6 Things That Helped Me Become a Millionaire by 30

Sharon Tseung 0:02
This is the digital nomad quest podcast with Sharon Tseung. teaching people how to build passive income, become financially free and design their best lives. Hey guys, is Sharon from digital nomad quest and today we’re gonna talk about six things that helped me become a millionaire. So I recently did this interview with Business Insider, where we talked all about my journey, my different tips that helped me boost my net worth, which by the way, when you are doing an interview with Business Insider, they request every single documentation. So I had to gather all these different things within like a day, they had a really strict timeline. And they usually always do when they interview me, and I have to get everything in order right away and do the interview right away. So whatever you see there is factual. And essentially, because I did all this, I’m like, let me do a YouTube video on this topic, it seems to have gathered some interest. So let’s talk about this. So as you guys know, my husband, and I did combine our rental portfolios, but basically what this article does net worth only counts my portion, any real estate that my husband owned, that’s only his name. And it’s not with me, I didn’t count any of that just anything that had my name on it. And then with our accounts is pretty easy, because we still have our own separate account. So we do have a joint account that we share that we sometimes contribute to, but essentially, I was able to kind of separate most of this stuff. So it’s only my stuff that I kind of built over the years. So let’s talk about my journey. As you guys know, about two months ago or so I got laid off, I was a marketing manager at a startup. And I’d been in marketing for about 10 years now, my annual salary was a bit over six figures. But essentially, I was not worried when I got laid off. Because my side hustles actually make me more than my day job. The thing that I was worried about was like, how am I going to spend my time after getting laid off? Am I going to work super hard on making content on these different projects, or am I going to do more of my passion projects like gardening, possibly fishing in the future, making music so this is kind of the stuff that’s been on my mind and I have been working on a lot of my other bucket list goals, not just this personal finance stuff, because there’s so much more to life where you create this freedom. So you can be in touch with the things that you actually value that you get to pursue because you have the time now. So basically, by the age of 31, I am retired from that nine to five, I don’t depend on that paycheck.

I spent around seven years building these multiple income streams. Basically my whole life though, working on my personal finances. So over 10 years working on my personal finance, because I’ve always had that save and invest mentality. I’m lucky that my parents kind of instilled that in me my earnings now come a lot from ad revenue, affiliate marketing, online courses, sponsorships selling on Amazon and Etsy as well as getting cash flow from real estate. This all sounds really cool. But I didn’t have all these things. When I first started, when I first started, I didn’t have enough to invest in real estate stocks was the most accessible route for me. And I did have a good head start because my parents really cared about instilling good habits with me. So they actually helped me open a brokerage account in 2003. But obviously, because I didn’t have a full time job yet I wasn’t able to allocate that much to it, I did start taking part time jobs as a chess teacher, like I was a chess teacher at five different chess schools and I took different jobs in college like as a resident assistant and a vet assistant, I took multiple summer internships, and that allowed me to kind of contribute to my accounts a little bit more. But at the time, again, I wasn’t making that much. And opening this account was really to encourage me to get into the habit of investing. It wasn’t until I began working in 2011, when I started allocating funds to my Roth IRA, the Roth IRA is an after tax retirement account. This means contributions are not tax deductible when they’re made, but they can grow tax free over time. So any earnings from your investments, you’re keeping it in that account, it can grow tax free over time. So my initial goal was to max out the annual limit of $6,000. And then as my income gradually increased, I was able to put the rest into a brokerage account, instead of just my retirement accounts in 2021, I was able to finally get access to a Roth 401 K because they had that benefit later on with that job. And this allowed me to contribute to retirement pre tax, and it had a higher contribution limit of $21,500, which I would max out. So in the article here, they actually didn’t include some of the numbers in some of my other accounts, which would have brought up that net worth at least like 100 to 150 K, but it’s all good. I don’t want to give the exact numbers right now if you guys do want those exact numbers of what they reported, you guys can check out the article at the time of the article. My stocks are down at least $150,000 Actually, but I wasn’t worried because I knew that there was a downturn in the stock market and things would pick up later. So that’s kind of how you should view it with investing. You should only invest what you’re comfortable with losing and if things happen. It’s okay because you’re in it for the long run. At least for me, I try to set it and forget it, invest in some safe index funds. In ETFs, that are going to grow over time. I would also say that right now I am holding on to a decent amount of cash because of this volatility. And I’m kind of waiting for a good time to invest more with real estate. Actually, I’ve been kind of dollar cost averaging with my stocks and crypto a little bit, but I’m also holding a lot ready for my next real estate project. We are working on a project right now. But I’m like going slower than normal. Like before, we were buying properties really quickly, but I’m trying to be more patient with it and just kind of watching the market. Now within my stocks. Q QQ is my biggest holding, it’s an ETF that tracks the NASDAQ 100. And essentially, it’s a basket of stocks, so you’re not investing in just one stock. So it makes it a little bit safer and more diversified. Arc w is my next biggest ETF holding, and they’re all kind of technology and growth based. But as time goes on, I want to be contributing more to spy because it does give a little bit more of a balanced portfolio spy tracks the s&p 500. So my real estate portfolio actually minus all the liabilities and just counting the equity is around a million. And these properties are around Georgia, Texas in California. So let’s go into my different top tips. So first off, it is having the right mindset.

