10 Brilliant Steps To Becoming Rich And Skyrocketing Your Wealth

Becoming rich and not having to worry about money is a dream for many of us. We have a dream to be so wealthy that money doesn’t stress us out. We don’t have to think before we spend because we know we have enough money to cover the purchase.

We want the money, the houses, the lifestyle. We believe that when we are rich, we will have the world at our finger tips.

If this is true or not I can’t really say. After all, your definition of rich might be different from mine. I know that my definition of rich currently is a lot different than it was when I was younger.

If you’re definition of becoming rich means a lavish lifestyle, then this post is for you. Below I present you with 10 tips for attaining wealth beyond your dreams. If you can master these 10 steps, then you will be able to buy whatever you want whenever you want to.

Becoming Rich Beyond Your Dreams In 10 Steps

#10. Live Below Your Means

I know, nothing groundbreaking here. But if you want any shot at becoming rich, you can’t be in consumer debt. When you are, you are working to pay other people and not pay yourself.

Think about that for a minute. If you are in $500 worth of credit card debt and you get paid $500 a week after taxes, you just worked 40 hours to pay off your debt. None of that money you earned is yours. It’s going right to the credit card company.

It’s hard enough to get out of bed some mornings and fight traffic. If you are in debt, you are doing it simply so you can hand your paycheck over to someone else. That needs to change. You need to get out of debt and start living within your means.

But it doesn’t end there.

Being in debt strangles your options in life as well.

If you had no debt and kept your spending in check, you could work at a more rewarding job and even get paid less. You would be infinitely happier because you would be doing something you love to do.

So your first step for becoming rich is to get out of debt. Need some help? Check out this great app to help you pay down debt. If you have student loans, consider refinancing them so that more of your payment goes towards paying them off and not towards interest.

If you have a mortgage, look at refinancing this debt as well. Play with the calculator below to see how much you could save just by refinancing.

Aside from debt, there are other things you can do to live within your means. Your first step should be to follow a budget. Knowing how much you have coming and going will help you to make smarter decisions.

From there, you need to cut some expenses and save money. The easiest way to do both is  below.

• Cut expenses: use the free app Clarity Money. This app will scan through your spending and find memberships and subscriptions you pay for that you can cancel. They will even help you to cancel them. The app will also offer suggestions for other ways to cut your expenses. Did I mention it’s free? Learn more here.
• Save money: another free app, this time it is Qapital. They will round up your purchases to the whole dollar and put the difference in your savings account. So if you spend $12.49, Qapital will take $0.51 from your checking account and put it into your savings account. They also have other challenges to help you beef up your savings. In the short time I’ve used them, I’ve saved over $300. You can learn more here.

The sooner you start to dig yourself out of debt, the sooner you can start your journey to riches. If you need any extra motivation, be sure to check out my list of others who have pay down significant amounts of debt.

#9. Spend Smart

Another factor in becoming rich is to spend smart. What does this mean? It means to buy quality items, even if they cost more. A great example is one I learned recently. I tend to wear a lot of tee shirts. Since I don’t value them that much, I would go to a store and buy their tee shirts for $9 each. My thinking was $9 is much better than $30 that other stores charge.

But my thinking was flawed. The $9 shirts were made poorly. I ended up needing new ones every year because they would get holes in them.

The $30 shirt on the other hand was made better and lasted many years. Over time, the $30 shirt is a better buy because in 5 years, I’d have bought 5 shirts at $9, meaning I spent $45 every year on new shirts. In that same time I could have bought three $30 shirts and kept them for 5 years.

The savings? $135 just on tee shirts.

Think of all the times you base your purchase on price alone. My guess is you could be saving a decent amount of money on things even though the upfront cost is more.

Granted, there are times when lower priced is better. For us, we buy the store brand frozen vegetables. They taste the same and are much cheaper in price.

Before you buy anything, look at the quality of the item and see if it makes sense to spend the least amount of money possible or if a higher priced version is a better value.

