We Are Millionaires – Here’s a Snapshot of Our Lives

In my five year Rich Habits Study, I got to know my millionaires very well. They had a lot in common. Below is a snapshot of a typical millionaire from my study:

• We’re really rich. We are worth at least $3.2 million. 16% of us are worth more than $5 million. We make at least $160,000 a year. Half of us make close to $500,000 a year.
• We’re not young. 80% of us are 50 years of age or older.
• It took us a long time to accumulate our wealth. On average, it took 32 years to get rich as a Saver-Investor, 22 years as a Big Company Climber, 21 Years as a Virtuoso and 12 years as an Entrepreneur.
• We like our jobs. 86% of us like what we do for a living. 61% of us pursued some dream or some thing we were passionate about. Those of us who did pursue some dream became millionaires in about 12 years and, as a group, have an average net worth of $7.4 million.
• The richest among us had success mentors who taught us what to do and what not to do. Finding a Success Mentor, it turns out, is the fast track to success and wealth.
• We read every day to learn. 88% of us read every day to increase our knowledge for our job. 85% of us read a minimum of two books a month. 63% of us listen to audio books or podcasts while we’re commuting to work, exercising or working in our backyards. We don’t read for entertainment. We consider entertainment reading a time-wasting habit that should be done in moderation.
• Most of us are self-made. 31% of us were raised in a poor home. 45% of us were raised in a middle-class home. Only 24% of us inherited a good amount of money from our parents, which contributed significantly to our being wealthy.
• We have many good habits and few bad habits. 73% of us got our success habits from our parents. The rest of us got our success habits from mentors or the school of hard knocks.
• We’re competitive. 63% of us played sports in high school and continued playing competitive sports as adults.
• We’re in good health. We exercise almost every day. 76% of us exercise at least 30 minutes a day, 4 days a week. Mostly, we like to jog, run or bike. We watch what we eat every day. We don’t eat much junk food. We don’t go to fast food restaurants very often. We don’t eat candy very often. We don’t get drunk very often. We don’t do drugs. We floss every day. We sleep at least 7 hours a night. We don’t smoke.
• We like to mentor others. We like to help others succeed in life.
• We’re charitable with our time and money. 72% of us volunteer 5 hours or more a month at local non-profits. We also give money to these same charities. Many of us help to run local, community-based charities. That’s one of the ways we get to know other successful people within our community. Many of them are our friends and we do business with them.
• We all have financial advisors. We bounce everything off our CPA. We also have attorneys. Many of us are Home Depot Investors – we like to pick our investments ourselves and then bounce them off our financial advisors.
• We’re happy.
• Same house, same wife and same car. 64% of us own modest homes. We’ve owned our home for at least 20 years. Very few of us get divorced. We drive old cars. Most of the time we buy good used cars. We hardly ever lease a car.
• We plan our day. 81% of us keep a to-do list. Many of us also keep a to-don’t list – things we shouldn’t be wasting our time on.
• We vote. 83% of us vote at every election.
• We don’t spend a lot of money on vacations. 96% of us spend less than $6,000 a year on vacations. 41% of us spend less than $3,000 a year.
• We wake up early every day. 44% of us wake up at least 3 hours before our work day actually begins.
• Except for the saver-Investors, we’re the boss at work. 91% of the Big Company climbers, Virtuosos and Entrepreneurs are decision makers. We’re one of these: Teachers, small business owners, CEO, senior executives, CPAs, attorneys, doctors, financial advisors or salespeople.
• We’re frugal. At least the Saver-Investors and Virtuosos among us.
• We went to college. 68% of us went to college. 56% of us worked our way through college. 25% of us went to graduate school.
• We’re not afraid to take risks. 63% of us took a risk in order to become rich. 27% of us failed at least once in business.
• We work a lot. 73% of us work an average of 58 hours a week.
• We love to pursue goals. 80% of us are focused on one major goal at any given time.
• We don’t get mad or angry. We’ve mastered our emotions. That’s why we have so many strong relationships – people want to associate with us and do business with us.
• We hang out with other successful people, people who pursuing success or people who are upbeat and optimistic and have something on the ball. We don’t hang out with negative people or people who complain all the time. We avoid Negative, Toxic people like the plague.
• We hardly ever gamble. 84% of us never gamble.
• We believe in the American Dream. Our parents instilled that in us. We are living the American Dream. We believe we are the architects of our lives. We take responsibility for creating the life we have.
• We obey the laws. 99% of us have never been arrested.
• Many of us built teams to help us succeed. 84% of us, other than the Saver-Investors, have a team of individuals we rely on every day.
• We are savers. 94% of us who are Saver-Investors or Virtuosos have been saving 20% of our income from the first day we started working. All of us have retirement savings.
• We have more than one source of income. 65% of us have 3 streams of income. 45% of us have 4 streams. 29% of us have 5 streams.
• We don’t watch TV. 67% of us watch less than an hour of TV each day.
• We’re optimists. We have a positive mental outlook on life. This is one of the reasons we became self-made millionaires.
• We don’t lie, we’re honest. People trust us and therefore want to do business with us.
• We weren’t exceptionally smart in school. 77% of us were either C students or B students in school. But we got smart after school. We self-educated ourselves. We never stopped learning our entire adult lives.

Tom Corley

Tom Corley is an accountant, financial planner, public speaker, and author of the books “Effort-Less Wealth: Smart Money Habits At Every Stage of Your Life” and “RichKids: How to Raise Our Children to Be Happy and Successful in Life“.  Corley’s work has appeared on CNN, USA Today, The Huffington Post, SUCCESS Magazine, and many other media outlets and podcasts in the U.S. and 27 other countries. Tom is a frequent contributor to Business Insider and CNBC.

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