What secrets about managing money do the rich know that the average person doesn’t? I spent five years trying to answer that question. I asked 233 millionaires 144 questions and discovered the rich have certain very specific money habits that were instrumental in helping them accumulate their wealth. [Read more…]
How Self-Made Millionaires Deal With Their Money Every Day
November 25, 2015 by 2 Comments
Make a To-Don’t List
November 25, 2015 by Leave a Comment
We’ve all heard about to-do lists. The best to-do lists incorporate daily activities that help you move yourself forward in life towards accomplishing your goals.
But you probably never heard of a to-don’t list. A to-don’t list is a list that includes things you should never do because they are either time wasters, bad habits or things that hold you back from having a happy and successful life. A typical to-don’t list might include the following:
- Don’t watch more than 1 hour of TV today.
- Don’t waste time today on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
- Don’t envy anyone today.
- Don’t make any impulse purchases today.
- Don’t gossip today.
- Don’t gamble today.
- Don’t drink in excess today.
- Don’t lose my temper today.
- Don’t ignore my family today.
- Don’t read negative news articles today.
- Don’t procrastinate today.
- Don’t ridicule anyone today.
- Don’t hate anyone today.
- Don’t smoke a cigarette today.
- Don’t be negative today.
To-don’t lists are just as important as to-do lists. For those who have a lot of bad habits, they may be more important. To-don’t lists help keep you aware of the things you should not be doing. Knowing what not to do is just as important in achieving success as knowing what to do. To-do’s, while a great success tool, only get you half way there. To-don’ts take you the rest of the way. What would be on your to-don’t list? Take your life to the next level. Start a to-don’t list today.
8 Hours Poorer
November 24, 2015 by Leave a Comment
For those who live beyond their means, every time you wake up you are 8 hours poorer. The interest on your mounting debt never sleeps. It’s working while you are sleeping. It keeps increasing as your debt increases.
Conversely, those who take control of their lives, who make a concerted effort to spend less than they earn and invest their savings, wake up 8 hours richer. The interest, dividends and gains on their investments are working overtime while they sleep. It keeps increasing as your savings and investments increase.
Until you make a decision to live below your means, save and invest your savings, you will continue to drag yourself further and further into debt and poverty. Unfortunately for most, when they go to sleep they wake up 8 hours poorer.
You Can’t Have the Glitter Without the Grit
November 23, 2015 by 1 Comment
Many people want the glitter without the grit. They want wealth and success without the effort and the hassle. That’s why lotteries are so successful. Most would rather take the short cut in becoming rich. But the lottery short cut is also the poor bet.
The best odds for becoming rich requires daily, consistent effort. You must invest time in becoming exceptional in one thing. You have to improve and grow every day. Success requires that you continuously increase and perfect your knowledge and skills. You have to push yourself day after day. You must also force yourself outside of your comfort zone by doing things that are uncomfortable. That’s how you grow, through discomfort, learning, taking risks. It’s hard work and it’s frustrating. In the beginning of pursuing anything worthwhile, nothing seems to go your way. This is when most people quit. But a few don’t quit. A few fight through the pain and anguish and the discomfort of learning and improving because they understand one thing those who quit don’t: You Can’t Have the Glitter Without the Grit!
Daily Exercise Increases Your Willpower and Self-Control
November 20, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Willpower is very much like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger and more powerful it becomes. How do you exercise your willpower? Simple, just exercise every day. The latest science on willpower is clear: daily exercise not only benefits your muscles and health, it also boosts your willpower and self-control. It’s like hitting a double in baseball. You get two for one when you exercise every day: better health and more willpower.
Why is willpower so important? Depletion of willpower results in bad decision making and causes you to lapse into old bad habits. The latest science on willpower indicates that willpower depletion, also known as decision fatigue, is behind drug addiction, alcoholism, overeating, infidelity, gambling and many other vices. When your willpower is depleted, watch out. The wake you leave behind can be devastating: damage to your family relationships, damaged friendships, damaged work relationships, poor your health, bad finances (spontaneous purchases occur when willpower is low) and all of these bad things will send your life spiraling downward. So, rid yourself of your demons by exercising every day. You and everyone around you will be better off for it.
Daily Tracking is the Key to New Habit Formation
November 19, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Roy Baumeister is a renown behavioral psychologist whose studies and experiments on willpower are revolutionizing our understanding of willpower. According to Baurmeiser, author of Willpower, the only sure fire way to stick to a new good habit is through tracking. In one of his many experiments, Baumeister tracked individuals who were trying to lose weight. One group tracked their daily calories, either in a journal or using some software or app and also weighed themselves every day. The second group did not track their calories and weighed themselves once a week. In the first group two times as many individuals lost weight vs. the first group. The first group essentially doubled their success in losing weight by tracking calories every day and by stepping on the scale every day.
