Want to save a million dollars by the age of 30?
Grant Sabatier, hopefully I’m saying that right, was able to do this.
So in today's video, we are going to learn how he did this
so that we can apply the steps into our own lives to become millionaires.
I am Tiffany Thomas with wealthytiffany.com
and I achieved financial freedom and became a millionaire.
If you are looking to do one or both of those things,
hit that like button and hit the subscribe button and we're going to dive right in.
Grant begins his journey with pretty much nothing.
He said, a few years after graduating from college,
he was unemployed, broke, and living with his parents.
He was hungry for a burrito one afternoon
and he checked his checking account and he had two dollars and twenty-six cents in the bank.
This low point really served as a wake-up call for him.
He remembers having this intense feeling of honestly,
just lack of control. And you’ve probably heard this before, you control your money
or your money will control you,
but he never wanted to feel that way again.
He ended up finding a job at a marketing agency
and then started doing gigs to make extra cash and he managed to save half of his paycheck.
Another thing that he did was he read a ton of financial books
and I love this aspect because we can always learn something more.
I love reading self-improvement or self development books and especially money books.
And clearly he learned a lot by reading these financial books
because he was able to hit his goal of saving a million dollars by age 30.
But it wasn't just reading about finance that helped him save
that million dollars by age 30. He gives us some very specific tips that
helped him to reach his goal of becoming a millionaire.
The first tip that he gives us is to find a side hustle.
He quickly realized the fifty thousand dollars he was earning
at the marketing agency wasn't going to be enough for him to meet his savings goal.
He ended up starting multiple side gigs to bring in extra money
and he gives examples of launching a consulting company,
selling concert tickets, and building websites for businesses.
There are a number of different side hustles that we could start. Comment below
and tell me if you have started a side hustle.
And these side hustles that he started really paid off
because he said that he was able to quit his traditional nine to five job
and dedicate time to growing his website business,
which was earning him more than he was making at his day job.
But he didn't just focus in on that one side hustle,
he kept multiple side hustles, so that he could save as much money as possible.
And that makes a really big difference.
Since he did have this very specific goal to save a million
dollars by the age of 30. He sacrificed a lot of time with his friends
and family, and there are certain sacrifices that we need to make in order to build our wealth,
but make sure that you are still focusing on what is really important to you.
Figure out what your priorities
are because we don't want to neglect those just to chase after money.
I feel like we can find a good balance of making certain sacrifices,
but not making the major sacrifices of things that are very important to us.
The second tip that he shares is to make saving a daily habit, and this is a really good point.
If we can create those small daily habits,
they will really impact our future over the long term.
One of the main things he did was to make his goal feel attainable.
I'm sure going from broke to a million dollars is going to feel very overwhelming.
So he focused on the near term and calculated that he could meet that goal in about 30 years,
if he saved at least fifty dollars a day and earned roughly 5% a year,
and I actually talked about this recently in another video.
So I will leave a link above and below.
You can check that out later on,
but he started with investing five dollars a
day and then he increased his contributions over time
and since he had his goal of a million dollars,
he didn't stop with just five dollars a day.
He continued to increase that, and even when he topped 50 dollars a day,
he didn't stop, he still increased that. He stashed away any
extra money that was coming in, such as a bonus or income from freelance work.
He eventually reached the point of saving hundreds or thousands of dollars on some days.
That is pretty impressive when you are really focused in on that goal. And then
you are combining that with the short term of what can I do today right now, to achieve that
goal, it makes a really big difference. And this moves us right into his third tip,
which is to invest extra cash.
Grant says, that he was able to meet his goal
because he invested the majority of his long-term savings and stocks and bonds,
giving him a much higher return then he would have earned through a savings account.
This may seem really obvious to some people,
but his story is a reminder of how much money can be left on the table
when people are too afraid to invest.
And I think this is a really, really true because I used to be a huge saver.
And then I turned over to investing and I am so glad I did because I've been
able to grow my wealth. I've been able to become a millionaire and become financially free,
and there is no way I would have done that if I would have left my money
in a savings account. He also says that part of his success came from good timing.
