How To Build Wealth In Your 20s - The Easy Way

What's up, Gram? It's guys here.

So lately, I've gotten really into the series from GQ Sports called "My First Million," where athletes share exactly how they make and spend a lot of money. Usually, it's a train wreck of cars, jewelry, and expensive bottle service. But sometimes, they wind up building their wealth, making extremely lucrative investments, and setting themselves up on a trajectory of complete financial independence.

In my case though, I didn't always make the perfect choice. Given how I've been inspired by their series, I thought it would be fun to break down exactly how I made and spent my first million dollars by the age of 26. All I need to do is pay for my financial freedom master class starting at the low cost of just $18.99—just kidding! All I ask for in return is that if you enjoy the video, consider subscribing if you want to see more personal finance content. Or hit the like button for the YouTube algorithm because it helps me out a lot. That's it, and with that said, let's begin.

So first, it's important to mention that I never started out from a family who came from money. It wasn't like I had a long-lost uncle who passed away and left me a million dollars. Although, hey, if I have a wealthy uncle out there—no! But for real, growing up, at times, money was an issue. I remember seeing the struggles it caused. I saw firsthand how difficult money was to come by. From a young age, I saw that if you want to be financially secure, you have to work hard and save. And that's what I did.

In high school, I worked part-time at a marine aquarium wholesaler, taking pictures of fish and coral. Honestly, I enjoyed the job so much that I would have done it for free. But by working after school, weekends, and holidays, I was able to save my first few thousand. Unfortunately, though, after a few years, the company sold. So I left and shifted my attention to a new venture, and that was investments.

At the time, I was barely graduating high school. I had no formal training whatsoever; I just knew it was something I really wanted to do. So I started emailing any job posting that I could find. In fact, here's an email that I sent to a highly respected Beverly Hills investment firm when I was 17. Needless to say, they never got back to me. But eventually, after six months of calling and emailing every company that I could find, right as I was graduating high school, I ended up landing a job at a precious metals investment firm in Los Angeles.

The job was minimum wage, which I believe was $8 an hour. I was doing data entry, and unlike what I expected, it was horrible. Thankfully, that job only lasted a few months, and I quit. But that taught me everything that I did not want in a career. I knew at that point I couldn't work for anybody else. I didn't want set hours, and most importantly, I had to enjoy what I was doing.

That's how I fell into real estate. Since I had terrible grades in high school, I didn't have a college education, and I had very limited job experience. So, I decided to go get my real estate license. Saying that makes it seem like there's a really low barrier to becoming a real estate agent, but yeah, there's a really low barrier to becoming a real estate agent.

During the time that I was studying for those exams, I would go to open houses every single Sunday to go and meet different agents and network with them to talk about the business. Even though most agents had no desire to talk to me and were completely dismissive to hear anything I had to say, after months of doing that, one agent decided to give me a chance and let me work with him for free in exchange for teaching me the business.

So I used that as an opportunity to do anything he needed. I'd get the houses early to turn on the lights. I'd print out fliers. I'd put up open house signs on major street corners. I'd field appointments. I didn't even care about the money at that point; I just wanted the experience because I felt like I was learning so much just by watching how someone else worked.

But as I became more and more familiar with the process, I started taking pictures of his lease listings so I could post them up on Craigslist to meet prospective clients. Usually, those rental commissions would range anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand, depending on the price and terms of the lease. But after about nine months or so of doing that, I made my first $5,000.

By the time I was 20, I was more consistently representing buyers. I had built up a net worth to about $200,000 and I absolutely loved what I did. I would work the really difficult clients, the small deals that no one else wanted to take on, the clients who I knew had no intention of buying a house and they weren't even serious, but still wanted to see stuff. But that actually wound up working in my favor because some of those clients led to deals and more deals, and more deals. That was my first year earning $100,000.

A year after that, I ended up selling my biggest house ever at $5.5 million to a buyer that I met on Craigslist. At that point, I got an offer to leave the broker I was currently working with from a colleague who opened up his own company called the Oppenheim Group. Some of you might know them as the real estate brokerage on the Netflix show "Selling Sunset." You might have seen me lurking in the background during some of the drama.

Although when I first joined, the Oppenheim Group was just a few of us growing our prominence in West Hollywood. I got to say, learning from a new environment was so impactful because I got to see a different side of the industry than I was accustomed to, and I got to see what it was like to work with someone who only took on the listings that he knew he could sell.

So, by watching him and taking on the same approach myself, my income skyrocketed. All of a sudden, the pickier I became, the more money I started to make. And pretty soon, my income exceeded $500,000. Through all of this, I made my first million dollars by the time I was 26 years old.

Although in terms of how I spent it, this is what made the difference. Because by the end of almost every single year, I would be completely broke. My first purchase was a used 2005 Toyota Prius that I bought for $500. Prior to then, I was driving a 1998 Ford Explorer with 150,000 miles on the clock, and as I started earning money as a real estate agent, I realized that I needed a slightly more presentable car that wasn't scratched with torn seats. To me, this was really just an investment in my own career to build that image of being a professional that clients could work with.