This was basically the first thing that came to mind when she was interviewing me because essentially, my parents instilled in me to save a lot to buy only what you need now what you want as much as you can, that’s kind of what I did growing up, like my parents told me that I would never ask for anything. And when I was a kid, one day, I decided I wanted a nutcracker for Christmas. And they were like, oh my god, she never asked for anything. So they like went all through different stores trying to find the Nutcracker to give me for Christmas. And that’s how much like I didn’t spend money, right, I didn’t have many things I wanted to buy. So honestly, I feel really lucky that my parents instilled this mentality in me to save and invest. And I actually do find more joy seeing my dollar amount grow versus just spending it on extravagant things like I don’t get as much joy having these luxurious things, because for me, it’s like there are more things I have to worry about. But at the same time now as like I’ve created these income streams and Bill my accounts up and net worth up, I feel more and more comfortable spending on things that I value. So like travel, I value experiences, it doesn’t mean I have to fly like first class or anything like that, I’m still being kind of budget conscious. Because I enjoy finding deals, I enjoy spending less while getting a ton of value out of my purchases. Same thing with music. So I love creating music. And I’m okay with spending on some music equipment for me to create awesome projects. So to me, it is important to kind of align yourself with your values and spend based off of those values versus trying to keep up with the Joneses. And trying to impress other people, it’s really easy to fall into that trap to buy things just to be like liquid I have, it can be easy to kind of get this badge to show off essentially is what it is. But try to hone in on what you actually want and only spend on those things that give you that much value. My parents would always buy things on sale. And I’m lucky that I got to observe that because I love a good deal and not just buying super cheap things. You want to buy quality things that can last a long time and possibly get it at a lower cost than what it’s actually worth number two is to consider time as part of the cost. When it came to me deciding if something was worth buying, I want to just consider the price tag, I would also consider the opportunity cost. So if I were to buy a $300 bag and I was getting paid $15 an hour, I knew that’d be 20 hours of my life that I would trade for this bag. So I’d have to think is that really worth it. This just made it so much easier for me to decide this is not something I want to buy my time is one of the most valuable things that I have. I’d rather not trade my time for money. And I’d rather make money work for me. Number three is I paid myself first. Now this means allocating money to your savings account and kind of putting money aside for yourself first. And that way there’s this quote by Warren Buffett, it says don’t save what is left after spending, spend what is left after saving. So if you kind of think about things where you’re spending your paycheck, and then just saving what you can that’s left, it’s not going to be as effective as if you already paid yourself first and saved it and then spend what is left after saving.

