How to ACTUALLY become a Millionaire (even without a high income)

This is the one thing that we all have in common is that we all have the same 24 hours in a day, and it's up to us to make the best of that.

What's up, you guys? It's Graham here. So, it seems like becoming a millionaire is one of these buzz words we all hear growing up. This also seems to be the first threshold number that people think about when it comes to wealth.

What's surprising is that only 5% of U.S. households are able to say that they're a millionaire. Even fewer if you account for individuals versus the household net worth, and even fewer than that have done it on their own and are completely self-made versus receiving any sort of inheritance. So, the real number of individual self-made millionaires here in the U.S. is likely somewhere around one to two percent.

Now, here's how I have done it and how you can do it as well. Most likely, you're not going to be able to achieve this just by saving money.

So, here's a little background on me: I came from zero family money, zero inheritance. Even though I'm not gonna tell you my exact net worth, I will tell you that it was over a million dollars by the time I was 26. Even though I've had a fairly high income selling real estate as a real estate agent, I would not have been worth over a million dollars had I not done a few these very specific things.

To start, the bigger picture is really just a numbers game. First off, it's gonna be really difficult to save your way to a million dollars. Think of it this way: if you're saving $50 every single day, it's gonna take you almost 55 years to hit 1 million dollars. And 55 years from now, a million dollars with inflation is probably barely gonna buy you a Big Mac.

Even if you save $200 every single day starting today, it's gonna take you thirteen and a half years to get to a million dollar net worth. So unless you're earning a ton of money in a very short period of time, it's gonna be very difficult just to save your way to a million dollars.

Now instead, the most efficient way to go about being worth over a million dollars is to invest. Now, of my total net worth, the money that I've made through my investments has contributed a significant amount to this number. It's not just about my work alone, but it's about my money making me more money.

At a certain point, you could only save for so long before you hit the wall of what you can do with your own time. You cannot just trade your time for money because there's a limit to how much you can do per hour with your time. This scenario will likely take you decades to realistically become a millionaire. You need to trade your money for more money, and that's gonna cut down the time it takes dramatically.

This is how you're actually gonna be worth over a million dollars. Once you start letting your money make you even more money, you're gonna start to see your net worth skyrocket. After a few years, eventually, the money that you're making through your investments is going to be huge in comparison to what you can do on your own with your time.

But in order for you to make the most of this effect, you can't waste your money on stupid stuff. This is why you're gonna have someone who's earning $200,000 a year but who's constantly broke, or someone who's making $80,000 a year who's secretly ballin' because his investments are bringing him in even more money on top of what he's making.

You can't just make $100,000 and live like you make $100,000. The secret to this is you make $100,000 and you live as though you're making $30,000.

So with that said, don't be discouraged if you're not the type that's making over a hundred thousand dollars per year. You could still become a millionaire. You could still do it even if you're earning less than a hundred thousand dollars a year.

And here's how: So as an example, let's say you're earning $60,000 a year after taxes. If you keep your expenses at three thousand dollars per month, you should be able to save about twenty-four thousand dollars per year, or sixty-five dollars per day.

Now, if you just save that twenty-four thousand dollars a year and you put it into a bank account, it will take you 41 years of doing that to actually hit a million dollars. But if you invested that twenty-four thousand dollars a year and averaged an eight percent return, that will only take you seventeen and a half years. You've just reduced the time it takes to become a millionaire by over fifty-five percent just by investing your money.

Now, if you invested that same twenty-four thousand dollars a year and averaged a 10% return, which is about what I'm getting in real estate, you will become a millionaire in fifteen and a half years. That's by someone who's making $60,000 a year after taxes. If you're earning $100,000 after taxes and you keep your expenses the same at $3,000 per month, you will become a millionaire by doing exactly that in eight and a half years.

If you're making $150,000 after taxes, you're looking at just about five years to become a millionaire. From here, it's really just a numbers game. It's how much can you make, how much can you save, how much can you invest, and how long you can invest for.

That's really how simple it is. You don't need to make two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or more per year to become a millionaire. You can definitely do it under a hundred thousand dollars just by diligent saving and investing.

Like I said, in order to make the most of that, invest and save everything you can. If you're making a hundred thousand dollars, don't live like you're making a hundred thousand dollars. Live like you're making thirty-six thousand dollars a year.

Take my example for instance: I make significantly more than a hundred thousand dollars per year, and ask any one of my friends, they will tell you I’m living like I’m a broke college kid. That's how crazy this is. But it allows me to invest a lot of my money and just continue to grow it.

