Welcome to reThinkable – my weekly newsletter where I share actionable insights to build a wealthy healthy life.

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 37 seconds

A few weeks ago, I talked about why reaching your first $100,000 is crucial for financial freedom.

Not only will your net worth explode after that number, but it is a significant amount that can buy you some time and freedom, for a while.

Many of you have asked for more advice and tips to reach that $100,000 threshold so today, I want to talk about 4 habits that helped me achieve it in my early 20s.

 ⭕ Find Your Golden Circle

Simon Sinek created this concept called the Golden Circle. It’s a model that explains how some people achieve success while others don’t. 

One common issue I notice is that many people don’t know their “why” — the reason they get up in the morning or the reason they want to build wealth.

That used to be the case for me, too. But not anymore.

Sinek says it’s not enough to know how to build wealth or what you can do to build wealth. These things are important, but they come secondary after you have an answer to why you want to build wealth.

Your “why” builds a personal reason to build wealth, not just because you should or are told to, but because you have a deeper meaning to do so.

For me, my “why” is my parents.

My parents left their friends, family, and everything they knew to come to the US. They worked in factories every day, including weekends, from morning to evening to give their children a better life. 

My wealth goal is to give my parents a life they never had—a life where they don’t have to worry about money.

So, I have a duty to do the best I can for them.

Find your “why.” Double down. Go all in on it.

🙅‍♂️ Remove Yourself From The Equation

Nassim Taleb said, “the three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” 

Most people tend to spend more money as their income goes up: a new car, a larger apartment, fancier dinners.

The problem is when you spend all the extra money you make, you’ll become a prisoner of your job. You’re chained by “golden handcuffs” — you desperately need your paychecks to sustain your new lifestyle and pay off your debts

The key to avoiding or breaking free from this is to take yourself out of the equation. 

When you get paid and the first thing you do is pay everyone else first (e.g. your bills, dining out, movies), you’ll likely end up with very little. Instead, you need to pay yourself as much as you can first.

The easiest and most effective way to do this is with financial automation — it’s how I was able to save $100,000 in my early 20’s.

Automating your finances takes out the weakest link in your money flow chain: You.

If you leave it to yourself and willpower, you’ll procrastinate and make excuses: you tell yourself you’ll just do it later. The problem is, “later” turns into “never.”

Which is why I created my FREE 5-Day “Automate Your Money” Challenge to help you start now.

The 5-Day Challenge starts on July 1st where I’ll teach you step-by-step, how to automate your finances so you can save and earn more money on autopilot.

So if you want to discover how to make your financial dreams come true…

Then secure your spot in The 5-Day Challenge right now:

After that, I don’t know when, or if, I will open the doors to The 5-Day Challenge again… 

📊 Go Exponential, Not Linear

Like many children of immigrant parents, I was taught that hard work was absolutely necessary to succeed.

However, after graduating college and starting my career in finance, I realized that hard work isn’t the only ingredient for success.

Hard work will move you from point A to point B, but to reach point Z, you need to work smart.

Naval Ravikant suggests that leverage is one of the major differentiators between those who achieve significant success and those who don’t. 

We’re all constrained by the same 24 hours in a day. For instance, if you’re a pizza chef who can make only one pineapple pizza per hour, no matter how hard you hustle, you’re capped at 24 pizzas in a day—a linear progression.

But if you leverage your resources, your linear progress can become exponential.

The simplest form of leverage in finance is investing. The average return from the S&P 500 is about 10% annually, meaning your money could double every 10 years.

If you invest $6,000 a year from age 25 to 65 at an annual return of 10%, you’ll end up with a total value of over $2.7 million. On the other hand, if you simply kept that money under your mattress, you’d only have the $240,000 you originally saved. 

Investing versus hoarding your money under your mattress is the difference between using leverage and not.

💰 Determine Your Future Cost

Everything in life is a trade-off.

Choosing to work late may help your career, but you’ll spend less time with your loved ones. Saving and investing money for retirement is smart, but you’ll have to skip out on that fancy summer vacation.

Everything comes at the cost of something else in one way or another. You have to decide for yourself what price you’re willing to pay.

But the absolute worst decision you can make is indecision — it’s a virus that robs people blind.

It’s easy to put off big decisions, especially if you’re scared of the potential outcome — starting a business, investing in yourself or changing jobs.

But the future cost and trade-off of not deciding is worse than whatever the potential outcome could be. Indecision leads to inaction. And without action, there’s no data. No experience of life. No information. No growth. Just stagnation.

The sooner you make the hard decision (assuming it’s a financially savvy one), the more time you allow for the investment to compound, and the greater the end reward.

Stop calculating small things like how you can save $5, and instead, start calculating the future cost of not making big decisions.

And this is the perfect time to put your future cost calculation into action. The future cost of not taking control of your finances is detrimental.

So if you want to finally take control of your finances…

Secure your spot in The Free 5-Day Challenge right now:

🔎 reThink More

🍔 How a $18 Big Mac meal might put an end to inflation

💼 So you might have been applying to fake jobs all this time…

📰 Bad news. Here’s how bad housing affordability is now…

❤️ Community Space

In last week’s newsletter, I asked “Why does automating your money help you take control of your finances?” 55% of you got the right answer.

The answer: It reduces financial stress, eliminates decision fatigue, and prevents overspending, so you can focus on more important things, like perfecting your coffee brew.

📝 reThinkable Quiz

P.S. here’s a good post about bees

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