Millionaire Habits That Will Change Your Life - Smart Money Bro

If you're stopping by the channel for the first time, hit the thumbs up button, like the video and subscribe to the channel. It's going to help the channel grow and that's the whole purpose. The whole mission of the channel is to help individuals, regular people be extraordinary with their money. So on this video, let's jump into the 10 things, 10 millionaire habits that helped me along the way. Number one, I started contributing to a 401k at my job. And I was a teacher back in the 90s for about seven years. And during that time, I put money towards a retirement plan, the teacher retirement plan. And then when I moved to work for the federal government, I transferred that money over to the federal government side. And I didn't take the money, I just transferred it. But contributing to my 401k, or I work for the government, so it's actually called a TSP, Thrift Savings Plan. But contributing to that has been huge in terms of my financial growth and on my path to becoming a millionaire. So that's number one. Number two, I focused on my network at least twice a year for the last 15 years. I have taken time out to figure my network. Sounds like no big deal, but it's been huge because it's allowed me to sit and take a look at my assets and try to work towards making them grow and take a look at my liabilities and work on making them decrease and go down. So I focused on my network. Now, does that mean I was perfect? No, nobody's perfect. But it means that over the course of 15 years, I've had a handle on what my net worth was. And that's what millionaires do. They focus. They focus on the money. Number three, I stopped borrowing money. One of the most important things I ever did was I stopped, and there's nothing wrong. Let me back up. There's nothing wrong with borrowing money for the right reason. If you're borrowing money on an asset that's appreciating like a home, I'm okay with it. I'm not of the opinion that says all debt is horrible. But I am under the opinion that says when you invest money in depreciating assets, assets going down, you're going to have a hard time becoming wealthy if you do that on a regular basis. Are there lots of millionaires that have car payments and things like that? Sure. But on your way to becoming a millionaire, it's better to not borrow money. I haven't had a car payment in probably 10 years because I stopped buying cars with debt. I stopped having a car payment. You wouldn't believe how tremendous that is. So I don't buy cars with debt. I buy cars with cash. And you've got to get to the point as you're starting to build your money up, you got to get to the point where you understand assets versus liabilities, appreciating versus depreciating. And for me, a car payment as a depreciating asset was one that I didn't want to have. It was my opinion and my choice not to have a car payment in the last 10 years. And it's been tremendous for me. If you can get to the point where you're comfortable purchasing cars cash for $5,000, $4,000, $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, $3,000, I suggest you do it because it will help you grow your money. So that's one thing I did. And again, the video is about what helped me. The 10 habits of millionaires that helped me. And so that means borrowing money was a problem. I had to stop. I had to cut it out. So number five, I'm sorry, number four is giving. You can't go broke giving. So that's been a big part of what I've done over the last 20 years is giving, tithing to a local church or giving to people that are less fortunate than you. One of the things I did, I had an eBay business for a long time. And one of the things I would always do for many years is I gave hundreds and hundreds of shoes away to a local domestic violence shelter. So if one of the things that you want to do as you begin to grow your money, and even when you don't have a whole lot of money, is give a portion of your money to others who are less fortunate than you are. If you've been blessed, and I know I've been blessed, it was very important that I give and help other people. You just don't go broke when you give. When you have that giving way of thinking, it helps. Number five is real estate. This one has been huge for me. So number five is real estate. So real estate for me makes up today about 40% of what my net worth is. I started buying houses back in 2000. And to this day, I still have two homes that I rent and own and manage on a regular basis. And it is tremendous when I look at the appreciation that they have obtained over the years. And I own a primary residence. Now you may be saying, hey, I live in an apartment. If you live in an apartment, that's cool. I know people that have lived in apartments and bought property. So consider real estate. It's a millionaire habit that has been tremendous for me. Number six, right here, speaking of real estate, the best piece of real estate that you could ever, ever develop is right between your ears. The best real estate in the world is your mind, how you think, what is your money mindset, what is your philosophy about money? One of the things that I did over the years is I have, since I was little, always understood one guiding principle. And that guiding principle for me has been responsibility, that I am responsible for what happens to me. It's helped in my relationships, it's helped with my money, it's helped in a lot of ways, understanding responsibility and accountability. Because here's what responsibility does for you. It gives you power. If you take responsibility and you embrace responsibility with your finances, it gives you power over your finances, over your money. It allows you to say, look, I have control over my cash, over my paycheck, what I do with my money, the decisions I make. So having the right mindset and the ability to take responsibility, because really if you do an exercise where you take all your assets and all your liabilities and you put them on either side of you and you figure out your net worth, your net worth is really a reflection of how you think about money or how you thought about money up to this point. Your net worth is a reflection of how you thought about money up to this point. Now that's going to be a rude awakening for some people, but for everyone, it should be empowering. Empowering to give you, it gives you power to know that, hey, this is my responsibility. It changes the way you think about your situation, about life, and about money. So