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 can it be done by anyone with a combination of hard work, consistent savings, and regular investing?
According to Grant Sabatier, a man who did it himself, the answer is an absolute yes. This is the true story of a young man who at 25, was down on his luck but chose to take his life in a different direction. According to Grant, five years later – at 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 were bloggers who were crushing it. Some make millions of dollars from their blogs, and some even sell them for millions of dollars.
Grant was in the group, and though I hadn’t heard much about him, his story made me want to learn 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 as a blogger. 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 a fantastic 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 into 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, had only $2.26 in savings, and his parents gave him just three months to get his life together.
But it was then 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 period ,it took him to accumulate over $1 million (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. The rest came from investment earnings.
How Grant Sabatier Went 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 Dominquez.
There he learned whenever you work for money, you’re trading your life energy. After calculating how much he had 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% to 20% of someone’s budget for managing their Google ads. For free, he got Google certified online and learned the trade from 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? Says Grant, “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 that 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 half years, he abandoned that and started a partnership which focused solely on marketing online MBA programs. While his income from his agency and his side hustles continue 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 to 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 is 80% of his after-tax income. At the time, he was living in the “crappy is department and driving the crappy is 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. “It’s motivated by a scarcity mindset,” he says. “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.
A blog, Grant told me, 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, reporting he earns between $10,000 and $15,000 per speech.
Probably his biggest entrepreneurial realization was recognizing you can take just about any site business idea imaginable, and convert it from making a few hundred dollars on the side to a full-on business. That’s also how a side hustle grows to be more profitable than a full-time job.
Being an entrepreneur helped Sabatier understand 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 on their personal situations. Mostly, 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 make it into a more profitable venture.
According to Sabatier, one college student he counseled went from making $16 a dog walk, to six-figures in one year. Sabatier provided him with advice and plans for how to get more customers, then subcontract 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 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 from easy. 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 focuses on optimizing your full-time job, creating a profitable side hustle, and knowing 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 funds.
Rethinking Your Relationship with Money:—
You may assume going from being flat broke to millionaire repute will reason 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 ones ideas with others.
One of his maximum vital revelations has been the idea of time. “One of the most important myths is humans assume cash is time and time is cash,” says Sabatier. “But cash is truely infinite – you may constantly make extra cash, however you cannot get lower back your time.”
Why time? “Time is a lot extra treasured than cash,” he says. And there are lots of gear and assets to be had today, which have in no way been withinside the beyond. Just as vital, they may be to be had to the common person.
“While it is really now no longer easy, it is in no way been less complicated in records to make sufficient cash to stay a existence you love,” says Grant. “There have in no way been extra excessive first-rate low fee making an investment alternatives to be had actually at your fingertips, it is in no way been less complicated to paintings remotely on paintings wherein you do not want an office, and there are such a lot of blueprints that you may comply with to make extra cash in much less time.”
These are the very ideas he stocks in his ee-e book. “I wrote Financial Freedom to percentage the precise grade by grade blueprint I used to head from $2.26 to $1.25 million in five years. While I’m really an severe example, the concepts will paintings for all and sundry.”
Can Anyone Do What Grant Sabatier Has Done?
If Grant Sabatier is an severe example, can all and sundry sincerely do what he’s done? “At the quit of the day it comes right all the way down to what tradeoffs you are inclined to make, and now no longer losing time,” he adds.
“Over the beyond 3 months I’ve had the possibility to satisfy with heaps and heaps of humans even as on my ee-e book excursion and it is fantastic to peer the innovative approaches humans are creating wealth and residing high-quality lives. Money handiest subjects if it allows you stay a existence you love. Life is just too quick to now no longer love your existence. ”
Decide regardless of the greenback parent of monetary freedom is for you, and set that as your purpose. Next, parent out how lengthy it’s going to take you to attain your purpose. Look at how a great deal cash you’ve got got stored and invested already, then how a great deal you may keep on a normal basis. If it’s now no longer sufficient, decrease your residing expenses, mainly the massive 3 – housing, transportation, and food.
It’s in all likelihood you won’t be capable of attain your purpose primarily based totally to your contemporary profits. If now no longer, inspect facet hustles. Grant Sabatier without a doubt constructed his seven-parent portfolio from walking more than one facet hustles. You can do the same. You simply want to parent out what it’s far you need to do, and a way to scale it up so in place of incomes some hundred greenbacks month out of your venture, you may make heaps.
But possibly his maximum vital recommendation is to ensure you keep and make investments the more profits out of your facet hustles. He has no fancy recommendation here, simply to make investments thru retirement plans and brokerage accounts, sticking with index price range and stocks.
Courtesy:— Forbes