#8. Know What Matters

Advertisers are good at getting you to part with your money. If you want to be rich one day, you have to know what matters to you. This means not getting sucked into the marketing for a product and buying on a whim.

Make sure you know who you are and what you like. This is a big step in not falling for their tricks. But, you will still fall victim at times. The key here is to not buy on impulse. Everything you want to buy needs to be thought about first.

Write it down, make a note in your phone, whatever. Then wait a week and see if you still want it. Odds are you won’t and you will have completely forgotten about it. This trick works because of the way our brain is wired.

Our emotional side fires up first, which makes us buy without thinking. Then some time later, our rational side kicks in. We know this happens when we regret a purchase. By writing it down, we give our rational brain a chance to process the information and save money.

#7. Invest

You will never become rich unless you invest. OK, you can win the lottery (though not likely) or get a million dollar inheritance from a long lost uncle (again, odds not so good there), but realistically, your best shot is to invest in the stock market.

Now, I know some reading this would rather walk over hot coals than invest in the market, but it isn’t so bad. In fact, I’ve outlined how to be successful investing in posts on my blog. Here are some reading choices to get you started:

• Read this post if you want a quick way to build a solid foundation on investing
• Read this post if you are scared to invest and need to put things into perspective
• Check out my ebook for a basic plan to follow if you want to be a successful investor

From there, all that is left is to invest. You can go about this one of two ways: either DIY or hire someone.

For some, the DIY approach works best. If this is you, check out my online broker list to find one that meets your needs.

If you aren’t the DIY person, you can hire someone. While this is a good choice, many won’t have the money advisors require. This is because most advisor deal with people who have a good amount of money to invest, like $250,000 or more. Luckily though, hope is not lost.

You can invest with Betterment. They will do everything for you. Invest your money, build a portfolio, rebalance, tax loss harvest (if I lost you there, these are all good things. You can read more about them in this post).

They do take a small fee, but remember the other point about spending smart and getting more value in the long run? This is a great example of that in action.

You can learn more about Betterment here.

#6. Be A Lifelong Learner

I don’t care what your age is, you need to be educating yourself at all times. We live in a fast paced world and technology is changing all of the time. If you don’t stay on top of evolving your skill set, you are going to get left in the dust.

Why does this matter? Because your career is the greatest asset you have in becoming rich. Nowhere else will you earn as much money as you can from your career. For example, if you are making $40,000 a year and are 35 years old, you will make a total of $1.2 million by age 65, assuming you never get a raise.

If you don’t keep learning though someone else who is hungrier for success than you will come along and make you susceptible to being let go.

If you do get let go, chances are you will a tough time finding a comparable job because you haven’t stayed up to date with technology. This means you will have to take a lower paying job.

If this new job only pays you $30,000 you just cost yourself $300,000 in lifetime earnings.

Therefore, it is critical that you are always learning about your field and making sure you are at the forefront of new technology.

How do you do this? Read industry magazines. Go to conferences and networking events. The more knowledge and information you consume, the better your chances of keeping your job, earning raises and becoming rich.

#5. Work Hard

Along with being a lifelong learner goes working hard. You can’t just skate by even if you stay on top of the trends in your field. You have to work hard. This means getting a lot done. Take on new projects. Help out anywhere you can. I am not saying you have to work 80 hours a week, though working 50 or 60 wouldn’t be a bad thing.

In addition to working hard, find ways to work smart too. See if there are ways you can improve your time management skills. I suggest you read Getting Things Done. This is especially true if your emails are out of hand.

Another good time management skill is to cut out distractions. Close your door at the office or block off time in your work calendar so others think you are busy and won’t bother you.

The better off you become of improving efficient with the small day-to-day things that eat away at your time, the more time you will be able to spend on projects, finding new business, or anything else that will make you stand out from the crowd.

#4. Become Invaluable

To earn the most you can and never be threatened with a layoff, you need to become invaluable. Just how do you do this? Your boss should see you as someone the company cannot survive without.