consider your mindset, how you think about money. It makes a big difference. And it also, if you think in the right way, it puts you in a potential place of responsibility and that's power. So number seven, we're going to jump into estate planning. Estate planning is a millionaire habit because what it does is it gives you a vision. And one of the things I found out about wealthy people is that wealthy people think long term when it comes to their money. They don't think about the kicking it over the weekend. They think about the kicking it in two years, five years, 10 years. So I want you to think about an estate plan. You don't have to be wealthy to have an estate plan. If you've got $10,000, $20,000, $40,000 net worth, you need to be thinking about a will and on a larger scale, an estate plan. Because an estate plan is going to tell your money what to do when you're no longer able to tell your money what to do. It's important. And it's a millionaire habit. Millionaires think about money on a long term basis. So consider it. For me, my estate plan was done a few years back and I had always wanted to do one since I really started changing the way I thought and felt about money. And I finally got one done. Sure, it cost me $2,500 or so. But it's one of the best decisions I ever made because again, it brought me back to a place where I was in control of what happens to my money 10 years from now, 20 years from now, next year. It's a mindset thing. But getting an estate plan is definitely a millionaire habit that you should consider. So number eight. Number eight is big and it's something anybody can do. But number eight is your health. What good is having a bunch of wealth and a bunch of money if you're not here to enjoy it, right? So you've got to get your health together because wealth is not always about money. Wealth is about your relationships. Wealth is about your network of people. Wealth is about how you feel about yourself, your attitude. Wealth is about your health, how you take care of yourself. Do you eat right? Staying away from processed foods and fast foods. Are you eating beans and are you eating vegetables, raw vegetables? Are you drinking a lot of water? Are you eating lots of fruit and greens and the kales, the spinach, the arugulas, et cetera? Are you taking care of the temple that you have? Because your money, again, your money doesn't mean anything if you're in poor health. So that's a habit of millionaire people. That's one of the things I do. I walk on a regular basis. I exercise regularly. And I take good care of the one thing that I have control over 100% of the time is my body. Sure, things are going to come up. No human is perfect. But if you're taking care of your health, at least you're doing your part to manage your wellbeing, your physical. Number nine, let's jump into number nine because number nine is one of the fun ones. Number nine is multiple streams of income. So if you're just following the channel for the first time, you're just viewing this video and you've never viewed another video, you may not know this, but one of the side gigs that I do on the side is I do voiceovers. So I can have a very distinct voice. I can do an announcer voice. I can do a lot of different voices. So one of the things I do in terms of side gigs and extra streams of income is I do voiceovers. I get a lot of questions about that. I'm going to do more videos about voiceovers because everybody asks me, how did you get into voiceovers? So I do that on the side. I still run an eBay business on the side. I also manage rental properties on the side. I do things on the side to gain a little extra income. I don't get rich off of those things. I gain small amounts of income. I write a blog over at smartmoneybro.com. Check it out and feel free to subscribe to that one as well. But I do all those things because I have a skill set. I have enjoyment from them and there's some gifts and talents that I'm able to monetize outside of my nine to five to make a little bit of extra money. You can do that too. I don't care if it's plumbing, if you fix cars, I don't care if you knit sweaters or if you make caps, whatever you do, you can monetize those things for additional streams of income and you can do it as a sole proprietor. You don't have to go out and hire a lawyer or you can get an LLC, but you can just do it on your own to make that extra money. That's a key wealth building principle and it's one of the things that millionaires do is they find ways to make money in other sources of income besides their job or their business. So that's number nine. Number 10 is you got to get focused. You got to get serious. Most people don't have a money problem. Most people have a management problem because they don't take serious the job of managing their money. So you got to get focused and you got to get serious. We played when we were teens and we were in our 20s, but as you get in your 30s and especially your 40s, you got to start taking money seriously. So that's number 10. Get focused. Get serious about money. It doesn't mean you got to worship money. Never worship money because there's other things that are more important than money, but there's nothing wrong with focusing on money. People that have money, they focus on money. Doesn't mean they do anything to get money or they sell themselves out or they worship money. Having money is not the same as worshiping money. So I'm of the opinion that just because people have money, it doesn't mean they're evil or bad or did anything wrong to get it. They just focused on it and that's a millionaire habit. That's a mindset shift that a very poor, humble, from poor, humble beginnings came up and we believe that people that have money, they're just evil or they did something, they put somebody else down in order to get money and that's not true. That's a mind shift change that we all got to have. A lot of us that didn't come up with much, but get serious, get focused. Those are my 10 things, 10 millionaire habits that really placed me on the path to becoming a millionaire. Not there yet, three or four years, I'll be there. Take you guys along for the journey. So again, if you're stopping by the channel for the first time, please subscribe to the channel and hit the like button. It helps me and it helps the channel grow and remember, the best person to take care of the old you is going to be the young you. So with that said, take care of yourself, take care of others. I'll talk to you on the next video. Peace.