7 INCREDIBLE Daily Habits from REAL Self-Made Millionaires

So, I don't know about you, but my goal when I retire is to become a millionaire. And not just a millionaire, but like a multi-millionaire. And I think for millennials in this day and age, we have to aim for that because the cost of living is just going up all over the place. So, I had to take this to the streets and find out from real self-made millionaires what their daily habits are, how they got to become a millionaire, and really simple strategies that you can implement today. Hey guys, it's Justine with Debt-Free Millennials, the channel to help you crush your debt and live payment-free. So, this may seem like far, far future financial goals for you. However, you can start implementing daily financial habits that get you to millionaire status. So, I reached out to a handful of millionaires and I asked them what are some of their habits that got them to where they're at. Now, you're like, Justine, how do you know so many millionaires? Well, I'm a part of the FinCon community. FinCon stands for Financial Conference. It's a huge conference that pulls together media and influencers from the personal finance industry. And so, naturally, it attracts people who are really good with money and, therefore, a lot of millionaires. So, I was like, yes! I asked the FinCon community, those with millionaire status and up, what exactly they did to help them become millionaires. Let's go over these seven daily habits that you can implement starting now. Our first tip comes from millionaire Stephanie Gatewood, who is a blogger over at FinancialFreedomCrew.com. And she says, Automate your retirement savings and let compound interest do the heavy lifting. I love this because so often, I think we just get into this mindset of pay ourselves today, take care of the bills today, and then whatever's left over, we'll set aside for tomorrow. And so, when you automate your retirement savings, the work is already done for you and you don't have to worry about whether or not you actually contributed to your retirement account. So, this works really well for built-in 401ks with your employer. But if you want to do outside investing on your own, maybe with a Roth IRA, or you have a brokerage account, set it up once a month, build in that savings habit into your budget. Even if it's small, with $20 or $50, then you can always increase that limit as you get better and better with your finances. The next habit comes from Michael Kwan, who is a blogger over at FinanciallyAlert.com. And his tip is to set goals and review them monthly. Now, this seems really, really simple and maybe kind of like vague, but I loved what he said in his blog post on 8 Millionaire Habits. He says, Some of the most simple goals are just figuring out your annual expenses and multiplying that by 25. Let's say your annual expenses are $100,000 per year. You'd need $2.5 million to live off of a safe withdrawal rate of 4%. Now, this goes off of that rule of 4% that he's talking about. And the multiplying by 25 is that whole financial independence, retire early, the fire mentality. So if you want to safely live off of your investments, take your annual expenses, multiply it by 25, and then you can withdraw at the safe rate of 4%. There's research that backs this up. I will drop a couple of links below for you guys to check out some articles. But I love this habit by Michael. Our third habit comes from millionaire Tracy Jepson of TracyJepson.com. And her habit, being debt-free. I love that so much, Tracy, because that's exactly what Debt-Free Millennials talks about, living a debt-free life. And one of the best ways that you can achieve and acquire wealth is by not having any debt, not taking on more debt, and really living with intention to being debt-free. That's all that it takes. If you guys have seen any of my videos, I have a whole playlist on getting out of debt, talking about debt snowball versus debt avalanche, what you can do. Also, if you're on your debt-free journey currently and you just need help reigning in the spending and figuring out some methods to pay off that debt, check out my How to Control Your Spending Workbook, which is linked below in the description box. Habit number four comes from millionaire Doug Norman, who is author of the Military Guide to Financial Independence and Retirement. And he says the core habit is high savings rate. Everything else follows from that. So you can work on building your savings by starting, again, small. You have to start somewhere, and oftentimes the best ways is to start small because that's going to keep you consistent with your savings rate. So if you can start by saving $100 each month, try that out for three months, see how you do. Then increase it to 150, 200, so on and so forth until you really can get a good savings rate. Now these last three tips are some of my favorites. I saved the best for last, and I'm going to start with Joseph Hogue, who is a YouTuber over at Let's Talk Money with Joseph Hogue. Be sure to