6 Millionaire Habits That Changed My Life

What's up you guys, it's Graham here. So throughout these last few years, I've had the opportunity to speak with hundreds of people about their financial situation, learn what sets them apart, and see firsthand how they're able to grow their wealth from nothing into a mega fortune. From that, I've noticed a recurring set of money habits that almost all of them do consistently, day after day. Call it like the universal cheat code of money that has nothing to do with how early you wake up, how often you meditate, or how many books you read every month. Because trust me, some of the most successful people that I met don't do any of that stuff. Instead, they all seem to have these six money habits in common that help them save more money, make more money, and invest more money. Thankfully, nearly anyone could do it for totally free. That's pretty much guaranteed to work, as long as you actually do it.

But before I begin, the reason you're seeing this message right now is because my analytics have shown me that you have not smashed the like button yet for the YouTube algorithm. Please, every 30 seconds, a YouTuber like myself goes without the like button being pressed. Thankfully, you can help. For the low cost of just one like button being pressed, a financial YouTuber like myself will be blessed by the algorithm for another 24 hours, giving us enough of a push to keep making videos for another day. Without your help, our videos don't get enough engagement to be pushed out to a brand new audience. Because of that, they won't be able to learn of new financial habits that could help them make and save a lot more money. So just go and tap that like button oh so gently, and that would mean a lot to me. So thank you so much for your kindness, and as a gratitude for my appreciation, here is a really cool picture of an iguana.

All right, so thanks so much guys, and with that said, let's begin. Here, the first most effective money habit that you could begin working on today is to track your spending. I have to say, if there's just one point throughout this entire video that you choose to follow, let it be this one. Because I guarantee this will have the biggest impact in the rest of your life if you just stick with it. And if that's not convincing enough, nearly every single self-made millionaire that I've ever spoken to knows exactly where their money goes, how much money they spend, and how much they need to earn every single day to cover their overhead.

The reason for this is that in order to be good with money, you have to be meticulous about tracking how much money goes in and how much money goes out. It's why being good with money has really nothing to do with how much money you make, but instead, how much of it you actually get to keep. So here's the best solution to that: go and sign up for a budget tracking website like mint.com or personalcapital.com, which are completely free to use. Then pay very close attention to how much money you're making and how much money you're spending. I want you to see how much you spend on things that you don't even realize, or how much those small expenditures will add up over weeks and months.

This is something that I've done for almost 10 years now, and every single day I track all of my accounts. I see where my money is going, I see where I'm spending it, and I get to see how much I'm saving. This is one of those things that's difficult to start, but once it becomes ingrained in your everyday routine, you're not going to want to stop. I am such a firm believer that if you could just stick with this one habit for 60 days, it's gonna positively translate into every other aspect of your life as well. Like when you pay attention to that small three-dollar charge at lunch, you're going to pay closer attention to that thirty-dollar item you otherwise would have bought. And when you do that, you're less likely to blow three hundred dollars on that next gadget.

And when you've already gone that far, you're less likely to spend three thousand dollars over the next year on the brand new car. I would call this the trickle-up effect of spending that very few people talk about. But by starting off small, guaranteed, it's going to translate into other more expensive areas of your life as well.

Second, the really wealthy people that I've spoken to are all really good at saying no to want spending. These are often the instant gratification type expenses that all of us want to have immediately, without waiting. It's why so many people have grown so accustomed to the simplicity of just swiping a credit card and then making the minimum payments, so that way you could just have the gratification of buying it now. And it's also why so many people would rather just buy a lottery ticket and hope for the best instead of focusing on the core financial principles that would actually make them a mini fortune if they just followed it.

It's also why it's so common to see people living paycheck to paycheck, regardless of how much money they make. These are often the people who continually inflate their expenses to match their income, and as soon as they make more money, it's gone before they even realize it. But the most successful people that I met are all really good at delaying that gratification until they're able to comfortably afford what they want without that expense negatively impacting their finances. Typically, they'll only buy once they could afford to pay outright in cash, and if they can't afford to pay it off immediately, they don't buy it. They also carefully think to themselves, even if they can buy it, do they really need it? And will that make them happy?

