Archives for August 2019

49% of the millionaires in my Rich Habits Study were individuals who followed the Saver-Investor Path (4 Paths to Becoming a Self-Made Millionaire – http://richhabits.net/4-paths-becoming-self-made-millionaire/).

These Saver-Investors were ordinary people who did not have any special advantages in life:

• They came from Poverty or the Middle-Class (Poor 41%/Middle-Class 59%)
• They did not have high salaries.
• They did not possess any unique set of skills.
• They did not have any special knowledge.
• They did not have advanced degrees or graduate from elite universities.
• They did not inherit money from their parents, grandparents, relatives or others.
• They did not own fancy things – their home, cars, clothes, and possessions were modest.

The reason they did not seem wealthy is because most spent 80% or less of their income and saved-invested 20% or more of that income. This forced them to live on 80% or less, and this was reflected back to the world in the form of their very ordinary lifestyle.

These individuals do not advertise their wealth. You would never know they were rich by looking at them. They are your neighbors, family, friends, colleagues at work, assistant coaches, teachers, union workers, plumbers, electricians, construction workers, Accountants, government workers, etc.

Everything about their lives screams – “I AM NOT RICH”.

Yet, they are rich. They’re rich because they followed the Guaranteed Path to Wealth – The Saver-Investor Path. A path most anyone can follow.

Becoming rich is a process. Forging smart money habits, and sticking to them during every stage of your life, is a process most anyone can follow.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

In the movie, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy must follow the yellow brick road in order to get to her destination – the City of Oz, where the Wizard of Oz lives. She needs the Wizard’s help in getting her back home to Kansas.

But that road is fraught with all sorts of dangers, obstacles and hazards. After battling seemingly impossible adversity, Dorothy somehow manages to reach Oz and, with the Wizard’s help, finds her way back home to Kansas.

The path you take in the pursuit of your dream is very much like that yellow brick road.

It’s a risky journey. You will face all sorts of problems, obstacles and have to overcome many mistakes. What keeps you moving forward is a clear picture of your destination.

You must be able to clearly see your City of Oz.

If you are pursuing a dream, what do you see at the end of your journey?

Most don’t have a clear picture of their destination in life, which is why most do not succeed. When the destination is not clear, it is impossible to complete your journey.

If you can’t see the destination, if you don’t know where you are going in life, you will get nowhere.

The end, your destination, must be definitive, clear, specific and something simple for your mind to anchor itself on to.

In order to succeed in life, you must have a clear picture of your destination.

Here are some examples of destinations to help you:

• I want to be a senior executive at my company.
• I want to be a full-time author.
• I want to be a full-time speaker.
• I want to own a house by the beach.
• I want to have $2 million in savings by age 55.
• I want to be a CPA, Attorney, Neurosurgeon, Astronaut, Priest, etc.
• I want to grow my company and sell it for $3 million.
• I want to pay off my mortgage to my home by age 50.
• I want to sell 1 million books.
• I want to lose 20 pounds over the next twelve months.
• I want to run a marathon next spring.
• I want to become a professional athlete.
• I want to be able to bench 300 pounds.
• I want to get rid of my high blood pressure, diabetes, or beat my cancer, etc.

When you are clear about your destination, no dangers, no obstacles, no problems, no mistakes, no uncertainties and no doubts will be able to stop you from reaching it.

Clarity gives you laser-like focus. When you are able to see your City of Oz, nothing can stop you from reaching your destination and realizing your dream.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

In my five year study of the daily habits of the rich and poor (Rich Habits Study – Background on Methodology), 76% of the successful engaged in some form of daily exercise, predominantly aerobic exercise. Conversely, 77% of the poor did no exercise at all.

It’s no coincidence that self-made millionaires exercise consistently.

Researchers from the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland identified a gene, called Mtss1L, which is activated by aerobic exercise. This particular gene, when toggled on, boosts the connections among brain cells in the hippocampus, a part of the brain associated with learning and memory.

Exercise toggles it on. Lack of exercise keeps the gene turned off.

Those who consistently exercise, while engaged in the pursuit of success, have a competitive advantage over those who do not exercise. They essentially have a gene working for them, who’s sole purpose is to make them smarter.

Imagine having a gene, who’s sole purpose is to make you smarter. What an edge!

Oftentimes, the difference between success and failure, particularly among Dreamers-Entrepreneurs, is infinitesimal. Exercise gives you an edge. This edge can make all the difference in the world, tipping the scales in your favor.

Success, and the wealth that success produces, is a process. Exercise is an important part of that process.

Lace up your sneakers. Your future success may very well depend on it.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

John D. Rockefeller Sr. was, at one time, the richest man in the world. He spent the last 40 years or his life giving his money away to family and various charities.

He owned two homes, one in Sleepy Hollow, New York and one in Ormond Beach, Florida. His Sleepy Hollow home, known as the Kykuit Rockefeller Estate, was very large and very expensive to maintain.

