Is it possible to become a millionaire by the age of 30? I don’t mean by starting a company, taking it public, and becoming a multimillionaire.
That’s a million-to-one shot that makes for great headlines, but it isn’t doable for the average person. But is it possible for just about anyone to do it with a combination of diligent work, consistent saving, and regular investing?
The answer is absolutely yes, according to Grant Sabatier, a man who did it himself. This is the true story of a young man who, at age 25, was down on his luck but chose to take his life in a different direction. According to Grant, five years later, at the age of 30, he was worth over $1 million.
How did he do it?
I met Grant Sabatier at a mastermind conference of million-dollar bloggers in Nashville. The people who were in attendance are bloggers who are crushing it. Some make a million dollars from their blogs, and some have even sold their blogs for millions of dollars.
Grant was in the group, and though I hadn’t heard much about him before, his story made me want to get to know more about him. I even did a video interview with him to learn more.
Known as the Millennial Money Expert, Grant Sabatier is the founder, owner, and host of the Millennial Money blog. He didn’t start out as a blogger. In fact, his blog is just three years old, but he claims he’s already made over $400,000 from it in the past year. That’s an amazing story all by itself.
Grant describes his beginnings as typical of young people today. He graduated with a degree in philosophy, then bounced around jobs, even being laid off twice. He then moved in with his parents, sleeping in the same bed he did when he was a kid. That’s almost a cliché millennial story.
He was deep in credit card debt and had only $2.26 in savings, and his parents gave him just three months to get his life together. But it was then that Grant Sabatier set a seemingly unrealistic goal: to save $1 million and retire as quickly as possible. According to Sabatier, five years, three months, and six days later, he had amassed a fortune worth $1.25 million.
Grant disclosed that during the five-year time frame it took him to accumulate over $1 million (from 2010 to 2015), his income averaged about $257,000 per year. He saved and invested an average of $144,500 per year, or more than $720,000 in total. The rest came from investment earnings.
How Did Grant Sabatier Go From $2.26 to $1.25 Million in Just Five Years?
Being unemployed and sending out hundreds of resumes with no response, Grant looked for solutions that could change his life. That started with the book, Your Money or Your Life, by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez.
There he learned that whenever you work for money, you’re trading your life energy. After calculating how much he earned in the previous three years and being stunned at how little it ended up being, he realized the truth of that claim.
While performing a Google search, he responded to an ad. He learned he could make between 15% and 20% of someone’s budget for managing their Google ads. He got Google-certified online—for free—and learned the trade by watching YouTube videos.
In just 45 days, he had a job at a digital marketing agency. But he didn’t stop there. He began developing income streams through side hustles. That increased his income well into six figures. He started by picking up a side gig, building a WordPress website for a law firm for $500.
From that gig, he got referrals for other law firms. Within 60 days of landing the first gig, he did a similar job for another law firm that paid him $50,000. How did he go from $500 to $50,000? Grant says, “I spent a lot of time with the head sales guy at my company and learned all I could. He recommended I charge them ‘until it almost hurts” and to stop working for people who don’t have money.”
Sabatier reports that between his regular job and the side gigs, he made about $300,000 in the first year, saving and investing an incredible 80% of his after-tax income. As you get to know Grant, investing such a large percentage of your income comes close to being his “secret sauce”.
From Side Hustle to Self-employment:
Grant finally launched his own digital marketing agency but kept doing side gigs. And he invested 100% of the money he was earning from the side hustles.
His first digital marketing agency was focused on real estate agents, doctors, and law firms. But after two and a half years, he abandoned that and started a partnership that focused solely on marketing online MBA programs.
While his income from his agency and his side hustles continued to grow, he became obsessed with money. He’s since left that business to concentrate on his blog and other ventures. That’s when he launched Millennial Money, which was an effort to help others follow the path he was on.
The blog is unique as it focuses on entrepreneurship, personal finance, and investing. He recognized the connection between the three. “It’s the power of these three things that allows you to maximize your money,” says Grant. “It doesn’t matter how much money you make if you’re not saving and investing. And it doesn’t matter if you invest if you’re not making enough money to do it. “
Investing was a critical piece of the financial independence strategy for Grant. According to Sabatier, he gradually increased his investment contributions to as much as 80% of his after-tax income. At the time, he was living in the “crappy” department and driving the craziest car you can imagine.
Grant Sabatier’s Core Message: Release Your Inner Entrepreneur
The entrepreneurial aspect of Millennial Money is particularly interesting. There are many blogs focusing on personal finance and investing. But few include an entrepreneurial piece, certainly not to the degree that Grant Sabatier does.
Not surprisingly, Grant Sabatier is down on personal finance. He claims that the driving force behind it is a scarcity mindset. “Instead of clipping coupons, cut your three biggest expenses—housing, transportation, and food—then use the money to invest or begin a side business.”
That’s where the entrepreneurial part of his blog becomes critical. Grant Sabatier is a serial side hustler. He prefers to focus on the more basic task of increasing income, which ultimately leads to investment success.
Grant told me that a blog is a personal brand. You can use it as an opportunity to launch all kinds of income-generating ventures. Meanwhile, the blog generates revenue from advertising and affiliate sales. Grant is now also in demand as a speaker; he reports earning between $10,000 and $15,000 per speech.
