How to Be a Millionaire

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By jtreptiles
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Think Like a millionaire

I set out at a young age to become a millionaire...and to learn how millionaire's thought about money. I studied books, listened to tapes and asked many of questions of the affluent people that I know. By copying the processes that led those people to wealth, I have in turn found that I am becoming wealthy. I have however learned many lessons along the way. Some were easy to learn, almost common sense. Others were hard to learn and difficult to fully conceptualize. Still others cost me...and not in figurative sense! To you, I give you my hard won thoughts on the road to thinking like a millionaire:

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Step 1

Think like the wealthy

You must use leverage to your benefit. Having leverage basically means you use less of your money (substitute: work, time, assets, investments, etc.) to control a greater amount of money (again, substitute the items above). The key word here is control. You want control...that is part of a millionaires mindset. There are many ways to leverage your money. Some people use stock options, margins accounts, trade futures or currencies, or borrow other peoples commodities. Others use real estate to leverage their investment. Whatever method that you use, the key is to have a greater degree of control over assets.
Step 2

Millionaires record their plans and make goals. They make their goals very specific and strategic, and hold themselves accountable to achieving those goals. They ensure that their goals are aggressive, realistic, and quantifiable, and then they make a plan to achieve them. The rich then identify what they will have to sacrifice in order to achieve those goals...and then they act.
Step 3

Become extraordinarily wealthy

If you're aspiring to be rich, you must learn the art of self discipline (and it is an art). A technique that I use to sustain my self discipline is to create self imposed hardships. 'Now, why in the world would I want to do that?' you say...well, let me explain. If I'm not feeling my typical motivation levels or enthusiasm for an endeavor (basically feeling like a lazy bum), I force myself to do something twice as difficult as the original task. If I realize that I'm dragging my feet to go on my three mile run, I force myself to do five. If I have exceeded my budget this month on going out to eat, I force myself to earn that money back..and then double it (part of the reason for this article!). These hardships force me to focus on what it was that got me into the situation in the first place...and I eventually self correct.
Step 4

Self made millionaires develop systems. They develop systems for acquiring, building, distributing, and leveraging wealth. By many accounts, this is how you would describe a business. One of the most difficult thoughts for me to break was that owning a profitable business doesn't mean that I have to continually work at it...I just had to develop the systems that made it run on its own (see my article on how to create a profitable business system below). Once that step was done, all I had to concern myself with was making the business efficient. Added with the steps above, I have learned how to think like (and become) a millionaire.