HOW to EASILY make your first MILLION

JD_2B

Little Vixen
Sep 23, 2009
1,091
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Nunya, Wudjathink
Want a million dollars??

Who doesn't, right? LOL!! Seems impossible, to so many people...

You can have a million dollars in 10-20 years by following these rules, and thinking in only the SHORT TERM (but still having the long term goal)- by following these very simple rules of personal finance:

1- Stop buying those little bottles of individual sodas or drinks every day from the machines and the convenience store. You have a fridge, and the capability to go to the store to buy a big giant bottle full of the soda or the coffee beans and make your iced coffee or tea at home. Weekly savings can be up to 35 dollars..

2- Snack machines are the devil! Every time you go to the snack machine you are trading your personal finance savvy for personal convenience..

3- Pack your lunch! If you tend to go out to eat several times a week.. try packing a lunch instead, at least a few times a week! This saves you between 10 and 20 dollars a week..

4- Use alternate transportation- Try riding a bike, walking places, or carpooling with co-workers one day a week, or every day. When everyone pitches in by taking a day to drive, for the rest, then you can save on the gas you would be using the other 4 days a week! Also, consider the amount of gas and gas money you save in a year by walking or riding a bike to the local ballfield, instead of driving even one mile to get there. If you calculate the distance and consider the frequency of those short trips, you may find that you can save hundreds of dollars a year in gas expenses this way..

5- Keep the air filter in your vehicle clean, and do regular oil changes as well as tire rotations. This will help to keep your gas mileage down, and your tire tread from wearing unevenly. This particular tip can save a person hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a year.

6- Whenever you make a purchase at the store, as far as clothing, tools, etc goes- consider something you would be willing to give up or sell, to make a space in your home for the "new arrival". If you buy a new shirt, for example- it is probably because you have an old shirt that is no longer used, or wearable- so consider throwing it away, selling it, or at least turning it into a rag and reusing it for another purpose. If you buy a screwdriver to replace a junky one- be sure to sell or donate that old screwdriver to someone in need. Doing this actively with every item purchased, will keep your spending down, and your home a little more free of clutter, also- which saves money in other ways also (if you have a housekeeper, it might help them to not have to move clutter, so you may get a cheaper rate, for instance)

7- Housekeeping- Many families use a housekeeper these days.. nothing wrong with that. But if you are trying to make your first million by using common sense strategies- then cut down on what is done, or how often the housekeeper's visits are. Use products such as ammonia, bleach, and even vinegar and water to disinfect your home with. If you do not have a sponge, you can cut up an old towel and use it as a rag, also.

8- Speaking of rags- And I apologize because this is an uncommon thing to do anymore, but a great way to save money for women and for any families with teenage girls, is to get back on the literal "rag", rather than using commercially available disposable feminine hygiene products, and disinfect and wash them similar to the way baby diapers are stored and washed.. Keep a small bucket of water miixed with borax in the bathroom, and when the week is over, take some rubber gloves and fish the home made feminine hygiene towels out. Then you wash and dry, being sure to use bleach in the washer. The dryer portion is hot enough to sanitize the pads for reuse. Just sanitize your hands in between opening the dryer and touching the pads themselves. Then put them in a small sized (and new) garbage bag and leave them under the sink for next month. You can sew them and use cutesy material if you want.. It is an option for while you are at home, or at night or something- and can save you anywhere between 10 and 120 dollars a year, per person.
I realize that this is dated, and maybe seems a little gross, but doing this is also very environmentally friendly, and those dollars really do add up, in the long run.

9- Use cloth diapers and breast feed babies- This saves you BOOKOO bucks during the time you have an infant. Breastfeeding can save a person between 30 and 50 dollars a week for a newborn.. Using cloth diapers can also save you an additional 60-80 dollars a week, and both are very environmentally friendly!