Tracking acts like an accountability partner. It forces you to confront, on a daily basis, your weight loss efforts. But tracking can be applied to any new good habit. Exercise, for example. If you journal, or use some other tracking system to detail your exercise activities (miles, reps, time spent, etc.), you double your chances of sticking to the exercise regimen. Reading to learn every day, another Rich Habit, can be processed on a daily basis by simply tracking what you read and how much you read each day.
Stress Makes You Do Bad Things
November 18, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Stress decreases willpower, self control and weakens your resistance to old bad habits. Stress comes primarily from four places:
- Work
- Family
- Finances
- Health
The key to not giving into the caustic effects of stress is awareness. Being aware that you are experiencing stress and being aware that that stress might cause you to make bad decisions wakes up the pre-frontal cortex, which typically shuts down or hibernates under stress. Once the pre-frontal cortex is woken up it can come to the rescue and stop you from doing any damage. But the key is awareness to stress. Awareness puts you on the offensive against bad choices, bad behavior, negative emotions and bad habits.
After 5 Years Studying Rich People I Learned 5 Myths About Money
November 17, 2015 by Leave a Comment
I spent five years studying the daily activities of wealthy individuals. I learned so many things that I’ve spent the better part of seven years sharing that information to help those who were struggling financially pull themselves out of the abyss that is poverty. One of the many things I learned is that self-made millionaires have a very different understanding about money than everyone else. I’d like to share some of the myth’s about money I uncovered in my research. [Read more…]
Take a Habit Vacation
November 17, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Every habit has a trigger. Example: Every day you pick up a donut on your way to work. This is because the route you take to work each day includes passing a Dunkin’ Donuts store. Dunkin’ Donuts is the trigger and eating a donut is the habit.
One of the most effective ways to eliminate a bad habit is to eliminate the trigger. In the case of eating a donut every day, the simple act of changing your route to work to avoid passing by the Dunkin’ Donut store eliminates the trigger.
This is why changing a habit while on vacation has been proven to be one of the most successful habit change strategies. Starting a new good habit or eliminating an old bad habit is easier to do when you change your environment. Vacations represent a change in environment. There is a lot of research on this, so I decided to test this hypothesis myself.
For years I have been nagging myself to get back into the gym to do some free weight training. I power lifted during college, but when I got married I stopped lifting weights. In August of 2014 my entire family went on a vacation to the Dominican Republic. There was a gym at the resort and I decided to bench press for the first time in 29 years. That was fifteen months ago and I am still going to the gym three days a week. All it took was a change in my environment to start a new good habit.
If you want to quit smoking, stop smoking while on vacation. If you want to start reading on a daily basis, start while on vacation. If you want to start flossing every day, start while on vacation. Pick just one new good habit and start it while on vacation or pick one old bad habit and stop doing it while on vacation. If you know you are going to have some time off in the near future, pick a habit to stop or start a week before your time off. Then spend that week visualizing your new behavior. That preps you for the habit change. Commit just one day to the new behavior during your time off. One day sets everything in motion. On your next vacation, make it a habit vacation.
Whose Investment Are You?
November 16, 2015 by Leave a Comment
The fact is, most people work for someone or some organization. From the perspective of the employer, their employees represent an investment; an asset. From the perspective of an employee, their employer is a means to an end. That end, for most unfortunately, is a paycheck. A select few, however, are in it for more than a paycheck. They go the extra mile. They do more than their job description. They pursue responsibilities that go beyond their job description. And here’s the little known secret to success that only a unique number of employees have discovered – going the extra mile is an investment in themselves.
When you do more than your job requires, you grow. As you grow, you become more valuable. Not just to your employer, but to every competitor in your industry. The more you go beyond just earning a paycheck, the more you learn, the more new people you come into contact with and more your stock rises.
Going beyond a paycheck and your job description shifts the investment from your employer to you. It’s an investment in yourself. And the more you invest in yourself, the more opportunities you create.
That was one of the hallmark’s of the self-made millionaires I uncovered in my Rich Habits Study. One of the self-made millionaires in my study started in the equivalent of the mailroom. I interviewed him because he had risen to the 2nd in command at a pharmaceutical company in New Jersey. He’s now worth in excess of 8 million dollars. He somehow uncovered that little known secret of success.
If you want to be a success in life you must invest in yourself. You must take on responsibilities that push you outside your comfort zone. This discomfort means you are growing. When you go above and beyond your job description, you are no longer an investment of your employer. You become your own investment.
