Want to know the habits of a millionaire so you can become one or maybe just
the habits of someone who has become financially free and retired early.
I just hit that millionaire mark and have
been financially free for a couple of years.
So I want to share with you five of the habits that have got me where I am today.
I'm Tiffany Thomas with Wealthy Tiffany Dotcom.
And investing in real estate and in the stock market is what helped me
to become a millionaire at 40 and achieve financial freedom at age thirty eight.
Hit that like button and the subscribe button and we are going to dive right
in and tell me in the comments if you think you know which one of the habits I
am going to tell you today and we will see if you are right at the end of the video.
All right.
Habit number one that I want to share with you today is actually believing
that you can become a millionaire or that you can become financially free.
And this is really key.
This has made a huge difference
in my life, because if you don't believe it, you won't achieve it.
And that is true. If you keep telling yourself you are not
going to become a millionaire, then you are not going to become a millionaire.
But if you do the opposite, if you start telling yourself that you
will become a millionaire, then you will become a millionaire.
And I am living proof of this.
Earlier this year, in April, I actually wrote
on my bathroom mirror "Millionaire at 40," and at this time I honestly wasn't sure if
I would be able to accomplish this or not because of the pandemic and the stock
market crash and everything that has been so crazy in this world,
the real estate market could have easily fallen or the stock market could have
crashed again and taken a long time to rebound.
But I really wanted to be a millionaire at age 40.
So I wrote that on my mirror.
And as I was going to bed almost every
night, I would say to myself, "I'm a millionaire, I am a millionaire."
And I would just repeat this phrase over and over.
And as silly as it may sound, it worked.
And I've used this tactic before.
Whatever it is that I am focusing
on currently, I will say some sort of mantra or
affirmation right before I'm going to bed at night.
And it's just some positive thoughts,
whether it is I am a millionaire or I am financially free or I am beautiful,
whatever it is that I want to create in my life or have more abundance with,
then I repeat these positive thoughts to myself as I'm falling asleep.
I really believe in positive thinking
and positive energy or vibes, whatever you want to call it.
But whatever you're putting out in the universe is going to come back to you.
And I have seen that in my own life with the example that I just shared with you.
But in other things as well, the more I focus on the positive than
the more good things that I see in my own life.
And just to contrast that, I have a friend and every time I talk
to her, she has a complaint about something and she's just very negative.
It's actually really hard for me to talk
to her a lot, but a lot of things seem to go wrong in her life.
And it is constant whether it's something going wrong with her back or
something at work or whatever it is, there always seems to be something wrong.
And I get that there are extenuating
circumstances and of course, bad things are going to happen.
But I feel like the more you can put out
good energy, then the more that's going to come back to you and vice versa.
And that's not to say that nothing bad
in my life ever happens because there are bad things that happen.
But I don't dwell on those things.
I don't focus on them.
I choose to look at the positive that can come out of that experience.
Just to share a quick example, my car was completely totaled and I've
shared this before, but that could have been so much worse.
And I really could have focused on, oh, my gosh, my car is totaled.
I don't even know if we're going to find the driver or if he has insurance.
How am I going to get a new car?
I could have just been really,
really stressed and really, really negative.
And I chose not to to focus on it that way.
I looked at it as OK.
Well, I don't really want to buy a new car right
now, but I get the opportunity to choose to buy a new car.
And I wasn't in the car when it happened.
So luckily nothing bad happened to me physically.
But I chose to pull out the positive that I could from that experience.
I ended up finishing my basement with part
of the check that I received for the car that was totaled.
So if we are looking for the positive, if we are believing that we can accomplish
what we want to do, then those things will come into our life.
We will be able to accomplish our goals.
And sure, it may take longer than we
thought because of things that have gone wrong, but
I would rather live a life of joy
and happiness, looking at the things that have gone right.
So believe you can become a millionaire and become financially free. And habit
Number two is to set a big goal, set a goal to become a millionaire at 40
or whatever age you want to, and set small goals along the way.
As I have learned more and more about goals over time and more about self
improvement and self development, I have seen that the less we can kind
of focus on that final outcome, the the better off that we're going to be.