10- Save energy- When you take a shower, you are using hot water from a big tank that needs to be heated constantly, to keep the water.. hot. Well, there is an alternative to running this all day, and still having hot water- turn the switch OFF after you take a shower. When you are preparing to take your next shower, turn the switch on about 30 minutes prior. This saves a substantial amount of money (20-35 dollars) a month on your electric bill. Also- insulate as much as possible. Use weatherstripping on windows and doors, to keep out the drafts, and use curtains in the summer- to keep out the hot sunlight. Open the curtains and blinds up as much as possible in the winter, to keep your heating costs down, also. Oh and much can be said about wearing long johns to bed at night, (or throwing a light jacket on around the house) and turning the thermostat down a little, to save money.

11- WATER- OK I know water is cheap in the US right now, but in some places, it is REALLLY expensive, like, people are paying 400-500 a month for residential water bills, and apparently it tastes really yucky too. In Ireland, it is made from sea water, desalinized, an expensive process.. So, if you want to save money on water later on, then it is best to consider conserving it now.. Use a small cup or bowl of water when you shave, rather than leaving the faucet running. Taking a short shower uses less water than a long bath.. In the military, they say "turn the water on, get wet. Turn the water off. Lather up. Turn the water on, rinse off. Turn the water off." You can be that strict, too, if you just like playing with the soap, lol.. Don't overwater your lawn, either- it leads to shallow root systems, and you can end up with an all dirt yard from the wind erosion.. If you hand wash dishes, fill the sink with hot soapy water, then turn the water off. Wash all the dishes, and set them aside for rinsing. Then, once you are done washing them, turn the faucet on, and rinse them all off. (that is my philosophy- the military taught me a few things, lol)

12- Reuse stuff, and get creative! If you have a memo pad, for instance, use both sides of each paper.. If you took notes for class, or work, on one side of a piece of paper, then start on the other side, the next time you take notes.. Reuse magazines as firestarters in the fireplace, or camping. Reuse old greeting cards by taking an origami class and making little gift boxes out of them. You can even reuse stuff that is "garbage" like spoons that got nabbed by the garbage disposal- Turn them into a makeshift wind chime and give it to someone who stops by Christmas day as an incidental christmas present.. Broken glass and mirrors can all be reused for creating artistic things, too. Just because something seems like it should be tossed doesnt mean you are under some rule to throw it away. Learn to reuse your old junk, for a good purpose. After a while, you will find that you save quite a lot of money by turning trash into treasures..

13- I do this thing where I do not spend my change very often, except in a jam, or if my bill comes up to be a certain amount of money and so many cents that are less than 20 cents, and I happen to have exact change and enough time to rummage through my purse and fish it out. (I always have exact change,obviously, lol) Every month, I usually end up with between 25 and 35 dollars in change. Empty your change into a shoebox or an old coffee can. There are plenty of grocery chain stores that have a coinstar machine, which counts your change and issues a receipt. Or you can roll it yourself, if you want to avoid the service charge, which in my opinion is an awful lot at 8%. It is a matter of personal choice, of course.

14- I know a guy who told me that he never spends his one dollar bills.. Incredibly, if you throw one dollar bills into that shoebox, and at the end of the month deposit all of the change and dollars into your account- you will end up with a cool million faster than you ever thought possible.

15- DO be sure that you take every penny saved from these examples and deposit them into an interest bearing FREE checking or savings account. (be sure you are clear that it is free, and ask to be well informed of any charges that might come up) The interest will gain you more money, the more money you have in your account. Say the interest rate is at 3%- If you have only 100 dollars in there, that is still three dollars you get for FREE from the bank, for saving that money with them. If you have 1,000 dollars in the account, you get 30 dollars for free that year... As the money grows, so does the money from interest. One day, you will have a million bucks in your account, making enough interest (30,000 dollars a year) to live comfortably in your retirement.

AAAANNNNNNDDDDDD.. Lastly..

**DO expect to have to put away at least 400 dollars a month to achieve millionaire status.

**DO expect downfalls and windfalls, and be sure to apply portions of windfalls to your savings, to help make up for the downfalls.

