According to the World Wealth
Report, the United States has half of the 6 million millionaires in the
world! Are you a millionaire yet? If not, did you know that it’s
possible to become a millionaire quite easily? It’s true.
Most of us think that someone being a millionaire is a rather rare
occurrence. A million dollars certainly doesn’t have the purchasing
power that it used to be, but it’s still a substantial amount of money
to most people. There are actually quite a few millionaires in the
United States today; in fact, 1 in 100 or about 3 million Americans
have a net worth of over $1,000,000!
Most
independently wealthy individuals don’t make huge sums of money by
creating a business or coming up with the next great idea, but rather
by performing sound financial habits over long periods of time. They
live rather basic lives; they drive used cars,
live in reasonable homes, and don’t buy every item they have an impulse
to purchase. They don’t eat at the fanciest restaurants and certainly
aren’t out to impress anybody.
When you have a moderate income, but don’t live a flashy lifestyle and spend all of your money,
you have a lot of cash-flow left over at the end of the month. Some
people even go so far that they live on 50% of their income. The
typical American family makes $40,000 a year. Imagine if you were to
save $20,000 of that a year into savings and investments. With the
power of compound interest, it wouldn’t be long before you became a
millionaire; if you invested that money in solid mutual funds that earned a 12% rate of return, you would be a millionaire in just 17 years.
If
you’re a young person in your 20’ or early 30’s, there is absolutely no
reason you should not be a millionaire when you retire. You have
decades until retirement and have all the opportunity in the world to
make use of compound interest for your benefit. You have
tax-advantageous options such as 401K plans and Roth IRA’s available to
you that only sweeten the deal.
You don’t need to start the next Microsoft to be a millionaire; you just have to practice wise financial principles for a long period of time.