Because he had given away most of his wealth, he was forced to borrow money from his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr.. He only had about $7 million left ($131 million in today’s dollars), and that money did not generate enough income for him to maintain his standard of living.

I do quite a few media interviews on my Rich Habits research. Almost every time, I am asked the same question – How much money do you have to have in order to be considered wealthy?

But, what does wealthy mean?

Wealthy means your invested assets generate enough income to fund your standard of living and pay the taxes on that income.

Alternately, if you have no invested assets, but are one of the lucky few who have a pension, you would be considered wealthy if your pension generates enough income to fund your standard of living and pay the taxes on that income.

Fine. But if you’re not one of the lucky few who receive a pension, what is the amount of wealth you need? What is the number?

While there is no easy answer to that question, I am fairly certain that the most correct answer is $3.2 million.

$3.2 million, if invested prudently, should generate about $150,000 – $160,000 a year in passive income. Even in expensive states like California, New York and New Jersey, $150,000 should be more than enough to enjoy a comfortable, financially-free, lifestyle.

So, $3.2 million, I would argue, would make just about anyone “wealthy”.

But you don’t need $3.2 million to be considered “wealthy”.

If your standard of living is low and your monthly nut is less than, say, $3,500, you could be considered wealthy if you had $1.2 million in invested assets. If invested prudently, $1.2 million should generate between $50,000 – $60,000 a year in passive income.

So, at the bottom level of wealth, $1.2 million is the number.

For John D. Rockefeller Sr., $131 million was not enough to maintain his standard of living. And, no matter how much money you have, if you’re John D. Rockefeller and you have to borrow money to maintain your standard of living, you won’t consider yourself “wealthy”.

The key to being wealthy, therefore, is standard of living costs that are less than your passive income. Your standard of living can make you wealthy or it can make you poor.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

We all have assets. Some are obvious, like a home, a business, money, investments.

But others are not as obvious.

Your spouse is an asset. Your children are assets. Your friends, are assets. The people you work with are assets.

When you are your spouses biggest cheerleader, when you love them unconditionally, you are treating your spouse like an asset. When you demean, or treat your spouse as if they were incompetent, ignorant or worthless, you are treating one of your most important assets as if it were a liability.

When you encourage and support your children and act as a success mentor to them, you are treating them as assets. When you berate and yell at them too often, you are treating them as liabilities.

When you stay in constant contact with your friends, lift them up when they fall, devote time to maintaining and building relationships with them, you are treating your friends like an asset. When you ignore your friends, belittle them, gossip about them or hurt them is any way, you are treating one of your most important assets as if they were a liability.

When you treat the people you work with, with respect and appreciation, you are treating them like assets. When you treat them poorly and undermine them, you are treating one of your most important assets as if they were a liability.

When you have an asset, you should devote a lot of time and money preserving, nurturing and growing it. Those who occupy your inner circle are your greatest assets and need to be treated as such.

Don’t treat your assets like liabilities.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

There are 4 paths to wealth:

1. Saver-Investor Path
2. Senior Executive or Big Company Path
3. Virtuoso Path
4. Dreamer or Entrepreneur Path

The Dreamer or Entrepreneur Path is the most difficult, and yet, the most lucrative path.

When entrepreneurs succeed, the rewards are often disproportionate to the investment in money and time. The average self-made Dreamer in my Rich Habits Study accumulated $7.4 million in wealth, which dwarfed the average wealth of each of the other three paths.

The life of the entrepreneur, however, is not for everyone.

Most Dreamers put everything they own on the line – their life savings, their retirement savings, the equity in their homes.

The enormous investment they make, is not only money.

They must also invest their time, which affects their relationships – family and friend time is sacrificed during the pursuit of their dream.

Probably the greatest burden these Dreamers must shoulder, on an almost daily basis, is the uncertainty that their investment will pay off. This uncertainty causes chronic stress.

Chronic stress, if not diffused through good health habits, will depress your immune system and invite in all sorts of diseases, impairing your health (This is one of the reasons why I spend so much time expounding on the need to forge good health habits).

So, another investment Dreamers must make, is maintaining good health, especially during their success journey. Good health keeps you in the game – you can’t achieve your goals and realize your dreams, laying in a hospital bed.

One common theme that kept repeating itself in the many stories told to me by my Dreamers, was how important luck was to their success.

For many, they couldn’t escape the feeling that their fate was in the hands of certain variables that were outside their control. They often felt as if they were sitting on a wall, dependent on the winds of fate for their success. And success, for too many of my self-made entrepreneurs, was very much dependent on which way that wind blew.

I learned from my Dreamers that the key to good luck was survival – surviving the roller coaster ride long enough, until good luck finally arrived.

