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Millionaire Myths & Lessons from Everyday Millionaires book




This post might impact your thoughts, beliefs, and perception about money, investing and millionaires. (10 minutes read)

Currently reading a book - "Everyday Millionaires" by Chris Hogan. 

This post is my lessons learned from the "Everyday Millionaires" book.

Welcome you all for the wonderful journey.
Let me brief you all about the Author-
Chris Hogan is the best selling author, world-class speaker, popular guest on national news channels, and number one rated podcaster. He, along with Dave Ramsay (America's trusted voice on money, is a National best-selling author and radio host) conduct radio shows that teaches people to become millionaires.

Chris and his team have interviewed TEN THOUSAND Millionaires in America and this book is the result of the interview, their findings, their common behaviors, how they make decisions, what did they do to become a millionaire, how their thoughts work, what did they eat (lol, no I'm kidding). This book is cold, hard data collected from 10,000 millionaires across the united states.

One thing, I was fascinated about this book is - We all have certain myths about money, wealth, debt and millionaires, for example, many of us might have some or all of following thoughts about millionaires -
  1. Millionaires are greedy, unreliable, tax cheating and untrustworthy.
  2. Millionaires will be either doing big businesses or high paid corporate CEOs.
  3. Millionaires will sleep only for 3-4 hours a day. They would have worked like crazy till they became a millionaire.
  4. Millionaires drive expensive cars, live in exotic locations and live the royal lifestyle.
  5. Millionaires might have studied from top end universities.
  6. Millionaires get into huge debt due to their businesses.
  7. Most of the millionaires are from the inherited wealth from the family.
This book proves me that all those are stupid limiting beliefs that I was holding.

If any of you have a doubt - "Do you really think, can an ordinary person become a millionaire?", this book is a must read as most of the stories confirm the fact that those millionaires are average, ordinary people with a strong burning desire and belief that is possible for them.

There were small stories about the millionaires throughout the book, I noticed their professions - Farm backgrounds, Sales, engineering, small business ownership, accounting and I found even a math teacher. Noticeably, there weren't even #1 vice president of global operations or CEOs in the list. 

I felt - If these ordinary people can achieve it, why not You & I?

Key Takeaways-

  • Millionaires don't care about impressing people, I'm not saying they don't live or prefer a luxurious life, they do, but only, out of their choice. Most of the millionaires lead a conservative lifestyle and long term wealth building plans.
  • Millionaires never give up when things get hard.
  • What you think and what you do are infinitely more powerful than what you make.
  • All the millionaires had an abundance mentality and they never focussed on their limitations.

Two key contributing factors for millionaires - Discipline and Consistency.

Some of my observation from their stories - 

1. Millionaires started investing early.
2. Millionaires saved mostly more than 20% of their income.
3. Millionaires were not trying to get rich quick, they were consistent.
4. Even when the world ridiculed them, they were seeing them as millionaires.
5. Millionaires never tried to show off their status and hence living a humble life.
6. Millionaires had a very good understanding of the power of compounding.

Mistakes to avoid (from the millionaire's words)-
1. Trying to keep up with the neighbors.
2. Waiting too late to start saving for retirement.

Power of compounding - 
One of the common mistakes, most of the young adults do - They put off their savings plan, they think its too early to save. I spoke to many people, urged them to start investing with small savings monthly but most of them were not aware of the compound interest magic and they were postponing. I wanted to show them what they are missing using simple exercise -

If you want to build a net worth of INR 100,00,00,000 (100 Crores), how much do you need to save monthly?

Assume, your investments are giving you 20% returns and you start with a capital of 2,50,000. (Long term equity or mutual funds gives an average of 20% returns)

To accumulate 100 crores in 10 years, you need to save 46,00,000 per month
20 years, you need to save 4,60,000 per month (10 times lesser)
30 years, you need to save 65,000 per month (can you see the difference!!)
40 years, you need to save 6,699 per month (Can you believe this? wait, this is not yet over)

The highlight is this, if you had just invested, 2,50,000 for 50 years and you have not invested any further money and assuming 20% returns, your investment will be worth 227,00,00,000 (227 Crores).


I know, many of my friends in India, pay their kids, kindergarten admission fees as 2,50,000 with a hope that their kids should get a good education. 

If we just invest that amount in the right investments, we have good chances of becoming millionaires.

The important factor to consider is the TIME PERIOD of our investments more than the actual money!!

An important lesson - We overestimate what we can do in 1 year and we underestimate what we can accomplish in 10, 20 or 30 years.


Work out a plan for yourself - Maybe a 5 year or 10-year plan. 



Some facts from the book which caught my attention -

  • 84% of Millionaires are self-made millionaires. Among Forbes 400 list of Billionaires, 91.5% of people are self-made billionaires.
  • 8 out of 10 Millionaires come from families at or below the middle-class income level. 
  • 79% of millionaires received no inheritance at all from their parents.
  • 97% of millionaires believe they control their own destiny.
I, highly recommend this book and I'm just done with 50% of the book, it's already having so much impact on my beliefs.
End of the day, if you read this book, you will start believing that, you can become a millionaire too. Good Or Good!!

Will meet you soon with another interesting post!!

With Love,
VJ

UK & Ireland Users - Click here to buy the "Everyday Millionaires" book.
India Users - Click here

Comments

vijay said…
Wow. Nice article. Thanks for bringing out the stats from the book.
Vicky Ram said…
I am happy to find this post Very useful for me, as it contains lot of information

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VJ said…
I'm.happy too Vicky for you finding this post, useful!! Thanks for your comments

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