People want to know how to make a million dollars and want to get started quickly- but it doesn’t appear overnight.
The saying is that you need to “have money to make money” – and it holds very true.
It’s a lot easier to make money if you have money to invest and do more with, but there are other steps you need to consider too.
You may not make a million dollars overnight, but after reading this article, you’ll be started on your millionaire journey.
With that in mind, we wanted to share some ideas about how to become a millionaire that anyone should be able to do.
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Savvy Quick Picks: Helpful Apps For Growing Wealth
Now if you’re like me, you want to know a few apps that can help you earn more money and start saving ASAP!
Here are our favorite apps that can help you better manage your money, save more cash, and up your income so you can reach millionaire status quicker:
- Best Overall App For Side Hustles – Steady
- Best App For Fast Cash – Survey Junkie
- Best Real Estate Investing – Fundrise
- Best Budget & Investment Tracker – Empower (formerly Personal Capital)
How to Become a Millionaire in 12 Simple Steps
1. Stop Spending Money On Junk
It may sound obvious, but if you want to reach one million dollars, you need to be mindful of what you are spending your money on.
Have you ever looked around your house and wondered why you spent money on things you don’t use and just take up space?
Without even realizing it, you may be spending money on a lot of things that you don’t need or even want.
It’s really important to make sure that when you are spending your money, you are spending on the key things that are important to you.
If you bought less of the extra, you could have more tucked away for retirement or that dream vacation.
You can buy whatever you like, as long as it’s within your budget and financial situation, but it helps to know that you are spending on needs and savings for your dream life.
The less you spend – the more you will have towards your millions! We’d rather have a million bucks to our name than fill up our house and lives with other junk.
The basics of building any kind of wealth are to make more income and still spend less. Then with the excess, you need to keep growing that wealth – usually with investments.
2. Budget Your Money ASAP
Having a budget is a sure-fire way to secure yourself on the path to becoming rich.
If you’ve never had a budget before, you may find yourself tempted to skip over this one, but we urge you not to as it could really change what you can save.
Creating a budget isn’t as difficult as it sounds and keeps you from living above your means and getting into more debt.
You get paid a certain amount each month, right? That money needs to go towards your bills, but you also want to use it for your goals and for having fun as well. Sound about right?
When you have a budget, you’ll just be making a plan to make ends meet and enjoy your lifestyle- plus save some extra and get started on your million-dollar dreams.
You can use tools like Empower and Mint to see what you’re spending money on and where you might be overspending rather than saving.
To have a realistic budget, go through your past spending and work off that for your expenses. You’ll get an idea of what you’ve paid before and can work your way into saving on it now.
We are known for helping people reach their goals and achieve financial success, and have a budgeting binder to help you get started!
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3. Real Estate Investing
Millionaires typically have a lot of different income sources, and the more that you diversify, the more likely you are to reach your million-dollar goal.
It’s so important to diversify your income streams, and investing in real estate is one of those ways that you can do so.
And great news: investing in real estate doesn’t mean becoming a landlord! There are other things that you can invest in, such as REITs- real estate investment trusts.
Fundrise is perfect for real estate investing and has a variety of real estate options- plus, you can start investing for only $10!
Besides REITs and hands-off properties, there are 2 main ways of making money by investing in real estate: through rental property or house flipping.
Renting is where you own a separate real estate property that houses tenants – they will pay you for being able to live there.
This is a good option if you want regular household income coming in, as long as it covers the mortgage or other real estate fees, but you also need a good down payment to get a good mortgage.
With rental property, the right area will change how quickly you get renters flocking to you. College areas are typically a smart buy!
You could also rent out rooms in your own home rather than purchasing another property, but carefully weigh the pros and cons before finding potential roomies.
Flipping is where you buy a house, intend to do some improvements to increase the value of the house, and then sell it quickly to get the profits.
HGTV is a flipper’s dream to find real estate ideas, but you can actually have a good profit margin on the right house and the right updates.
Welcome to the future of real estate investing. Invest now and get $10 in shares. It only takes a few minutes to get started!
4. Invest More In Your 401(k)
A 401(k) is an employer-sponsored defined-contribution retirement account where you can invest part of your income, pre-tax, and let it grow.
Putting money into a 401(k) isn’t just beneficial for tax reasons, as it lowers your taxable income each paycheck, but also because sometimes you can get an employer match to increase how much you invest.
