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It’s hard to save your way to wealth. It took the average millionaire in my Rich Habits Study between 12 – 32 years to accumulate an average of between $3.3 – $7.4 million.
When asked about the importance of saving, 88% of the millionaires in my Study stated that it was critical to success.
Almost all of the millionaires in my Study used three key strategies to grow their wealth.
#1 Automated Savings
Each Saver-Investor consistently saved 20% or more of their net pay, each pay check. Many accomplished this by automating the withdrawal of a fixed percentage of their net pay. Typically, 10% of their net pay went into employer-sponsored retirement accounts and the other 10% was automatically directed into a separate savings account.
Once a month, the Saver-Investors would then transfer their accumulated 10% monthly savings, into an investment account, such as a brokerage account.
#2 Consistent Investing of Savings
Because the Saver-Investors consistently invested their savings, their investments compounded over time. In the beginning of this Investment of Savings strategy, this compounding was not very significant. But after ten years, their investment wealth began to become significant.
Towards the final years of their working lives, using these two strategies, the Saver-Investors’ wealth grew to an average of $3.3 million.
Similarly, many of the Big Company Climber and Virtuoso Millionaires in my Study adopted these two strategies during their working lives, which significantly added to their stock compensation-related wealth, upon retirement.
The millionaires in my Study who pursued some dream and started a business, whom I call Dreamer-Entrepreneurs, did not have the ability to invest their savings, particularly in the early stages of the pursuit of their Dream. Whatever savings they did have were used as working capital, in those early years, in order to fund their dream.
But, interestingly, once most of these Dreamer-Entrepreneur millionaires began to realize success, in the form of available cash flow, they immediately pivoted and began to employ both strategies into order to preserve and grow the wealth generated by their success.
#3 Frugality
One of the common denominators for Saver-Investors, Big Company Climbers and the Virtuoso self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study, was being frugal with their money.
For these millionaires, this frugality began the moment they received their first paycheck.
For the Dreamer-Entrepreneur millionaires in my Study, their frugality started the moment their dream began to create enough cash flow to enable them to save and invest.
What does it mean to be frugal?
Being frugal requires three things:
- Awareness – Being aware of how you spend your money
- Focus on Quality – Spending your money on quality products and services and
- Bargain Shopping – Spending the least amount possible, by shopping around for the lowest price
On its own, being frugal will not make you rich. It is just one piece to the Rich Habits puzzle, and there are many pieces. But being frugal will enable you to increase the amount of money you can save. The more you have in savings, the more money you can invest.
Having money set aside in savings, also allows you to take advantage of opportunities that come along. Without savings, those opportunities pass you by.
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