If we can set small goals along the way and create processes to achieve those
goals, then we are going to be a lot more successful.
And let me share an example of what I'm talking about here.
So I wanted to create passive income through real estate.
I wanted to have enough properties where I had enough cash flow coming in that I
wouldn't have to worry about getting a nine to five job.
So I had my big goal of that number that I wanted to reach.
And then I took a step back and thought, OK, how can I get to the school?
So I work backwards.
I bought the first property and I had roommates living with me.
So I had some income coming in that way.
And then I thought, OK,
the next step is to buy another property and get more cash flow from that property.
So that's what I did.
I saved up for a down payment
and purchased that rental property and increased my cash flow.
And then I did it again.
I thought, OK, well, I'm going to need another property.
So I purchased another property,
ended up moving into that property so I could put less money down,
left my roommates oat my old property and replaced myself there.
So I increased my cash flow that way.
I got roommates in my new place and had an increase in cash flow that way.
And then I knew I needed at least one more
property and it would need to be a little bit bigger property.
It could it be just a two bedroom.
So I ended up purchasing a four bedroom home and renting it to singles so that I
could make a little bit more money that way.
And that's what put me at financial
freedom, lean financial freedom, if you will, at age thirty eight.
So I had all of these properties.
I purchased one at a time and just started
to slowly increase my cash flow with each property and I achieved my goal and then I
ended up paying off one of those properties and achieved financial freedom.
And I did think about purchasing another property instead of paying that one off.
But for my situation, I thought, you know, I really want to pay off this property
and it will increase my cash flow enough where I will be financially free.
So I was more focused on the process of achieving my goals.
I knew that I wanted to do buy and hold properties, and that's what I did.
I took it one step at a time,
one house at a time, if you will, and was able to achieve this lofty goal
by just starting small and continuing to move forwards.
And it wasn't a completely smooth process.
I had to put in multiple offers, look at a lot of different homes.
And the last property that I purchased,
I was actually the backup offer and the first offer ended up falling through.
So I was able to purchase that property,
which I didn't think I was going to be able to.
So keep that end goal in mind and then set
your smaller goals and just work backward so that you can see where you are
and celebrate those small milestones, those small goals along the way.
Because if you don't know what you're
working toward, how are you going to get there?
The third habit that I want to share
with you that has helped me to become a millionaire and become financially free
is making your good habits easier to do and your bad habits harder to do.
Take a look at the habits that you have right now and decide if they are hindering
you from reaching your goals or if they are helping you to reach your goals.
And if they are hindering you,
then try to get rid of those habits or try to make them harder to do.
And an easy example of this is if you
watch TV a lot, then hide your remote, take it downstairs.
If your TV is upstairs, make it harder to sit down and watch TV.
To give you a personal example,
when I wanted to buy another property, I was spending a lot of money on clothes
and shoes and I didn't want to be spending my money on that anymore.
So here's what I did.
I got rid of the email subscriptions that I had to my favorite stories
that were sending me sales and discounts on clothes and shoes.
So I took away that temptation and I stopped going shopping with my friends
who would always buy clothes and shoes at the stores.
I either planned a different activity or told them I couldn't go.
I also stopped taking random trips to just walk around Target or Ross,
so I wasn't tempted to buy anything while I was at the store.
And instead I tried to replace that habit
with something else, like going for a walk or reading a book.
And as far as a personal
example for a good habit, I use personal capital to track my net
worth and all of my finances, but I love using this because I can just
log in really quickly and see all of my credit card balances,
my mortgage balances, my checking savings, all of the financial accounts that I have.
And I can watch my net worth grow over time or shrink for that matter.
But I check this almost daily because I
get really excited when my net worth has gone up so much.
For example, when it became over a million
dollars and it helps me to think, oh, do I really want to make this purchase?
Because it's going to decrease my net worth and I don't want that to happen.
So it really helped me become better at spending on my priorities because I
could see everything in one place really quickly.
So think about some good habits that you have and make those easier to do
and think about the bad habits that you have and try to get rid of those
altogether or at least make them harder to do.
And then habit number four is invest your money.
