Millionaire Money Habits You Can Copy

What would you say if I told you that millionaires weren’t only rich because they had high salaries? 

While a good salary can lead to financial success, your money habits actually play a much greater role in building wealth. Here we look at five millionaire money habits that you can copy. 

1. Live Below Your Means 

Our first millionaire money habit you can copy is the practice of living below your means. It’s a pretty simple concept, with the idea being that you should not spend more money than you earn. 

Taking control of your finances, understanding where your money goes each month and setting budgets can help you do this. 

Reducing meaningless spending and negotiating bills is also a great way to make sure you live below your means. 

Ultimately though, living below your means will mean you have to prioritise saving money, over spending money. Adopting this change in behaviour is just one way you can build wealth. After all, the less money you spend, the more money you get to keep! 

2. Watch Out For The Lifestyle Creep

What’s the first thing you think of when you get a pay rise? If you’re thinking about all the new things you can buy, then you may be experiencing the lifestyle creep. 

What tends to happen is the more money you earn, the more money you spend. This kind of lifestyle inflation sees your outgoings increase as you look to improve your standard of living. This extra money you’re earning each month is then spent on gym memberships you rarely use. A more expensive car you don’t need. Or an even larger mortgage – just because you can. 

The downside of this? Increasing your expenses in line with every pay rise you get, means you’ll never see your net worth increase.

Using a budgeting method like 50/30/20 can help you combat lifestyle inflation. Allocating 50% of your salary to needs, 30% of your salary to wants, and 20% of your salary to savings, means each area of your spending will increase in line with your new salary. (Stopping you spending all your extra cash on just your “wants”)

3. Have Multiple Streams Of Income 

Most people are happy with one solid stream of income. But, did you know that millionaires on average have a reported seven streams of income? 

Other than the basic earned income, there’s profit income – money you earn from selling goods for more than you bought them. There’s the interest income – using the power of compound interest to grow your wealth. Or there’s even rental income, where you rent out an asset like a house or an office space. 

If you’d like another income stream, there are plenty of things you can do. We’ve listed 7 ways you can earn an extra income from home. 

4. Invest In Yourself 

Another millionaire money habit is the prioritization of investing in yourself.

It’s been reported in the past that 88% of millionaires spend 30 minutes or more each day on self-improvement. With things like reading, or exercising at the top of that list. 

We love reading personal finance books here at Emma, and have a few firm favourites! See our recent Instagram post for a list of five personal finance books we’re loving RN. Or see which books our community have been recommending here.  

Other ways you can invest in yourself? Perhaps you could take a free class, either related or unrelated to the industry you’re working in. You could hire a business coach, to help you take your business to the next level. You could even consider investing in something that saves you money, instead of making money – like learning how to sew or cook. 

5. Set Realistic Savings Goals 

You might have set yourself some goals in relation to work, or to fitness, but have you set any financial goals? Setting realistic savings goals is the perfect way to stop dreaming about improving your finances, and actually do so. 

Knowing what you want to do with your money, can hugely increase your chances of hitting finance-related goals. So spend some time thinking about what you want most. Goals could include starting an emergency fund, saving a set amount of money in 6 months, or even becoming debt-free. 

If you’re struggling to stick to these goals, think about adding some small rules into your life. For example, if you’re often tempted by impulse spends, set a rule which says you have to wait 24 hours before you can buy. If you often feel the need to spend money on expensive items, you could even set a rule that says before you buy anything over X amount, you have to sell something.

Summary

If you’re reading this thinking that you currently don’t have any of these millionaire money habits, the good news is that habits can be changed! This means, there’s nothing stopping you from becoming a millionaire! 😉

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