subscribe to his channel if you want to check out other investing tips. He knows his stuff, and he's been a personal mentor for me as I've been gaining traction on YouTube. So he recorded a quick video for you. Let's hear what he has to say. Hey, my debt-free millennials, Joseph Hogue here with the Let's Talk Money channel. And I asked Justine if I could personally share two ideas with you, two books that helped me create not one but two million-dollar businesses. First is the idea of a 12-week year, a book by Brian Moran that says instead of making those one-year goals, which really means absolutely nothing to anybody because you have no urgency until December rolls around, instead you plan your goals for every 12 weeks or three months. Break those 12-week goals down into tasks you can get done each and every week. It's an amazing concept and I've been able to get three or even four times the amount done each year using it. Combine this with the system in Atomic Habits by James Clear and you will be unstoppable. In this one, Clear reveals what you can do to destroy your bad habits and create the good ones that are going to stick. You're going to understand how to create those habits and then use that goal system to accomplish anything. So I highly recommend both books and please stop by Let's Talk Money and let me know when they change your life. Alright, this next habit comes from millionaire Lisa Duke. She's a financial coach and I loved what she had to say. She says, focus on net worth. In this country, we focus on how much we earn, the house we live in, the car we drive, and even our credit score over net worth. There's no credit score so high you can retire on it. I love this and if you guys didn't check out my latest video on why you shouldn't put an emphasis on a credit score, be sure to check that one out. I think we get so caught up in the tangibles that we forget about, okay, what is my actual net worth? So the best tool that I use is Personal Capital to track my net worth. And basically, you can plug in all of your different accounts. So yes, you do have to provide that information inside of this platform, but you plug in all of your financial accounts and it is going to look at all of your assets, so your investments, your cash, do you have any valuables like a home, a car, and then it's going to look at all of your liabilities. If you have debt, mortgage, car loan, all that's going to subtract that out and get you your net worth number. So I love that she says to focus on your net worth and if you're interested in tracking that, Personal Capital is a great tool and it's free. Okay, the last habit, lucky number seven comes from my good friend and millionaire Andy Hill who is a podcaster over at Marriage, Kids, and Money and I love what he has to say. He says, live on a lot less than you make, boom, done. It's just as simple as that. Live below your means and he talks about this because he says, there were periods of time we saved 50% of our income. We took that extra money and used it to pay off our debt, our mortgage, and invested in tax-advantaged vehicles like the 401k, Roth IRA, and HSA. So Andy's habit of living on a lot less than you make kind of goes along with Doug's habit where he says, you know, the core habit is a high savings rate and I think a lot of us can experience lifestyle creep, so as we make more money, we spend more money or we upgrade our lifestyle and I absolutely want you to feel that you can upgrade and you don't have to live in some crappy apartment forever and ever in order to become a millionaire. It doesn't have to work that way. However, as you increase your income, make sure that your savings rate is increasing as well and you can still have money leftover for fun, travel, whatever fills your cup that you want to set aside money for, you can absolutely do that as well so long as you are getting that savings rate up. Thank you so much, millionaires, for helping me out with this video. This is something that I aspire to, to achieving really like financial independence, becoming a millionaire. I think that would be so awesome and these habits aren't hard to follow. If you can make a plan and really visualize what life would be like once you hit millionaire status, oh my gosh, the freedom that it would unlock for you. So if you guys are interested in hearing more from these millionaires and what they have to say, I will link to their platforms below. Be sure to check out everybody's blogs, their YouTube channel, the podcast from Andy Joseph's YouTube channel. They have a wealth of knowledge and I feel like the more that you can understand from a variety of sources, the more that you can make an informed decision for yourself in your financial journey. So I'd like to know what was your favorite daily habit out of this list. If you're interested in living debt free and eventually becoming a millionaire, ha ha, we're going to make this happen. Be sure to check out all of my videos on my channel and I'll catch you guys in another video. Bye for now.