4 Millionaire Habits You Need To Build Real Wealth | George Kamel

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

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0:49What would be the top habits of millionaires that you've studied and also you've applied in order to get that status? Ooh, that's a great question. So we did the largest study of millionaires ever done in North America. And I think there's a lot of overlap in the habits that we talk about with the Ramsey baby steps and what we found with millionaires. So it was encouraging because it just gave us some great confidence in the Ramsey plan to go like, this works. Every time you work it, it works, whether you make$40 ,000 or$400 ,000. And so one of those habits is living on less than you make. If you can't do that, this is not for you.

1:24Like if you make$40 ,000 and you spend$60 ,000 a year, that's a problem. The other one we found is delayed gratification. For that first one, why do you think people feel the need to spend more than they actually make? I think at the root of it, it's discontentment. We're not content with what we have. It's never enough. And thanks to debt, you're able to do that. Like before debt existed, you couldn't spend more than you made. It was physically impossible. Right. And all of a sudden with the advent of debt, and I talk about the history of each piece of the puzzle here, like where did credit cards come from?

1:59Where did auto loans originate? What about student loans? How did this all happen? And most of it was good intentions that turned into huge profits for companies and corporations going like, we can screw a lot of people over and make a lot of money from interest if we convince them they need that newer car. And look at colleges, what do they do? They raise prices because you can get as much student loans as you want. Sally Mae is happy to give you the Monopoly money. So colleges go, let's double the price. People will pay for it. And so because of that, people just have been spending more than they made for a long time now and putting it on the tab and going, I'll worry about that later.

2:32Okay. What's the second habit? The second habit is practicing delay gratification. That's a discipline that we have lost in an instant gratification culture. We have instant access 24-7 all the time in the palm of our hand, two-hour shipping. And that has caused our brains to just get fried where we're like, I can't wait a week. I can't wait 10 years to build wealth. I need this now. I need it now. And we found millionaires are okay with the long-term. They're playing the long game. And that's a very different mentality to have. They don't need it right now. They can say, I'm going to put 10 % or 5 % or a certain amount of dollar amount every month away automatically that I don't need to buy something with this.

3:13It's going to go to my future self. Yeah. Or I'm going to pay cash for that car. That means putting a thousand bucks away for 24 months to save up for a$24 ,000 car. You know, it's interesting when I moved to, my dad always had used cars until he started to make some real money. Then he bought a new car, right? But it wasn't for many, many years. He like had that car until he rode it to the last, I guess, mile. And when I moved to LA, I had a million dollars in my account already. By the time I moved to LA, I don't know, 12 years ago, I had built this marketing company up before the podcast. I wasn't like mega millionaire, but I had a million dollars in the account of net worth, right?

3:54And I came here and everyone had these flashy cars. And I was like, I just don't feel the need to try to live up to some Standard in Los Angeles. And I got this car for$4 ,000 that I drove for the first five years I lived here. And the only reason I got a new car was really for like a tax break into like, you know, write off on taxes. But this was a 1997 year car. Wow. And I drove it around for five years happy. It didn't have Bluetooth. It didn't have like, it had a CD player. And I'm like, That's all you need? That's all I needed. And the radio didn't work. But it was like, I don't need some fancy car to feel like...

4:35Well, you weren't trying to flex. I wasn't trying to. You were focused on what was ahead of you instead of who the people around you. Exactly. And it was good enough. It got me around. You know, eventually I was like, okay, it's time to upgrade. But not because I felt like I needed to to impress, but because I wanted it. It wasn't a flex. Yeah, exactly. That's the third habit right there. We found millionaires, they drive four-year-old cars on average. and they're all used. Really? You would think like millionaires, well, they can afford the new car, like they can do it, but they don't because they understand that cars are a depreciating asset.

5:07Every time you get in that car, it's just going down in value. And when you compound that with a car payment, you're paying interest on something going down in value. It's about the dumbest thing you can do. And I think it's one of the biggest wealth killers today. So that's definitely the third habit. Okay. What's getting a used car or what would it be? Yeah, driving used cars just, And that's part of delayed gratification. It all stems from living on less than you make and delayed gratification. Okay. And what's the fourth one? The most interesting one to me was that 97 % of millionaires in the study believe they control their financial destiny.

5:37That was a, like, I was shocked they even put that question in the study. But it was such an empowering one because it's less about money. It's more about belief. What the limiting beliefs we have about, like, well, I didn't grow up with money. Well, my parents made money mistakes. No, you don't understand. I got baggage, man. I made too many mistakes with zeros on the end and too many people live their life with that Eeyore mentality. But 97 % said, I believe I have a sense of control and autonomy and agency over what happens with my money.

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7:02Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.