Getting to $1 million?

Let’s face it: $1 million sounds good, but impossible to get to. That’s why I found this recent post from Free Money Finance so motivating. Getting to $1 million is “so simple”? Whoa.

The post shows that when you start breaking down $1 million into smaller amounts and steps, then things start sounding a bit more doable. It gives the example of completing a paid survey online for $10 – then just doing it 99,999 more times. Now whether you’re actually going to spend five years of your life filling out online surveys is beside the point. The real key here is that if you CHOSE to focus just on that goal, you could get there. It might take time (and you might develop a bad case of carpal tunnel along the way!), but you would get there.

The reality is that most of us don’t focus on that goal, probably because we don’t really believe it’s achievable for us. One of the most typical reasons I hear is “I don’t make enough money.”  But it just isn’t true that income determines your wealth. As this post from the Get Rich Slowly blog points out, building wealth is often less about how much money you make and more about what you do with the money you do make. Millionaires are more likely to spend time thinking about their budgets and their investments than others, for example. And only 20% of the variation in wealth can be traced back to differences in their incomes.

Now, you may decide you don’t need to get all the way to $1 million. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take steps to build real wealth. And as Earl Crawley’s story demonstrates, you don’t have to make a lot of money to make that happen. Being disciplined, being consistent, and investing your money over time can help you get there. You don’t even need to become a survey-completing machine to do it!