** This can take between 10 years and 20 years, depending on how much you can save monthly. If you can find a way to save more, you will reach millionare status sooner.. If you are unable to save as much, it will simply take longer.

Happy retirement everyone! Does anyone have any tips to add to this? I would love to hear them.. Thanks! :eusa_angel:
 
Yeah I have one more bit of wisdom you seem to have missed

Don't be unlucky.

Never get sick and never have an accident.

And never allow people you love, people you might be tempted to spend money trying to save, to be unlucky either.
 
I used cloth diapers with my first two. I didn't even have a washing machine with the first one, and never had a drier. HUGE savings...and the shit goes in the toilet, where it belongs, instead of in the garbage. Which in turn saves $$ when it comes time to go to da dum to da dump to da dump dump dump (as Spongebob says).
 
While all these comments are good advice, there are a few things you have missed. Aging parents that need help. You just say No!, right? Health. Education for the children. Education for yourself.

I never have had the ambition of being a millionaire. If the small real estate I have sells for enough on this market to have a small home where I want to be, and I have enough extra after normal expenses to travel once or twice a year, I am as wealthy as I have ever desired to be.
 
Currently my bills alone eat up all my money. After paying this month, I have $26. Plus the $77 or so I get a week (most weeks, anyway) in child support, which is our grocery money.

Because of this I'm actually going to finish my degree online (sigh. Fodder for ridicule, I'm sure. But the nearest campus, and it's a community one, is 90 miles away).
 
Oye that sucks.. At least you're getting an education.. good for you- especially with such a measly child support judgment. Yuck.. thats a shame. But hey- at least you are getting the measly child support. That is outstanding- one less thing to have to worry about, right!! =)

I took a class on grounds called career skills and our instructor made us do all these really interesting and funky exercises that ended up making us all feel ridiculous. One of the exercises was that he put a sheet of paper on the wall and gave someone a marker and told her to draw a line as high up as possible. So, she reached up and drew a line.
The next person he called up, told him to do the same, but try to draw it higher.. and he stretched, and did make his line a little higher.
Then he called a short girl up to draw a higher line.. She got on a chair and drew her line at the top of the paper.
Everyone was told to sit down. The instructor then took the paper off the wall, situated the chair against the wall, stood on the chair, and put the paper up as high as possible, and drew a line on it.

His line won, because it was the highest up anybody drew it.

Anyways, what was so interesting about it was the concept of "reaching for greatness", and "doing your best"- both of which take effort. We all had a good laugh and learned something that day..

(I really am getting to the point, sorry, lol)

Anyways, he taught us about good spending habits, and we all found ways we could each save at least 50 dollars a week, 50 dollars which had gone up from our original unanimous estimates of between 5 and 10 dollars a week.

I just thought it was so cool, and I know so many people right now who really know how to get out of debts, so I figured that maybe it would help some folks on here who were never clued in to this stuff. I also suck with finances, still- but am gradually getting better with time (I actually have money saved for the first time in a few years, and a long term plan, so that is good, lol) and could personally benefit from more useful tips from people in the know. I think solid financial planning (when you can) is pretty much the name of the game for us college girls, and single moms these days.. The millionaires of the future, perhaps? (20 years from now, lets hope!)

=)
 
As I read somewhere:

A dollar of expenses cut is a dollar earned.

A dollar of income is a dollar taxed.


Thus, focus on cutting costs, rather than increasing income.
 
While all these comments are good advice, there are a few things you have missed. Aging parents that need help. You just say No!, right? Health. Education for the children. Education for yourself.

I never have had the ambition of being a millionaire. If the small real estate I have sells for enough on this market to have a small home where I want to be, and I have enough extra after normal expenses to travel once or twice a year, I am as wealthy as I have ever desired to be.

"poor" by choice

not that your poor but there are levels as to what people want to reach and where they have no desire to go beyond. for some 20k a year is enough.
 