Stocks have risen sharply since he doubled down on his savings goals during the financial crisis,
which is very true. Sometimes we start investing a ton of money
and then the market starts to go down, in his case,
it started to go up. But honestly, if we were keeping that long-term perspective
and continuing to invest to dollar cost average than our investments will definitely go up
because we're focused on that long-term. And if you're thinking,
well, if I leave my money in a savings account, then I'm not going to lose any of my money.
Well, that is not true. Because if you take into account inflation,
which is super high right now, you've already lost a significant amount of
buying power by leaving your money in a savings account.
We really need to be investing our money.
Making our money work for us and not leaving it in a savings account.
The fourth tip Grant gives us is to keep boosting our savings rate. As he was earning
more money from his side gigs and reducing his living expenses, he moved from saving
15% to saving 25% and then eventually saving more than 40% of his paycheck.
He was able to drastically, increase his savings rate.
And while that may feel intimidating to some people, just
making a very small increase in our savings rate
will make a huge difference because of compound interest,
as long as we are investing that money and not just leaving it all in a savings account.
Then it will grow exponentially. So,
even that one percent increase that you can do will help you enormously.
While he was making those sacrifices to increase the savings rate,
he realized that there does need to be a balance. Like I mentioned before,
we need to know what our priorities are and where we can make sacrifices,
but still be spending on things that are important to us.
And then tip number 5 of becoming a millionaire at 30 is to reduce your expenses.
As he became more serious about achieving his goal,
he scaled back his monthly housing costs.
So that he could save even more. He moved from a really swanky apartment in Chicago
that was about 1,500 a month to an apartment half that size that cost $800 a month.
So that is 700 more, that went straight into his investment account.
And this is a really great point. He focused on housing which was one of his largest expenses.
If we are able to focus on reducing our largest expenses,
which are usually housing, transportation, and food,
then we can have a significant amount of money to invest.
He gives a few examples of different ways that you can save even more money.
For example, you could sell your car and eliminate that monthly car payment, insurance,
and the gas costs, or possibly even finding a roommate,
like I have, or even renting out a room in your house on Airbnb or something like that.
Really take a look at all of your monthly expenses
and figure out what is not really important to you.
And where can you reduce those expenses to increase that savings
rate and invest even more money to become a millionaire even sooner.
Comment below and tell me one of your expenses that you are going to reduce or cut.
And if you want an easy way to track all of your expenses.
I like using a free app called Personal Capital.
You can hook all of your financial accounts to Personal Capital so that you
can see everything in one place. I will leave a referral link below in the description.
You can click on that to set up your free account with Personal Capital.
Tip number six, that Grant shares with us that helped him become a millionaire at age
30 is to remember your goals.
And I think this one is is really, really important.
If you don't even have a goal that you are working toward,
make sure that you set a goal. Set a financial goal that you want to work toward
whether that is becoming a millionaire at a certain age,
or achieving financial freedom, or just saving $100 a month,
pick something to work towards, so that you can be excited about that goal.
He says years of living frugally,
and finding ways to make extra cash, helped him to meet his savings goal.
But then last year he made a costly mistake.
He got comfortable. He took a look at his transactions and calculated,
he spent two hundred thousand dollars the previous year more than twice as much
he had the year before that. Grant said that he knew he could afford these things
but the lifestyle inflation that he was experiencing,
could threaten the financial independence he had been working for.
Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
So he really tightened in the reins on spending,
which is a really good point. If we are getting comfortable and we are increasing our income,
but then also increasing our lifestyle, increasing our expenses,
then we aren't able to save more money
or invest more money and then we won't be able to achieve financial independence, or
financial freedom when we want to, or become a millionaire when we want. Really be careful
when you start to increase your income that you aren't increasing your expenses as well.
Especially when you are working toward a specific goal that you
really want to achieve like, becoming a millionaire.
I really love that he shared this example because it happens often.
We really need to remember his tip number six of not forgetting about our goals.
One thing that I want to add is that when we feel like we are making mistakes with our money,
especially, that we let go of those mistakes and just start to improve. We don't
need to beat ourselves up and constantly think about all of the mistakes that we have made.
Yes, they are good reminders for us that we should not be making those mistakes again,
but we don't need to continually stress about that and be upset with ourselves.
We can realize that mistake and forgive ourselves and move forward.
And continue to make progress. We all make mistakes.
Comment below with your favorite tip of becoming a millionaire at 30.
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Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you in the next video.