This is why I consider those who succeed as an entrepreneur, heroic. What makes them heroic is how they react when the winds blow the wrong way and they find themselves face down on the wrong side of the wall. It happens to almost every successful entrepreneur. There are very few exceptions.

The successful entrepreneurs, the ones we call self-made millionaires, somehow find the resilience to climb back onto the wall. They persevere. They survive. Those who are able to do this, over and over again despite all of the adversity, are able to survive until the winds of fortune finally blow their way.

The persistent, eventually get lucky.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

I have a childhood friend, who was raised in a family of five. His father was a NYC school teacher, at a long ago time when public school teachers did not make much money. His mother was a homemaker. While they were not considered “poor”, they did struggle financially.

This friend of mine worked as a lifeguard during the summers in his high school and college years. He save nearly everything he made and was able to pay for college with those savings.

He worked for three years, after graduating college, in a large, prestigious CPA firm. He lived at home and commuted to NYC and saved a significant amount of his income. He decided to invest his savings in law school.

After graduating NYU law school, again on his own dime, he met his future. wife, who was also paying her way through NYU. Like my friend, she shared his savings Rich Habit. Thanks to frugal living and their savings Rich Habit, my friend was able to buy himself the freedom to leave his big company law position, along with its grueling hours and stress, to take a lower paying job with a smaller, publicly-held company.

After many years of working at this smaller company, it was acquired by a private equity company and my friend received a windfall. That good luck acquisition gave my friend the freedom to retire. He was only 52. All thanks to one Rich Habit – saving.

Good habits create a unique type of good luck called Opportunity Luck. The Opportunity Luck for my friend was the unexpected acquisition of his company. My friend, because of his smart money Rich Habits, was able to make choices that put him in a position to become the recipient of good luck.

One of the individuals in my Rich Habits study had the Poor Habit of spending too much money. In his case, he spent a lot of money gambling. His gambling Poor Habit forced him to liquidate all of the college savings his children had inherited from a deceased Uncle, in order to pay the bills at home. With the loss of that college money, his kids were unable to afford to go to college and became stuck in dead end jobs, as adults.

This person was eventually forced to turn his home over to the bank in foreclosure. He now rents a very small and very inexpensive apartment, alone and all but abandoned by his children. He still gambles what little money he has. His life is miserable and lonely. All thanks to one Poor Habit – gambling.

Bad habits create a unique type of bad luck called Detrimental Luck. The Detrimental Luck event that occurred for the individual in my study was the the foreclosure of his home and the loss of the love and affection of his children.

Habits, good or bad, create luck. The type of luck created depends on your habits. Good habits attract good luck and bad habits attract bad luck.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

Every habit begins with a trigger.

The basal ganglia is constantly vigilant in looking for environmental triggers in an effort to subconsciously initiate a habit.

Why does our brain go behind the back of our conscious mind (prefrontal cortex) to set habits in motion? Or, put another way, why does part of our brain have a hidden habit agenda that our conscious mind is unaware of?

The simple answer is that unconscious brain functions, like habits, are less taxing on the brain and, thus, use less brain fuel.

Part of the job of the basal ganglia is to create habits and engage in habits, in an effort to allow the brain to work less and, thus, consume less fuel. The basal ganglia is, in a real sense, the brain’s fuel efficiency manager, using habits as its main energy savings device.

Unless you’re aware of those triggers, you will unconsciously engage in the habit.

There are 4 environmental triggers that set most habits in motion:

1. Visual Triggers – Visual Triggers are like unavoidable neon signs that grab the attention of the basal ganglia and stimulate you to engage in a habit. The McDonalds golden arches are an example of a powerful Visual Trigger. Once your see those golden arches, the next thing you know, you’re eating a hamburger with fries.
2. Time of Day Triggers – We all have habits that we engage in during the morning, afternoon and evening. Waking up in the morning sets in motion all sorts of habits. You see the coffee pot and the next thing you know, you’re making coffee. While getting ready to shower, you see your toothbrush and that triggers you to brush your teeth. Brushing your teeth may itself be a trigger to shave or put on your makeup.
3. Stress Triggers – Stress overwhelms the brain, consuming far too much fuel. To compensate, the basal ganglia changes it’s game plan, using stress as a trigger to get you to engage in a habit in order to conserve fuel.
4. Association Triggers – People who you associate with are habit triggers. One friend can be a trigger for hitting the bars, another for exercising, another for gambling, another for reading and another for cheating on your spouse. Who you associate with can be a habit trigger, setting in motion all sorts of good or bad habits.

The key to breaking any bad habit is self-awareness of the habits you have, and also, self-awareness of the triggers that set those habits off. Being aware of the triggers to your habits is critical to understanding what is setting off your habits.

Once self-awareness enters the picture, habits lose their power over you. By identifying the external triggers that set a habit in motion, you are able to consciously stop that habit in its tracks.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!