And this, you guys, is the cold hard unsexy, unglamorous truth of what it actually takes to become a millionaire.

Now, what also significantly helps—and that's vital—is that you start doing this as soon as you can. If you started at eighteen years old saving just $5,000 per year at a 7% return, you're gonna be a millionaire by the time you're 53 years old. Now if you started doing the exact same thing at age 30, saving $5,000 per year, you're only gonna be worth three hundred and fifty-eight thousand dollars by the time you're 53.

That difference right there is significant. Now, on the other hand, if you didn't invest your money and you just saved $5,000 per year starting at the age of eighteen, it's gonna take you 200 years to save your way to a million dollars.

So you can see just how inefficient that is; you have to invest your money if you ever want to be worth a million dollars. Think about that for a second: two hundred years of saving five thousand dollars per year—two hundred years to be worth a million. Just think about that versus investing.

So then the question comes: what if you're not making a lot of money right now? Now the thing is, to be a millionaire, you're gonna have to have a million dollars. And to get the million dollars, you're gonna have to have some money to invest.

There's really no way around it; like you can't have a million dollars without having a million dollars, and you need money to invest. So let's talk about this now.

Well, you can absolutely become a millionaire by working a salary nine-to-five job and just saving and investing diligently. You could oftentimes dramatically cut down the time frame of becoming a millionaire by utilizing your time efficiently. Now, working in areas where utilizing your time efficiently leads to more money than utilizing your time for money is a great way to get a head start.

Now, for me, that's been in real estate. I don't get paid a salary; I get paid for my results, which allows me to utilize my time as best as I can to make the most amount of money possible. I've never been paid for the amount of hours at work; instead, I'm paid for the results. This means I can focus on the clients and the properties that generate me the most money, that give me the best results, and that use my time in the best way I can with zero busywork whatsoever, and allow me to focus on other things that make me even more money, like real estate investing.

So this could include anything that makes you passive income, anything online, anything that doesn't result in you putting in X amount of hours for X amount of dollars. It's just about leveraging your time, using it smartly and efficiently to make you even more money.

The unfortunate thing about a nine-to-five salary is that your time is oftentimes directly correlated to how much money you make. And if you work smarter and more efficiently, that doesn't always translate to more money in your pocket.

So it's vital you do things that you can do efficiently, that you can leverage your time to make even more money so that it doesn't matter if you put in one hour or ten hours; your time that you put in is independent of how much money you make.

That's one of the most important things I can mention in this video: use your time efficiently because this is the one thing that we all have in common is that we all have the same 24 hours in a day, and it's up to us to make the best of that.

Now, I also recommend thinking long-term because realistically, you're not going to be worth a million dollars from scratch in just the first few years unless you get really lucky and maybe cryptocurrency like Ethereum and Bitcoin and all the things I didn't invest in, what I should have, or you strike a huge payday by selling a company.

Now beyond that, and speaking more so for a regular salary and for regular investing habits, it’s not something that's gonna happen in just a few years. It's something that can happen long-term for almost everyone out there watching this right now. It's just a matter of saving and investing consistently, and that's really just what it comes down to.

Then from there, it's just a numbers game. That's really all there is to it. Breaking it down in such a way makes it seem a lot easier to accomplish.

Now just a final thought here: Even though a million is a cool number, think about a lot of people talk about becoming a millionaire. Nothing really happened when I became a millionaire. I didn't feel better about myself; I didn't feel like I had finally made it. I didn't finally feel like, "Oh, that's done with." Nothing changed.

Then life just goes on. It's not like you just hit this number and then you feel like you've made it because I hit that number and it feels like this is just the beginning. It just gets better from here, and it just continues onward.

Even though it's cool to think about a million dollars, it's really just some arbitrary benchmark that people throw around there. So, I wouldn't be too concerned about trying to hit that million dollars and thinking it might solve all your problems and that you finally have made it.

Instead, I would focus on the journey of becoming a millionaire and becoming that person that you really want to be. In the bigger picture too, it's not really about having a million dollars for the things that it buys, but it's really just about having the money to buy you the time.

That's really the most important thing that I can see; by making money, it's really just about your time and having the freedom to do what you want with your time and do things that you enjoy the most. That's really what all this is about.

So don't go about this video just thinking, "I need a million dollars. How can I make a million dollars?" and make your whole focus on a million dollars. Trust me on this: It's about having the freedom and the time to do anything else you want in your life.

In order to do that, you're gonna have to make a few little sacrifices along the way in terms of just saving money and investing instead of going to the bar every weekend and throwing up a $200 tab on the bar.

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