You have to invest your money.
If you want to become a millionaire or
want to become financially free, you cannot leave your money sitting
in a savings account because it's not even keeping up with the rate of inflation.
So make sure you know how much money is
coming in and how much money is going out, what you have in your savings account as
an emergency fund and what your debts are so that you can pay them off.
But make sure that you get to the point if
you aren't already, that you have enough money to invest and start investing it.
And if you have questions about how
to invest your money, I have plenty of videos on how to do that.
I will leave a link above to my stock market investing playlist and below
and the description and you can check that out.
You can also automate your investing.
For example, if you have a paycheck
that you receive every two weeks, you could designate a certain percentage
of that paycheck to automatically go to a Roth IRA if you have one of those set up.
And that way you don't even have to think about it.
But honestly, if I had not invested
my money over the years, there is no way I would be a millionaire
right now, nor would I be financially free.
The stocks that I started buying in twenty
thirteen, which isn't really that long ago, have gone up over one hundred percent
and the real estate properties have also increased in value.
Just to give you an example,
the property that I bought just in twenty sixteen so about four years ago has gone
up over one hundred and thirty thousand dollars in value.
That's about what, just over 30 grand a year,
which was probably my starting salary after I graduated from college.
And that's not even to mention the cash
flow that I am receiving from those properties.
Even if I was to work 80 hours a week and get paid overtime,
which actually doesn't sound like a very fun life anyway,
but there's no way that would even add up to the million dollars that I have now.
So it is so, so important to invest your
money and invest as much as you can and as early as you can.
This brings us to the last habit,
habit number five, which is to stay the course,
stay focused on your goals, keep investing your money even when
the stock market takes a dip or when it goes up.
Be consistent and continue to invest and stay on the path to achieving your
goal of Millionaire or achieving your goal of financial freedom.
There will be things that come up along the way that will try to sidetrack you.
For example, I joined an MLM a while ago,
a multilevel marketing company, and my friend was very successful with it
and he told me he would help me along the way.
And I thought, OK, well, maybe I could build up more income this way.
I could start kind of a passive business once I get things going.
And turns out it wasn't for me and I ended up just cutting my losses and taking
a step back and thinking, Tiffany, you know what works.
You know what you want to be doing.
That's investing in real estate,
investing in the stock market and growing your own business.
So remember to stay focused on your goals
and really go after what is going to get you there in the best way possible,
which isn't necessarily the quickest way, but it's the best way that works for you.
And try not to get discouraged when things
go wrong or bad things happen because they will.
To give you another example, I chose to invest in whole life insurance
and that ended up not being the wisest choice either.
So I cut my losses and lost thousands of dollars, but I could have lost a lot
more had I continued with the policy, which I knew wasn't right for me.
So I needed to get out.
So that's what I did.
I cut my losses and learned my lesson not
to invest in anything I don't fully understand.
And know why I'm investing where I am,
and if you are staying on the course and being focused on your goals,
then it really helps you to spend your money on your priorities.
Like I mentioned before, I wanted to stop spending so much
on clothes and start putting more money toward a down payment on a property.
And when I had that specific goal, it was a lot easier to spend my money
on things that were really important to me because I knew what I was working toward.
And the more money I could put toward
a down payment, the sooner I could purchase that property.
But if I was spending on things
that weren't really that important to me, that weren't really bringing me joy,
then I was going to take longer to purchase that property.
So really stay focused on what is important to you.
And of course, you can adjust along the way.
There are things that will happen in your
life that will change your priorities, and that's totally fine.
Just make sure you know what you're
focused on and why you're focused on it and keep moving forward.
And if something doesn't feel right
anymore, then pray about it or meditate about it and decide, OK,
do I really want to work toward this still or is there something else that is more
important that I need to be working towards?
And then you can adjust. So stay the course and be focused,
focus on what is important to you, not to someone else.
And when you do get sidetracked or make a mistake, just acknowledge
that and forgive yourself and then continue to move forward.
Those are the five millionaire habits to financial freedom to help you retire
early that I wanted to share with you today.
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Thanks so much for watching.
I'll see you in the next video.