This means that if you put in a certain percentage, your employer will also put in a certain percentage to match your investment. This is huge because it is free money!
So if your employer matches 5%, that means for every $100, they’ll invest $5. It may not seem like much, but free money is always something you should take advantage of.
If you want to know how to make a million dollars in the stock market, starting your 401(k) is a brilliant place to start in an easy way.
We’ll discuss this further later on in this article, but growing your money whilst being aware of tax is going to help you to build your wealth.
You can invest in your 401(k) or an IRA for retirement, but you need to find out which is better for you and how much more one will grow.
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5. Increase Your Income In New Ways
You need to cut back on your outgoings when you are trying to build your millions, but the best way to get there faster is to try and earn some more money.
Your future income could be so much higher!
You don’t necessarily need a million-dollar idea, but right now you could be sitting on some highly useful skills that could get you some extra moolah!
There are so many ways that you can earn money, and all it takes is a little bit of imagination and a lot of determination.
You can join the Steady App and find tons of job postings that fit your skillset- and have high pay while working from home.
Earn more money on your terms when you need it most. Steady members can make an extra $5,500 in average yearly income!
We are big fans of starting a side hustle, some of our favorites you can find on Steady include:
- Blogging
- Proofreading
- Tutoring online
- Do Facebook advertising
- Pet sitting
- Delivery driver
- Be a Virtual Assistant
- Youtuber
A good way to look at it is to break down how much you will need to earn. So, for example, $1,000,000 in a year works out to be around $83,333 per month or $20,830 per week.
That’s a lot of money in a short amount of time, but don’t feel overwhelmed by it just yet. That’s just in one year, and things that matter may take more time.
You can make your own timeframe, your road to one million dollars can take longer- how about 2 or 5 years?
Only you can decide how quickly you can make it work, and we’ll help you with the tools to get it done by your deadline.
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6. Invest Early And Often- Prioritize It!
No matter what age you are, it’s so important to start investing, and you have more options than just real estate investing.
Money that you have saved could be doing you more or that $5 on your coffee could become more if you get some investments.
If you want to make a million, investing needs to be a top priority to up your profit margin and income!
If you look at very wealthy people, they have multiple investments to have more income streams – they aren’t trading all of their time and skills for money but use their money to earn more without working.
When you invest, you earn interest on the money that you invest. That extra money can then be reinvested and so on – so you make even more money on top of the money that you’re making.
You can use the best investments and smart platforms to keep your money growing and make one million dollars sooner than you’d think.
You can invest in mutual funds, ETFs, stocks, bonds, certificates of deposit, and much more to keep money coming in for years to come- slowly but surely!
The first million is the hardest, but after you start making money from your investments, the compound interest will kick in with sweet returns that fill your bank account time and again.
You do have the potential to lose money, but the right platforms can help you avoid pitfalls and reinvest your money in smart ways.
Don’t listen to the naysayers, and don’t let worries prevent you from investing because it’s something new or seems complicated.
There are easy places to start investing, like Robinhood, Acorns, or Betterment, to help you get started and increase your fund.
7. Pay Off Debts Efficiently
Paying off your debt is key to getting money back into your own pockets. When you are building your wealth you want to make sure you aren’t just spending more money paying others back.
It’s especially important to pay off high-interest debt quickly, as even with good investments, you may not get enough interest to counter the high-interest debt rates.
The great thing about having a money goal is that it’s exciting, and you’re going to come up with a bunch of different ways to do this.
When you start budgeting, asking for raises, and earning extra money – this makes it even easier for you to pay off your debt.
The first step that you need to take towards paying off your debt is figuring out how much debt you have.
Most people want to avoid knowing the exact numbers because it means facing your debt head-on and admitting to yourself how bad it is.
But don’t feel bad, because debt is not impossible to live with. Using payoff planners, you can get your debt organized and make it manageable.
Investopedia can help you learn more, but here is a rundown of debt repayment plans.
8. Avoid Lifestyle Inflation
As you start to accumulate more money, it can be really tempting to start spending more. But go back to steps #1 and 2- don’t buy junk and keep a budget!
It’s quite normal to want to splurge now that you’re making more, but that’s why you’ll find that people with high incomes still tend to have debt and live paycheck to paycheck.
