I always believed that I would be a millionaire, and I think
originally my goal was to try to hit that by 30.
Ended up surpassing that by a decent amount.
This is the moment.
My name is Graham Stephan. I'm 29 years old.
I make $1.6 million per year and I live in Los Angeles, California.
And welcome to, wait for it, Millennial Money.
So I'm a full-time real estate agent, real estate investor and a
YouTuber. Every day is gonna be a little bit different.
Some days I'm going to be out with clients showing properties, other
days I'm going to be planning YouTube videos.
And some other days I'm going to be looking at properties for myself
to invest in.
My mortgage is just over $2,800 a month.
The market value of the other unit next to me is about $2,500 a
month. Then between the equity I get and the tax write-offs from
using the garage as my office, it basically works out to be a free
place for me to live. So I spend about $200 a
month in groceries and I do price shop between grocery stores.
I'll kind of make the rounds and just stock up on whichever item is
the cheapest at which store.
Every morning, I have my same two eggs with ham and cheese and half a
bagel with store-bought generic brand cream cheese is my favorite to
do that. I refuse to spend money on two things.
Number one, I think everyone knows, is coffee.
I think it's absolutely ridiculous.
The markup of coffee at Starbucks and Coffee Bean and a lot of those
places out there. So I just make it a home for 20 cents.
Also, designer clothing.
Don't see the point in going and spending $700 on like Gucci shoes.
So I end up saving about 99% of my income just because my income is
so high and I keep my expenses so low.
And most of the properties just kind of, like, pay for my living
expenses. So anything else I make is really just seen as a bonus.
And I save and invest it.
So I got into real estate basically as soon as I turned 18 years old
because I had no other options.
I didn't get into college. I had really bad grades in high school and
I saw getting my real estate license, honestly, as a way where I
could just get one year of work experience and then reapply to
colleges. But it turned out to be a career I really loved.
So I ended up living with my dad for the first few years.
I moved out in my early 20s and that was when I bought another
property. The first property I bought was when I was 21 years old.
It was a short sale for $59,500 in San Bernardino.
It was a foreclosure that was being sold by the bank.
And at the time, I had been saving up as a real estate agent
basically using all of my commissions.
Just putting it in a savings account.
I bought that property in cash.
It actually appraised and was refinanced for like $260,000.
My investing strategy really hasn't changed since I was 21, and all
of it has really just been about real estate.
If anything, I'm just looking to buy more expensive real estate now
that makes a little bit more money. But otherwise, I've just kept
doing the same thing over and over again.
I had no idea that anyone would actually watch me and I had no idea
that I can actually make any money doing this.
So I started it really just with the intention of having fun.
I'd always wanted to do it, but I also felt like who would want to
watch me? And I felt like I didn't have the personality for it.
I just felt like, you know, I should probably postpone it.
But I just made a video one day.
Spur of the moment.
It was a slow open house. And I just filmed with my iPhone, the
selfie side. Just talked about how I got started in real estate.
And that was such a fun experience.
And I remember that video getting, like, 9 or 10 views and just
being, like, "Oh, my God, like, 9 people have seen this video."
So I started making more videos and once I started doing about two
videos a week, it's just... The growth really just exploded, it
seemed like. I would say 99.9%
of the comments are so positive and so supportive.
I absolutely love them and it really feels like a sense of community.
Then you get some funny ones.
The negative comments, at this point, I'm so used to them.
Then after a while, I think I realized that it has more to do with
them and their own problems that they portray onto you than it does
about you. So right now, probably like 85% of my
income is affiliated with YouTube in some way or another.
And then the remaining 15% is through real estate sales or real
estate investments. So since I've always been
self-employed, I've never had a formal, like, 401(k), but I do have a
SEP 401(k). I've thrown some money in there at the end of the year.
Just, if it's left over, just as a hedge.
But, I mean as far as savings are concerned, I always like to keep
about $20,000 to $30,000 in one of my checking accounts just to cover
anything that could come up in the short term or to draw from if I
have any expenses that come up.
