO everything on a single coin. While you do hear of some people making serious money doing so, the majority of people lose everything.

Increase My Income

I love my full-time job and I wouldn't change it for anything. To increase my income, I have to look for opportunities outside of my main job. Currently, I freelance for extra cash, trade stock options, and flip some low market cap crypto coins. I highly recommend studying before trying to increase income with day trading or getting into crypto. Taking a second job can help with income, but I need flexibility and so it's going to be gig work or things that I can do on my own time in order to increase my income.

Set Goals

It's very difficult to go from 0 to 1 million. If you don't believe me, just try counting to 1 million. So setup goals along the way. Maybe first we have a goal to hit $500. Then $1,000. After we hit $1,000 we make a goal for $10,000. Keep setting goals and keep hitting them. We're going to keep setting goals, knocking them out, and then keep going. Our main goal is not to retire early, but have enough money that I don't have to work. I can't see me not working, but I would be relieved knowing that I don't have to work.

Living Below My Means

Lots of people that I know have put themselves in terrible financial situations by trying to keep up appearances with all of their friends. They have the dream house, the dream car, and a whole bunch of debt that ruins it all. Our monthly expenses make up less than 25% of our income. Living below our means frees up tons of capitol to invest while still being about to do the things we love.

We prioritize the things that are important to us, and if it isn't important enough to us, then we don't waste our money on it. We don't care that our friends have nicer cars than we do, bigger houses, etc... Because we know they struggle making ends meet. We know that both spouses have to work or else they can't afford their debt-filled lifestyle. We know that if one of them lost their job they may lose their house or their cars.

A great example of this is I have a lot of friends who own a Yeti cooler. Guess what? They've never needed it to keep ice longer than a few hours. So why spend 10 times the price on something for the name brand when you aren't getting any benefit out of it? Instead, buy what you need, nothing less, nothing more. It's just as bad buying something that won't perform the function you need, so don't cheap out too much.

Enjoying My Life

We can all get too caught up in the dream. If I only... Once I have... If I had... these things are depressing. Don't compare your life to what others have and don't measure your life based on how you compare to other people. Be glad for what you have and enjoy spending time with people, not things. We all think the newest phone is going to change our lives for the better, but honestly its the person at the other end of the phone that we should be thinking about. Money is a tool to help us out in life. I don't want to lose sight of that in my attempt to build up wealth.