There’s nothing wrong with spending more money on the things that you enjoy when you have extra money coming in – but you may lose sight of your million-dollar goal.
The point is to make sure you are aware of your goals and keep focused. Like we ate out less and couponed more so we could squirrel away more money for our house’s down payment.
The more you spend now on clothes or coffee or traveling, the less you have on your golden path to being a millionaire.
Think about what you want long-term, not just in the moment. Develop a disciplined money mindset that allows you to control your spending habits.
If you want to increase your spending in some areas of your budget, that’s fine, but avoid lifestyle inflation. Just make sure that you reflect that on your budget and have control over what you are doing.
9. Better Understand Your Income Taxes
As briefly mentioned in the 401(k) section, something that wealthy people do is understand their income taxes.
With taxes being one of our biggest expenses in life it’s important to know the tax laws, deductions, exclusions, etc.
Many times you can save hundreds of thousands of dollars in your lifetime knowing simple tax laws like when you need to pay capital gains tax after selling your home.
It’s important to note that we do not mean tax evasion. There are legal ways that you can pay less tax and it is beneficial for you to use these instead of paying more taxes than you need to be.
We always recommend using a tax professional or certified financial planner to maximize your money and get better tax refunds and deductions.
10. Ask Your Boss For A Raise
In order to get to a million, more money is needed, right? Well, a great place to start is with your current place of work.
We don’t always have enough money every month for bills and bulking up our savings, and we focus on ways to scrimp and save money.
But why not make more money from your jobs?
You should talk to your boss about a raise or other compensation for your good work.
We don’t mean that you should just go and demand a ton- you need to demonstrate that you should be fairly compensated for the work that you are doing for the company.
One of the easiest ways to find out how much you should be getting paid is to speak to your colleagues to see what they earn.
Apart from that, you can take a look at websites like Glassdoor or Indeed to see what the expected salary is for your type of job.
11. Use Your Skills And Hobbies To Your Advantage
Something that you may not have thought about is using your skills to your advantage. Just think of your hobbies and your skills, and put yourself out there.
Your side hustle could be something you are passionate about and do already at home!
One million dollars could be within your grasp- and it’s all about your abilities and skills. You may have some hobbies or things that you are good at and can monetize.
Hobbies are a great way to pass the time- and a great way to fill your bank account.
Say, for example, you are a good artist and it’s something you do in your free time. This could be pencil drawing, painting, graphic design, and so on.
You can easily monetize this by selling your artwork and more on Etsy.
There could be other things that you are good at, and you could make videos for Youtube to show them off and earn some money for doing what you love.
You may enjoy the video process itself or maybe it’s the topics that you will be talking about that you are particularly passionate about.
You’re cooking techniques or tips could make you the next Alton Brown, or your craft skills could make you a top seller on Etsy.
You need to think about what you’ve got going on- know the skills that you have to offer- and think of new ways to monetize them to your advantage.
12. Spend Wisely- Spend Less Money In General
When you think about millionaires, do you think of them as big spenders?
We talked about some high-income people living inflated lifestyles, but millionaires don’t overspend.
Sure, they spend money on things that they want, but they spend within their means.
You don’t need to give up any of your small splurges – you can still treat yourself, but not to the detriment of your goals.
If you aren’t sure where to start, think about what you can do to make things a bit cheaper for yourself.
For example, you could try couponing to reduce the price of what you want or spend less on purchases overall.
You could also try things like using KashKick, Upside, and Rakuten to help you earn rewards and get cash back on the items that you will be purchasing anyway.
Final Thoughts: Reaching One Million Dollars
When we think of becoming a millionaire, it sounds a bit out of reach- like it’s too big of a goal to even contemplate.
Well, don’t join the naysayers, become a big success and rub it in their faces!
But how will you achieve those millions, you ask? It may be useful for you to break that million down into more manageable chunks.
For example, why not think about making your first $1000? Think about investing in real estate, starting a side hustle, or getting a raise at work
Then you just need to think about the fact that a million bucks is made up of multiple $1000s.
You just need to do it one step at a time and make $1,000 whenever you can!
Even if you thought it would never be possible for you, the chance of earning one million dollars has never been better than it is right now.
Earn more money on your terms when you need it most. Steady members can make an extra $5,500 in average yearly income!