Another thing is people talk about the 5030 20 rule 50% goes to your needs 30% goes to your wants 20% goes to your saving I will try to do even better than that, if possible, I would basically increase my 20% to over 50% Usually, and I would cut down on Nizam Juan so with the needs, the way you can cut that down is you could house hack which is basically renting out different units or different rooms of a property you purchased which makes your monthly living expenses close to zero or you could even live at home and that’s kind of what I did in the beginning. I essentially lived at home where a lot of my friends are moving out to the city having a good time and I was honestly kind of jealous because I really wanted to do that. But I knew that I would prefer saving as much as I could and then you know I ended up traveling the world for two years and two Me that trip was just fine because a lot of people were spending most of what they’re earning. And I was being financially responsible because I was only traveling in more budget friendly countries where I only spent about $1,400 a month, including transportation, accommodations, food and entertainment and all of that. If you can’t house hack or live at home, you should possibly live with roommates. You could even have a roommate live in the living room with kind of a curtain that walls it off if they’re okay with it. That’s actually what I did. I lived with two others, and one person lived in the living room and it saved a lot on expenses for rent. And like I mentioned with travel, I would do things like use Google Flights and find dates where it was cheaper to fly to the specific country. Another hack is if you are flying to like Europe, you could pick the cheapest destination first and then travel within Europe after that. That’s actually what I did on our honeymoon, we flew to Lisbon first because it was the cheapest airport out of all the different countries in Europe. And then we just traveled within Europe. And it’s a lot cheaper to do it that way because they have very budget friendly airlines where you can even book flights within Europe for under 20 bucks. And then with accommodations, I would do Airbnb and I do month long stays because with a month bookings, they usually have monthly discounts. And I was able to discount a lot by doing so number four is to track your expenses. So what I actually started doing while I was traveling, I tracked every single expense on my little spreadsheet and I blogged about it, I showed people that you didn’t have to spend everything you earn on travel because you can do it in a budget friendly way. My spreadsheet included categories like flights, accommodations, entertainment, food, and everything like that. And then I will track every single thing that I bought and how much it is in US dollars doing this just helped me stay aware about how much I was spending and let me know what I should cut down on. It was very eye opening to do this. And I was very proud of myself because I was not spending that much. And not only that, like back home again. I mentioned I was kind of sad that everyone was enjoying their lives in San Francisco while I was living in the suburbs at home. And I was just feeling like they’re earning more. A lot of them had probably six figure salaries at the time. And they were just able to live such fun lives in the city. Whereas I would have to stay at home and I didn’t have as high of a wage. So I was wondering, am I saving the same amount that these people were saving and they’re getting to enjoy their life a lot more than me? Well, it turns out some of the people I talked to they’re like, dude, I’m living paycheck to paycheck, I’m spending everything I’m earning. I guess it made me proud of myself because I really cared about the money actually took home because I was not about to trade my life for work and not have anything to show for it. I was like if I’m gonna spend 40 hours a week at work I better be saving some money and seeing my bank account grow. Number five is really important to boost your income. I always talk about this I talk about side hustles all the time, but it really changed my life making more money was a key factor for my journey because from my first job I was getting paid 30k a year while some people probably already had their six figure jobs especially in the Bay Area where I live what I honestly did that helped me was I chump jobs a lot so I’ve had multiple jobs, I boosted my salary every single time I did it, you can boost your salary a lot just by doing this versus working extremely hard, hoping for promotion. I did that. But then I also started the side hustles where I sold digital products on Etsy I started my blog. I even tried Kindle books for a little bit and in merch by Amazon Amazon FBA. And then I started this personal brand where I teach you guys all about this stuff, but it actually does help me make a living out of it. The more money you can take home the more you can invest it and make it work for you, then it just becomes so much easier, right because if you have more to invest, that means you get bigger returns where you can keep compounding that so it is really important to start early. Try increasing your income and then investing that money. Now lastly, it’s really important to learn the fundamentals. I believe that most people don’t start investing because it just seems so complicated, so daunting, all the numbers and charts and things like that. It just makes people like you know what, I’m scared of all this.

I don’t even want to look at it. I’ve even had friends not track their net worth because they’re scared of what it looks like. And they’re even like, you know, I don’t know if I’m going to live a long life. So I don’t want to think about retirement. I don’t care I just want to live in the present moment. I’ve met multiple people like this I have multiple friends like this, but in reality investing is not as complicated as it seems. And there are a lot of free resources out there online and you can start reading books I would recommend checking out four hour workweek and Rich Dad Poor Dad to get yourself in the right mindset and also check out books like Simple Path to Wealth and I’ll teach you to be rich they’re good ones to start with your personal finances like they actually have some instruction on how to get started especially if you don’t know anything Simple Path to Wealth is a very simple guide and it makes it so you don’t have to like learn all the complicated things around stocks you can just start putting it into some rely Bull index funds or ETFs. So yeah, investing doesn’t have to be that complicated. And I really think that you should continuously up your knowledge you keep watching my channel, learn more from the free resources out there. Like there’s so many videos you can watch on YouTube where you don’t feel like taking a course you don’t have to. And you could probably learn most everything but to me, I do learn best with courses. So I usually purchase courses and follow the curriculum and learn a lot from it. But basically, there are a lot of resources out there to help you with your knowledge and financial literacy. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode on my six things that helped me become a millionaire. You know, when you see me now, this stage of my life is so different from where I was seven years ago. So I feel like when you see social media and you see people killing it, you might think, oh, man, they’re so lucky. I wish I could have that. But in reality, while at least for me, it took me very long time to get to where I’m at. So it’s important to start early and start building as long as you’re getting better like 1% Every day you’re gonna get really far in life and it’s never too late to start learning the fundamentals, boosting your income saving as much as you can and investing that money. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Please make sure to rate review and subscribe. It really helps our podcast grow. And thanks again. I’ll see you guys in the next one.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai