To become wealthy, you need a foundational belief system. Yes, you can have the physical steps like paying off your credit cards, but there has to be a shift in mindset.
Without a divergent belief system, the world of consumerism and materialism will overtake your goals. I previously wrote about my core values of passive income. That article started the mindset process, which we continue here.
Today, I want to dig into “MY” seven principles of wealth. Your principles may differ from mine, but this should help you identify your path. I want to jump right in, so here are my seven principles of wealth.
- Have Grace
- Live Below Your Means
- Leverage Your Time
- Stay Out of Debt
- Pay Yourself First
- Save & Invest for Today & Tomorrow
- Believe in Compounding
1. Have Grace. The most crucial principle of wealth is to have grace, meaning being thankful for your situation each day. If you are alive, you should have a massive smile every day.
Stock Market Investing 101
Our higher entities cannot provide for us if we are not thankful for what we currently have. Why would they give us more if we complain about what we have?
Every time I receive a dividend or someone buys a book; I have grace. It’s incredible to have “free money” or passive income hit my bank account. I am also thankful every day I go to work.
I plan to retire as fast as humanly possible, but I am thankful that the Marine Corps helped change my life and put me in a position to retire before 48 years old.
Real Estate Investing 101
When you become a creator, investor, tycoon, and entrepreneur, you’ll need to have grace every day. You will start with zero audience and opportunities; thus, each step will require patience, persistence, and people. You’ll need grace to make it through the first few years. Nobody owes you anything—always remember that.
2) Live below your means. This principle may come hard for many people. Living below your means is pursuing a life of relationships over stuff. When you have true love in your life, you don’t require many things.
Sure, we want our spouse and kids to be comfortable, but what does that have to do with an $80,000 car? In the article “To Be Truly Free 2: You’ll Need $20,000/month of Passive Income,” I explain the art of cash flow.
The Magic of an Infinite Return
Yes, I want over $20,000/month in passive income, but I will not spend it all. I want it for protection and to pay it forward to my future generations. Just because you earn lots of money doesn’t mean you have to spend every cent.
We are supposed to be good stewards of our money; therefore, we can save and invest it for the future when we receive more. If we can’t control our income now, how will we take charge when we get more?
3. Leverage your time. Who told us that there are only eight hours in the workday? The eight-hour workday is a recent phenomenon, starting in the early 1900s. Before the shift to factories, people worked all kinds of hours on their farms and businesses.
Become a Content Creator in 2021
Today, we use the eight-hour workday, two-day weekend, and “family time” to keep us from our dreams. We think that going to work “is” the mission. Once we complete our eight hours, we come home, flop down in front of the TV, do nothing, and call it “family time.” That is crap.
The mission is to set ourselves and our children free. The only way to do this is “to build” in our free time—becoming passive income heroes. We need to start a home business, create content, start a garden, etc.
The human brain is supposed to create something every day. No, this does not include your spreadsheet at work. You need to push your brain every day, especially during your off time. Get your kids involved in your home business—that is real family time.
5 Habits to Envision a World of Money
4. Stay out of debt. Debt is not good for our souls. Yes, you can use debt to increase the returns on your investments—we call this leverage. No, I am talking about consumer debt.
Going on vacation on your credit card, buying a fancy car you cannot afford, and even purchasing a big and expensive house are all products of bad decisions.
Debt is a form of slavery. You become an in-debt-ured servant, where you cannot leave your job or grow your income because you need to pay off your loans. Even worse, you cannot invest in the future when you have debt.
Passive Income Ideas from $1,000 to $7,027
I’ve been in debt, and now I do not carry debt. There is a massive difference in my daily attitude. If I receive $100 from someone, I have choices on where and how to spend it. When you are in debt, you pay your money to enormous corporations for something you bought years ago.
Don’t live in the past; stop your bad debt habits today. Dave Ramsey has a great program to help get you out of debt. Also, the book “All Your Worth” has a good set of rules for understanding your income. Do something today.
5) Pay Yourself First. Growing up, you always hear this, but what does “pay yourself first mean?” It means that your budget must include allocations for savings and investing. You should treat saving and investing like a utility bill.
7 Steps to Starting a Blog
For example, if you have $4,000/month of earned income, you should budget it to include saving and investing. And saving and investing should make the rest of your life uncomfortably tight.
If your essential utilities and mortgage are $2,000/month, you should save and invest $1,000. This leaves $1,000 for food, car, and fun. If you reverse it, you will pay for food, car, fun, and what remains you would save.
How much cash would make it into your savings by the end of the month? Maybe $200 or $300. Thus, paying yourself forward is vital to your future success.
It Feels Good to be in Control of Your Finances
You can take it one step further and make dividends part of your life. Then, you would increase your discretionary income as you save and invest.
6) Save & Invest for Today & Tomorrow. The reason people have such a hard time saving and investing is that the media teaches us the wrong viewpoint.
They tell us that at age 25, we should be saving for age 65. Who at age 25 wants to think about retirement and getting old? Heck, we don’t even know what next year brings.
However, if we taught ourselves to invest in dividends, we would see immediate results. We are investing for today and securing our future one dividend at a time.
How to Leverage Real Estate at Any Age
The average person should be investing for dividends well before funding their retirement accounts. Inflation is affecting us today, and our 401Ks cannot help us.
My wife and I made nearly $1,000 in dividends this month, which helps us combat inflation, save for the future, and work towards our goals. Thinking about today will save us tomorrow. Focusing on today and tomorrow has proved to motivate the average person significantly.
Keep the Job, Lose the Mindset
7) Believe in compounding. The most under-utilized concept in life is the power of compounding. Our human brain thinks linearly (in a straight line), so we cannot fathom the power of compounding.
But compounding works by exponential growth or growing by percentages (not in a line). Let’s take a look at a scenario. We make $80,000/year and want to have $20,000 in savings in one year.
Immediately, the human brain starts to focus on what we can cut back on, reduce, and where to save. We will sell our car, take the bus, and start clipping coupons. We don’t believe in compounding.
Hindsight is 2020
However, if you truly believe in compounding, you wouldn’t worry about these minor changes. These actions do not represent a shift in mindset. The complete change in perspective will lead to compounding thought processes that will allow you to save much more than $20,000.
If you begin to read, invest in USDC, rent rooms, start a business, find a better job, etc., you will smash through your goals before you even know it.
No one teaches us to think exponentially, which is a shame. I came to Japan in 2020 for a two-year unaccompanied tour (without my family). I left America with $77,000 in debt. I told my wife it would be awesome to come back with half that debt.
My time is almost up in Japan, and we have no debt and over $200,000 in the bank. Wow, what a difference a mindset makes. Read the book “The Compound Effect” to experience the power of compounding.
5 Creative Ways to Make Money from While You Sleep
Conclusion. I could write for days on these topics; however, I will keep it reasonably short. I want to continue to drill down on these principles because the mainstream doesn’t understand the profound nature of becoming wealthy.
Wealth is not money; it’s the mindset. You are a millionaire well before you reach a million dollars in the bank. Your principles give you the million-dollar attitude and mindset to achieve $1 million.
What are your principles of wealth? If you don’t know where to start, begin reading. Here are my top 20 books that will make you rich—it’s an excellent place to start. Good Luck!
- PDF of the Month: 505 Takeaways from 101 Books (pdf)
- Free PDF Downloads: Download FREE PDF LIST here
- Financial Mindset: Become CEO of Yourself 2 (Free 196-Page PDF)
- Retirement Planning: Your Retirement Planning Guide 2 (Free 255-Page PDF)
- Investing: How We Plan to Retire on Dividends 2 (165-Page Free PDF)
- Cryptocurrencies: Counting on Crypto 2 (Free 159-Page PDF)
- Real Estate: Financial Independence through Real Estate 2 (Free 123-Page PDF)
- Business: Retire Rich, Retire Comfortable with a Business 2 (Free 185-Page PDF)
- Latest DGWR: Don’t Gamble with Retirement 6 (Free 409-Page PDF)
- Everything!: The Biggest Book on Passive Income Ever 2! (book)(Web Edition)(Art Edition)
- I bought a Kindle Oasis: Check it out on Amazon
- Read My Books for Free: Free Kindle Books Schedule
- Crypto Exchange: My Favorite Crypto Exchange VOYAGER (Join Voyager)
- Kindle Unlimited: Why I Finally Subscribed Kindle Unlimited (learn more)
- Book Reviews: 505 Takeaways from 101 Books (pdf)
- Writing: Can Grammarly Make You a Better Writer?
- Best REIT- Fundrise: REITs vs. Homeownership (Join Fundrise)
- Follow us: On our Facebook Page and Join our Facebook Group
- Monthly Dividend Tracker (XLSX): Check it out on Etsy
- For more detailed analysis, join my Youtube: MFI YouTube Channel
Monthly Dividend Tracker Template: Buy on Etsy
Disclosure: I am not a financial advisor or money manager, and any knowledge is given as guidance and not direct actionable investment advice. I am an Amazon Affiliate. Please research any investment vehicles that are being considered. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. All Right Reserved Military Family Investing
Leave a Reply