To do this, create new ways of doing things. For me, it was all about speed. In one job I had, we dealt with Excel a lot and it was all manual work. Really boring stuff.

I ended up learning about Excel macro formulas and applying that to my job. Suddenly the work that would take me 8 hours I was getting done in 3 hours.

The culture of our entire department changed overnight. No longer were we stuck doing boring reports manually. We have hours of free time to spend on growing our department.

We even tried to figure out other ways to automate some of our other tasks and were successful with a few.

Another way to become invaluable is to do the work your boss hates. Go into their office and ask them what they have been putting off doing and if you can take it off their hands. They will love you for this.

At another job I had, my boss had to write a quarterly market review. He hated doing this, would wait until the last minute to write it and then be a bear all day because of how stressed he was. I offered to take the quarterly review from him and he agreed. I was his go-to employee from that moment on.

The more you can become invaluable, the greater the chances you will see larger salary increases and lower odds of losing your job. And keeping your job and earning more money is a key to becoming rich.

You can learn more ways about how to become invaluable by reading this post.

#3. Network

Some people don’t think networking is important but it is huge. You never know when you will need the help of your network. I’ll give a quick example of this.

My wife was training to become a life coach. In her program she needed a certain number of clients to start with so she could stay in the program. The deadline was getting close and she was a few people short. I suggested that she post on Facebook and LinkedIn.

She has a ton of friends and worked in sales previously so she also has a lot of LinkedIn contacts. She posted in both places on a Sunday night and by Monday morning had 5 people reach out to her with interest.

Networking is an invaluable tool to have at your disposal. The larger your network, the more options you have. This could mean getting help with something like finding a job or just getting help with a project you have.

To get started networking, keep it simple. Reach out to some friends you haven’t talked to in a while. Find some clients of yours on LinkedIn and connect with them. Then find old colleagues that have moved on and connect with them as well.

Make it a point to connect with people you meet at networking events on LinkedIn as well.

As time goes on, you should be able to build a solid network. Just be sure to keep in touch with them occasionally, either through email or meeting for lunch.

#2. Marry Smart

Yep, I had to include this one on the list. The reason is simple. Marriage can make or break your chances of ever becoming rich. If you marry smart, you will work as a team and grow your wealth over time. If you marry the wrong person, you will be at odds all of the time and will destroy your wealth.

To be more specific, you have to marry someone that has the same values as you do. I know that opposites attract, but life (and marriage) is so much easier when you are both on the same page about the big things. This includes family and money.

Some people are savers and some are spenders. If you want to become wealthy and your spouse wants a new car every 2 years, you are going to have issues. But if you both have a goal of wealth, you work together and achieve this goal.

If you do end up marrying someone with different values than you, here is another way you can destroy your wealth. You will fight all of the time and rarely save anything. Eventually the marriage will end in divorce and any money you did save will get split 50/50. You just lost half of your wealth by marrying the wrong person.

I realize that not all marriages end because of finances alone, but you have to make sure you are marrying the right person for you and their values align with yours.

#1. Change And Adapt

I started off talking about how my idea of wealth is different now than 15 years ago. This is a key point in becoming wealthy: you have to change and adapt with the times.

Back then, I wanted tons of stuff and would have needed millions upon millions of dollars just to afford the upkeep on everything. Now I realize that I can be wealthy and have a lot less stuff and need a lot less money. This isn’t to say becoming rich isn’t a goal of mine.

I still want to have enough money so that I can live the life I want and not worry about money. It’s just that with my updated views, a lot less money will determine whether I am rich or not.

So I encourage you to not hold on to your specific idea of wealth. Let it change as you grow. Most likely you will find the same thing I did. That in time, experiences are more valuable than things.

Final Thoughts

These 10 tips cover all aspects of life to ensure you become rich one day. From spending to investing, to earning as much as you can, even paying attention to who you marry and changing with the times. If you can master these steps, becoming rich will be a reality for you and not just a dream. And in time you will reach your goal.