But other than that, all of my other money is spread out through
several high-interest savings accounts.
So coin collecting was actually something I really got into as a kid.
For some reason, I found it really cool to collect, like, old
American coins and paper money.
And what I would do is go across the street from where I would work
to a bank and the bank teller knew me.
And she knew me because I would go in and always ask for, like, any
old money that she would have.
Some lady came in the bank and exchanged $200 of all, just, like,
perfect condition $10 bills from 1934.
So some of these are worth up to $200, depending on the condition.
Others are worth more, like, $40 to $50.
So I wouldn't really consider these an investment.
Like, I think it's probably way better for me to put my money in the
stock market than it is for me to get like, you know, old money and
just keep it for a long time.
But this is just a fun hobby.
It's also from YouTube that I was really able to branch off into
other aspects of this as well, in the sense that I was able to create
two programs. One of them teaches people how to work as a real estate
agent and build their career.
The second program that I created was how to teach people to grow on
YouTube. And both of those this year have probably done a little bit
over $300,000+ in sales.
And since it's all online, that's pretty much all profit.
There's almost no overhead whatsoever with that.
Very much, like, it gives you a little jolt there.
So I bought my Tesla in April of 2019.
You get so many rebates back for it.
The financing is so cheap.
Everything that went on with the car, I calculated that it was going
to cost me $78 a month out of pocket.
Net in the first year.
Not counting the opportunity cost of then having all the money left
over that I could then go and reinvest.
So I figured, like, depreciation is going to be minimal.
I'm going to get some really great tax write-offs from it.
So it's going to almost be a free car.
And I figure like, oh, you know, that's the video I'm gonna make.
Then that video ended up getting now almost 6 million views.
I think the total cost of the car with everything.
All out the door with taxes and, like, all of the options,
everything, was like $44,000.
So I ended up making money from getting the car.
Well, I think we only lost, like, two or three pasta noodles. So I
think we did pretty good. So I have an amazing girlfriend and her and
I share a lot of the same values in terms of saving and spending
money. And I find it fun that she is just as frugal as I am.
So we can have a great time trying to figure out, like, where is the
best happy hour spot and, like, how we could save a little bit more
money doing this. And she's the one too that's also very encouraging
of, like, "We don't have to go out tonight to happy hour sushi."
She doesn't sound like that by the way, but she encourages me to
like, you know, we can go cook food at home or instead of going out
to see a movie, we could just pop something on Netflix.
So one of the things we actually do when we go out is we will end up
just splitting a meal because usually I'm not hungry enough to eat
the entire thing myself, and neither is she.
So we can basically get food for two by paying for one.
It's really cool to have someone in your life like that who I see as
just being an equal on every single level with the same mindset.
Ok. I know it sounds weird, too.
But I do end up rewarding myself every now and then at McDonald's
from the Dollar Menu.
I don't ever eat McDonald's, but I just decided to go just because it
was there and I was really hungry.
I had two of the double cheeseburgers from the Dollar Menu and it was
so good that now it gets to the point where I will purposely use that
as an incentive to get all my work done.
And if I'm able to do that before, like, midnight, I go and get the
two double cheeseburgers.
It's not something that happens too often, but it does become this
thing where it's, like, that's my treat.
Thank you. Oh, it smells so good.
There's something about the smell.
It's just like, how is it...
How does it smell so good?
So in terms of net worth goals, I really don't have any and I have no
desire of becoming a billionaire.
I don't even know what I would possibly do with that amount of money.
I would like to hit $10 million.
I feel like that would be just a decent number.
The only thing I really want to do is travel that I haven't done.
That's the only thing.
But I could do that if I wanted to.
It's just not the right time to do that.
You don't need to be as extreme as I am.
You don't need to skimp on every purchase at all.
You don't need to work 12 hours a day.
But you do need to think outside the box and you do need to be
creative and leverage your time appropriately.
But I love it and I love the challenge of saving and trying to handle
my money well and grow it.
No one is more frugal than I am.