The second, I also purchased a $1,000 tailored suit. I realized pretty quickly that one of the best ways that I could compensate for my youthful inexperience was by dressing the part. Even though I didn't wear it every day, there were so many occasions where a well-fitting suit was essential. And just like the car, to me, this was an investment in my own career.

And third, this one might seem stupid, but when I was 19 years old and sold my first house, I used almost all of that commission to buy a used Lotus Elise for $40,000. Today, this is pretty much everything I tell people not to do. But when I was 19 years old and I had the means to buy the dream car that I was obsessed with, I just went for it. I just reasoned that if I bought the car used, I wouldn't lose too much value, I could meet and network with other car enthusiasts, and it would give me a fun outlet to drive on the weekends.

Sure enough, I kept the car for two years. I ended up meeting some of my best friends and clients through those car meets, and I later sold the car for the same price I paid for it. Fourth, after that, when I was 21 years old, in 2011—yes, I am old now—I spent $20,000 buying and fixing up my first property. This was just as a foreclosure, in at the very bottom of the market, because frankly, I was really concerned about the inconsistency of making money as a real estate agent. I wanted something to bring me passive income regardless of what happened to my career.

This first deal got me absolutely hooked on real estate. I ended up renting it out for about $1,000 a month, and from that point on, all I wanted to do was make and save more money just to be able to go buy more rental property. That, of course, brought me to my fifth purchase, which was another rental property in San Bernardino that I bought for $80,000 in renovations. This was by far one of the easiest, smoothest deals that I have ever done because the house needed almost no work, and I rented it out to the first tenant who saw it, who was still there to this day.

But then we got to number six. At the same time as that, I bought a triplex down the street for another $140,000. This was ultimately the reason why I sold my Lotus Elise because after buying the first two properties, I had exhausted all my money, and I needed to come up with some extra cash to bridge the gap. As upsetting as it was to see that car go, I'm glad because the triplex ended up renting for $1,500 a month and ten years later, I still have it.

After a few years of missing the car community, I really wanted to get back in. In 2014, I spent another $50,000 to buy a 2008 Lotus Exige S240. For several years, it was showcased in the background of most of my earlier videos, and when it came time to sell it, I got back that very same $50,000 that I paid for it. So again, it was a totally free car.

Now, in 2016, my largest purchase was an $800,000 three-bedroom home in West Los Angeles that I then spent $50,000 fixing up. As I mentioned prior to this, my career as a real estate agent really began to take off, and a lot of my previous clients ended up buying homes as the entire market was going up in value. So as a result, I was making significantly higher commissions. I used that money to go and buy this. I later ended up renting out the home for $3,200, and the house has almost doubled in value since then.

A year later, I decided to spend all of my savings buying up another property, and that would be a duplex that I purchased for $850,000, which I then spent another $80,000 fixing up. Since I had just started posting YouTube videos at the time, I used it as an opportunity to talk about the purchase, the remodeling process, and document as much as I could on the subject of house hacking and living for free, essentially by renting out the other half of the property, paying down my mortgage, and using the garage as a tax write-off that completely covered my cost of living, meaning I got to stay there for free.

And finally, the one purchase that put me over that one million dollar mark was another property that I bought right down the street from that for $415,000. This is a completely turnkey property that needed absolutely nothing. Since the last owners remodeled it for themselves, they spent a considerable amount of money making it perfect. However, the seller mislabeled the property as a one-bedroom, one-bathroom when in reality, there was a bonus room that could easily be sectioned off to create a second bedroom and substantially increase its value.

So, I purchased it, I called it a two-bedroom, and I rented it out for substantially more than what the previous owner was getting. Now, what's unique about this is that, as you could see, actually spending a million dollars out of pocket goes quite a long way because I was investing in real estate. I was able to control the entire property for just 20 to 25% down. By keeping my investments as low as possible, that allowed me to reinvest all of that growth into buying more investments.

Honestly, up until the age of about 30—which wasn't that long ago—I would only buy assets that I knew would retain their value or rental properties that I could fix up and rent out for a profit. In fact, up until recently, my goal was that by the end of the year, I wanted to have no money leftover in my account because that meant I had invested all of it.

Of course, there were some mistakes that I made along the way, like not getting a credit card until I was 21 years old because I grew up with the mindset that if you want to buy something, you should pay for it with cash instead, or missing out on otherwise great experiences because I was too frugal to spend that extra $20 hanging out with friends. So instead, I would either just stay home or work more.

I mean, in hindsight, it really wouldn't have made a difference at all, and I missed out on a lot of personal growth just because I refused to spend money. But in the big picture, I can only learn from those mistakes, share my own experiences, and make sure they don't happen again.

I guess the big takeaway here is that if there's anything that you could control, it's how much money you spend and which opportunities you pursue. That's why it's always a good idea to cut back on what you don't need, spend money strategically when you're young, and the best opportunity out there is to subscribe if you haven't done that already because it's completely free to do so.

With that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. As always, also make sure to like the video, make sure to hit the notification bell, and also feel free to add me on Instagram or on my second channel, The Gram Stff, where I post there every single day. Now posting here. So if you want to see a brand new video from me every single day, make sure to add yourself to that. Thank you so much for watching, and until next time.