And I have to say for myself, if there's something I want, I'll just wait a week to buy it. Most of the time after that week, the desire to own it just goes away. On the other hand, if there's something I've wanted for a while and I've thought about it carefully, and I've waited long enough for that excitement to go away, and I could afford to pay for it outright without that purchase affecting my finances, then I could actually justify buying it. Because what's life without a little fun here and there? That's why I challenge you to start getting in the habit of carefully analyzing everything you want and only buy something that you could afford to pay off outright after thinking it through and after prioritizing the other savings and investing goals.

I think we've all heard the saying, don't put the cart before the horse, and this applies here. Just like you shouldn't put the brand new car before the emergency fund, good money habits are all about order. By setting up the proper foundation now, you'll eventually get to the point where you could start spending your money on wants. But until then, delayed gratification goes a long way to being responsible and making that happen.

Third, the wealthiest people that I've seen all get their four free stocks by using the link down below in the description and depositing 100 on Webull. Because those stocks are potentially worth all the way up to 1,600. Okay, I had to find a funny way to plug that in there because the offer expires shortly. But seriously, the most successful people that I've seen all have a way of making their money invisible. As soon as they get paid or as soon as money goes in their account, they immediately move it over to their investments. They put it into a savings account that they don't touch, or they go and buy real estate with it. So it's out of sight, out of mind.

Unknowingly, this is a strategy that I've used throughout my entire career. In fact, I probably took it to an extreme because every year by December 31st, I would have invested all of my money to the point where I maybe only had a few thousand dollars in my checking account. And by doing so, that would light the fire underneath me to go and make more money so that I would actually have some money in my account. Since doing that, I've really believed in the practice that once I invest my money, it doesn't even exist anymore. I make it as hard as possible to sell or cash out for any reason, and instead I rely on making more money if there's anything I need to pay for or anything I want to invest in.

Now, psychologically, I think this strategy has a lot of benefits. One, you get the immediate reward of saving, and you feel like you're working towards something tangible because you could see the benefit of it firsthand. Two, you're forced to live off of less because your invested money is completely out of reach. I think the more hurdles you put between you and your invested money, the more you're just gonna find a way to make what you have work. And three, you get used to living on less, and you get used to saving more, that you won't want to stop that habit once you see it working.

I would highly recommend you try this for any excess money you have sitting in your account: just immediately go and transfer it to a high-yield savings account or go and invest it where it's out of sight. Then once it's there, just pretend like it doesn't even exist, and now you're less likely to spend it, and that money will continue to grow completely uninterrupted while you focus on earning and saving more money.

Fourth, the most successful people that I met never invest in anything they don't fully understand. Like, think about it, you're never going to see someone in Forbes talk about how lucky they were from an investment they found in the comment section, or maybe how they happened to guess their way into a fortune. Now, luck can absolutely play a small factor, but the people who end up doing really well financially all have a very deep understanding of where their money goes and the relationship between the amount of risk they're willing to take and the reward they're expecting to get.

The people who are all really good with money never panic, FOMO, and do investments because pretty soon it's going to be too late to get in. The truth is there will always be new opportunities in the future that will be just as profitable as the opportunities you see today, and there's never going to be just one single thing that you have to strike rich at. By understanding that there's an abundance of opportunities out there, you're never going to feel the pressure to want to pile into the latest craze without taking a step back, understanding what you're doing, and taking the time to make the right choice. Otherwise, what's going to happen is that you're going to lose money or you're going to get lucky a few times in a row and then lose in the future when you've invested more than you were willing to lose. So the sooner you learn this one, and the sooner you understand what you're investing in, the better.

A fifth, if you want a good money habit that will help make you a lot of money, it's realizing that you can't time the market. Now, when I say this, there's a big difference between finding a good opportunity or selling because you should diversify, versus panic selling because you think the market is going to collapse any day now. I think that was such a big lesson for so many people back in March, back when the markets dropped 40 to 80 percent, depending on what you were invested in. Back then, I saw way too many people sell around March because they felt the market was going to be dropping even further, and then they would buy back in even lower. But once the market started to go back up and recover, those same people did not buy back in because they were waiting any day now for the market to drop back down.

But then finally, once the market recovered to its normal levels again, those same people are sitting on the sidelines because now it's too expensive, and eventually it's got to come back down once more. I've seen this type of pattern over and over and over again. What I've noticed is that the type of person who waits for a drop is the same type of person who refuses to actually buy in when there is really a drop. It's like they're always waiting for it to go lower, and once it goes lower, then they wait for it to go even lower than that. And then once it starts going back up, then it's always going to be too expensive, and they'll wait for it to come back down again.

Instead, the best investors that I've seen just hold, they almost never sell, and they just consistently buy in. No one knows when the market is going to come collapsing down, and this year is showing us that even the most respected experts are wrong half the time. So just ignore all the white noise, and all you need to know is just consistently invest long-term and hold. That's it.

Finally, number six, the wealthiest people I know all have a thorough understanding of the tax code and how it applies to them. The sad reality is that for a lot of people, taxes are going to be your single biggest expense. It's likely to be more than your car payment, more than your house payment, and more money than you invest. Depending on where you live and how much money you make, you could very easily spend between 20 and 50 percent of your income on income taxes, state taxes, payroll taxes, and sales taxes, and all of it adds up very quickly.

To make matters worse, the tax code is never taught in schools. No one talks about it, and it's so complicated that most people have no idea how it works until they're forced to learn about it. I think this is the money habit that's really worth fully immersing yourself in once you've gotten everything else taken care of. That also includes hiring a good accountant who's patient with you and will answer your questions about the tax code to help save you more money. No joke, I probably call my tax person at least every few weeks to go over different strategies and things I've learned about, and just learn more about how taxes work. I've even paid as much as 500 an hour to talk to a tax attorney when I couldn't find the answers on my own.

These are all things that have helped save me way more money than I've spent. If you want to learn more about this because this is such a complex topic, just go to the YouTube search bar and type in "Graham Stephan taxes," and I have a few videos that I made already that go into more detail about how all of this works. Finally, the last piece of advice to put all of this together is just consistency. Not only do you actually have to do everything I just mentioned, but you also have to do it consistently, day after day, in order for it to actually work.

Shortcuts rarely ever exist, and more often than not, if you're looking for a quick and easy fix, you're soon going to be back to where you originally started, except now you're going to be further behind where you could have been had you just done it right the first time. All six items that I just mentioned are meant to be completely free ways that you could improve your finances, as learned from the best of the best. Really nothing is stopping you from working on each step immediately, and I guarantee if you just stick with this for 60 days, you're gonna see such a massive difference.

And I'm so sure about it that I'm willing to bet your own subscription that if it doesn't work, you could unsubscribe, and I don't say that lightly. But on the other hand, if it's helpful and it does work, then I would appreciate it if you do subscribe and hit the notification bell so YouTube notifies you anytime I post a video. I think it's a fair trade-off, and if you found this helpful in any way, just hit the like button on the video, and that lets me know that you enjoy content like this.

So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. As always, make sure to destroy the subscribe button and the notification bell. Also, feel free to add me on Instagram; I post pretty much daily. So if you want to be a part of it, feel free to add me there. As my second channel, The Graham Stephan Show, I post there every single day I'm not posting here. So if you want to see a brand new video from me every single day, make sure to add yourself to that. And lastly, if you guys want this for free stock season, link down below in the description. Webull's gonna be giving you four free stocks when you deposit 100 on the platform, with those stocks potentially worth all the way up to 1,600. At that point, it's pretty much like free money. So if you want the free stocks and the free money, use the link down below. Let me know which stocks you get. Thank you so much for watching, and until next time!