Currently my bills alone eat up all my money. After paying this month, I have $26. Plus the $77 or so I get a week (most weeks, anyway) in child support, which is our grocery money.

Because of this I'm actually going to finish my degree online (sigh. Fodder for ridicule, I'm sure. But the nearest campus, and it's a community one, is 90 miles away).

absolutly nothing wrong with online edu, all major unies offer degree programs online, even harvard. so good for you, keep it up, plug away at it and sooner than you think youll be done.
 
I couldn't disagree with you more.

Coming from a middle-class family, I had a lot of contact with VERY wealthy people.

They have a very different way of managing money. They did not concentrate AT ALL on saving. Not one iota. They're attitude is "why be rich if you don't spend and enjoy your money".

What they concentrate on is GENERATING INCOME and lot's of it.

Sure, they're unscrupulous. They wheel and deal. They have no ethics. They don't care about fairness. They are self centered beyond imagination. (Some of these people would barely be beliveable on The Simpsons, but they are VERY real.

When I was young, being friends with them was an awful lot of fun. They usually have extravagant personalities. But once growing into the life of a working class adult, I've started to think that Joe Stalin really wasn't such an unreasonable guy after all.
 
I couldn't disagree with you more.

Coming from a middle-class family, I had a lot of contact with VERY wealthy people.

They have a very different way of managing money. They did not concentrate AT ALL on saving. Not one iota. They're attitude is "why be rich if you don't spend and enjoy your money".

What they concentrate on is GENERATING INCOME and lot's of it.

Sure, they're unscrupulous. They wheel and deal. They have no ethics. They don't care about fairness. They are self centered beyond imagination. (Some of these people would barely be beliveable on The Simpsons, but they are VERY real.

When I was young, being friends with them was an awful lot of fun. They usually have extravagant personalities. But once growing into the life of a working class adult, I've started to think that Joe Stalin really wasn't such an unreasonable guy after all.

I came from a high end middle class family, and did not want for anything for long growing up..

But unlike the apparently hard hearted "birds of a feather" that your folks seemed to flock around, (no disrespect meant there- you are the one discussing the virtues of Stalin, lol) the families we knew did focus on saving and investing, and were very conscientious about their ethics.. I was very much raised to want to help- to be considerate and to use good self preservation methods as to avoid having to experience losses to begin with.

Being able to save makes not one a frugal ol' miser, either. :lol: It just makes them respect their money and to respect their futures as well, enough to put aside a bit each paycheck, before calculating their bills..

I barely save at all right now- but am getting much better at it- some of it is really a frame of mind- I was not taught financial responsibility in my former teen years, and being in the Navy gave me just paychecks full of spending money, lol.. So it was only after that, I had to learn to budget. I also live a pretty darned good lifestyle, considering my income and status as a student keeps me from being capable of making a boatload of money every year. In my social circle, I am well liked, and well respected- and people with the financial capability really seem to like to do things for me and my son, even though we never ask for help. We always give a thank you card, and try to include our favorite people as much as possible, in our lives.. Life is good.. =)
 
**DO expect to have to put away at least 400 dollars a month to achieve millionaire status.

**DO expect downfalls and windfalls, and be sure to apply portions of windfalls to your savings, to help make up for the downfalls.

** This can take between 10 years and 20 years, depending on how much you can save monthly. If you can find a way to save more, you will reach millionare status sooner.. If you are unable to save as much, it will simply take longer.

Happy retirement everyone! Does anyone have any tips to add to this? I would love to hear them.. Thanks!


:clap2: hello JD_2B, thanks for sharing these tips!!

I'm pretty frugal myself, but I don't think I can ever hit the coveted status. I was just thinking about the calculations .... 40 years of savings x 12 months x $ 400 savings per month = $200 K approximately.

Nowhere near the half million mark :(

I'm thinking about the millionaire status question you posed. Seems like those who can achieve that either have some means of generating sources of income. Of course, keeping a wise spending budget and good savings habits help.

I'm thinking about people using their skills for hire, which of course translates to a job with varying levels of wages ... and so to me at the end of the day, it helps to have some of the following if possible

(1) collecting rent from an apartment, and then selling the house, hopefully for a profit!
(2) starting and conducting classes, and then hiring people to teach and you draw a small commission from these services provided and coordinated by yourself
(3) converting knowledge into a book, writing, publishing and selling it for royalties!

Lots of 'get-rich' scams around as well, so to me it's important to learn and earn on individual effort, and seek help from people that share similar or positive goals (this is different from people that you trust)

of course, your post made me re-think my saving habits :D and I thank you for that once again ... hope to hear your thoughts on this as well!

----------
shawn
buy travel guides or become a writer and sell your own
 
One thing that has worked really well for me over the past 25 years is to take most of my money out of the stock market when Democrats control Congress. Likewise, when Republicans control Congress, put the majority of my money in the stock market.
 
Or you can do it like I did. Go deep in debt buying a farm from a kid that inherited it and just wanted to get rid of it for money. This was during the height of the real estate boom and I knew the land would be wanted because an exit ramp was going in there. But so did the kid and everyone.
I sold the land for a big profit, then bought a business, built it up got good contracts. Sold it to my employees. Played in penney stocks for a while and made about 500% in a couple of years. Bought gold for a little over $600.

Now I live on a little farm, nice house, no debts and fixed comfortable for the rest of my life.

Up till a few years ago I was living check to check....
Ya just gotta go for it in a well thought out way. Risk is involved in going from working poor to comfortable.

And yes I am fairly frugal. I do not buy new vehicles and when I had made my million I was driving a 17 yr old car. Amazing how much money people flush down the drain for status.
 
Want a million dollars??.

You can have a million dollars in 10-20 years by following these rules, and thinking in only the SHORT TERM (but still having the long term goal)- by following these very simple rules of personal finance:

15- DO be sure that you take every penny saved from these examples and deposit them into an interest bearing FREE checking or savings account. (be sure you are clear that it is free, and ask to be well informed of any charges that might come up) The interest will gain you more money, the more money you have in your account. Say the interest rate is at 3%- If you have only 100 dollars in there, that is still three dollars you get for FREE from the bank, for saving that money with them. If you have 1,000 dollars in the account, you get 30 dollars for free that year... As the money grows, so does the money from interest. One day, you will have a million bucks in your account, making enough interest (30,000 dollars a year) to live comfortably in your retirement.

AAAANNNNNNDDDDDD.. Lastly..

**DO expect to have to put away at least 400 dollars a month to achieve millionaire status.
l:
Put away 400 per month for 30 years = 400x12x30 = 144,000
Put 144,000 at 3% for 30 years and you have ~ $349,920
So unless you can manage a lot better than 3% this is not a million dollar retirement plan.
Further, with an inflation rate of 3% you money has no increase in purchasing power. If inflation increases faster than 3% you lose purchasing power.
However the stock market is no longer a way to get a good return because too many companies fail altogether, taking an entire investment with them. Unless you are expert at investing you cannot hope to make much more than inflation and are apt to get burned frequently.
Nice try, but this does not work as proposed.
 
Another great way to build up a saving account is to set aside 10% of every paycheck you get. Put that money in the bank and leave it alone. If you try hard, it isn't hard to trim 10% spending from what you spend every payday or month. It will be difficult for you to do the first couple of months but if you stick to it, it will become easier than you think. Before you know it, you will have a nice nest egg in the bank and surprise yourself as to where it came from.
 
400 a month in a savings account that earns less than 2% ain't now way no how going to equal a million in 20 years

In fact 400 a month at 2% will only amount to about 120,000 in 20 years.

If you're not saving 20% or more of your gross income towards retirement and getting a decent return, you're doomed.
 
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