He probably learned the most about running a business when he realized that almost any small business idea can be turned from a way to make a few hundred dollars on the side into a full-fledged business. That’s also how a side hustle grows to be more profitable than a full-time job. Being an entrepreneur helped Sabatier understand that money is unlimited, which is an empowering concept. It’s one he freely and frequently shares with others.
Personal Coaching: Sharing the Wealth About Wealth:
The blog has enabled Grant to move into personal coaching. When you’re as successful as he has been, others are anxious to know how you can help them.
He regularly gets comments and emails from readers of the blog about their personal situations. Most often, they ask how to make more money. That’s a topic he’s become an expert in. He’ll work with clients who have a basic business idea and coach them on how to turn it into a more profitable venture.
According to Sabatier, one college student he counseled went from making $16 per dog walk to six figures in one year. Sabatier provided him with advice and plans for how to get more customers, then subcontracted out the actual dog walking to others. The student went from being a humble dog walker to being a dog-walking entrepreneur.
Sabatier confidently maintains that there’s never been a better or easier time in human history to follow your dreams and create the life you love. The Internet means the power is shifting from the big corporations to the individual, or at least to those who are willing to put themselves out there and create an online platform where you can engage people.
“You have two choices: what’s easy or what’s going to help you grow,” says Grant. “Easy is the enemy. And so are apathy and convenience. So many people coast through life and wonder why they’re unhappy. Financial freedom doesn’t come easily. It comes from struggling growth. “
And from Blogger to Author:
Grant Sabatier is clearly a man on the move, and he hasn’t sat still since reaching his goal of acquiring a seven-figure bankroll.
Rather than retire to blessed nothingness, he wrote a book, Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All the Money You Will Ever Need. It teaches you how to get the most out of your full-time job, how to start a profitable side business, and how to invest. The basic purpose of the book is to help you make as much money as possible in the shortest amount of time.
He works with the basic question, What would you do tomorrow if you didn’t have to work for money? Everyone needs to come up with an answer to that question for themselves. But once you figure that out, you’ll have all the motivation you need.
Grant Sabatier’s Investment Strategy: —
The advice on the investment front from Grant Sabatier may be a surprise, given he accumulated so much money so quickly. You may think he took advantage of some magic formula that enabled him to grow his money exponentially. But the truth is much closer to the ground.
He recommends the most basic investments, including stocks, bonds, and real estate. For stocks, he recommends index funds. He holds his long-term investments in tax-sheltered retirement accounts, like a 401(k), a SEP IRA, and a Roth IRA. Once he maxes out his contributions to those accounts, the rest is invested in a Vanguard brokerage account.
He does his own investing, keeping 70% in index funds and 20% in individual stocks. The remaining 10% is split between physical real estate and real estate investment trusts and non-traditional investments, like web domains and art.
But he specifically avoids more speculative investment practices, like day trading, short sales, buying tax liens, or investing in any type of hedge fund.
Rethinking Your Relationship with Money:
You may assume that going from being broke to being of millionaire repute will cause someone to reconsider some things. And that virtually has been the case with Grant Sabatier. He’s modified some of his mind on cash and stocks the ideas with others.
One of his most vital revelations has been the idea of time. “One of the most important myths is that humans assume cash is time and time is cash,” says Sabatier. “But cash is truly infinite; you may constantly make extra cash, but you cannot get your time back.”
Why time? “Time is a lot more valuable than cash,” he says. And there is lots of gear and assets to be had today that are in no way within the beyond. Just as vital, they may be available to the common person.
“While it is really no longer easy, it is in no way less complicated in records to make sufficient cash to stay in the life you love,” says Grant. “There have never been more high-quality low-price investment opportunities at your fingertips. It has never been easier to work remotely on jobs where you don’t need an office. And there are so many blueprints you can follow to make more money in less time.”
These are the very ideas he stocks in his EE-E book. “I wrote Financial Freedom as a percentage of the precise grade-by-grade blueprint I used to go from $2.26 to $1.25 million in five years. While I’m really a severe example, the concepts will apply to all and sundry.”
Can Anyone Do What Grant Sabatier Has Done?
If Grant Sabatier is a severe example, can all and sundry sincerely do what he’s done? “At the end of the day, it comes right down to what tradeoffs you are inclined to make, and now you are no longer losing time,” he adds.
“Over the past three months, I’ve had the possibility to satisfy with heaps and heaps of humans, even on my e-book excursion, and it is fantastic to peer the innovative approaches humans are using to create wealth and reside high-quality lives. Money is the handiest subject if it allows you to stay in an existence you love. Life is just too quick to no longer love your existence.”
Decide whether the greenback parent of monetary freedom is for you, and set that as your purpose. Next, figure out how long it’s going to take you to attain your purpose. Consider how much money you’ve already saved and invested, and then consider how much you can keep on a regular basis. If it’s now no longer sufficient, decrease your living expenses, mainly the massive 3—housing, transportation, and food.
In all likelihood, you won’t be able to attain your purpose primarily based on your current profits. If now no longer, inspect the facet hustles. Grant Sabatier without a doubt constructed his seven-parent portfolio by walking more than one facet hustle. You can do the same. You simply need to figure out what you want to do and how to scale it up so that instead of making a few hundred dollars per month from your venture, you can make a fortune.
But possibly his most vital recommendation is to ensure you keep and make investments so you can get more profits out of your side hustles. He has no fancy recommendation here, simply to make investments through retirement plans and brokerage accounts, sticking with index price ranges and stocks.
Courtesy:— Forbes