Forget NFTs and cryptocurrency. Great money lessons don’t change over time.

The inability to delay gratification is the #1 reason most people will not be wealthy.

In an effort to ‘Keep Up with Joneses’ or find the next NFT that will skyrocket, people forget about the timeless money lessons that build real wealth.

Making money is more about reinforcing timeless lessons rather than than learning new ones.

While these six money lessons won’t make you rich overnight (nothing will), they will put you ahead of most people around you and on track to becoming a millionaire.

The more you implement these lessons, the better the compound effect.

Seduce money with your mindset

Program your mind to see endless opportunities and you’ll never have to worry about money again.

— (Source)

If your mind isn’t hardwired for growth, forget about making money.

Any business idea, side hustle, or side income project starts as a seed in your mind first.

A growth mindset will help you nurture that seed into a tree.

A fixed mindset will make you judge the Acorn and question why it’s not a tree yet and stop watering it.

I see too many people kill their ideas too early. Once they hit the ‘dip’ in their business, they hit the eject button.

A lack of a growth mindset has killed more business dreams than a lack of talent or money ever will.

“Talent matters — especially at elite levels — but people talk themselves out of giving their best effort long before talent becomes the limiting factor”, writes James Clear.

Talk dirty to your money. Tell it about your ambitions and goals. Make it want to sleep with you.

Money follows your mind. You can determine someone’s financial future based solely on their mindset. You can’t expect to become a millionaire with $2 thinking.

Money is weirdly attracted to this.

Mathematically, it’s easier to go from a net worth of $600,000 to $1 million than it is to go from a net worth of $0 to $100,000.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a graph to illustrate the point:

In short, money loves momentum. Here’s why:

From $0 — $100,000 net worth, your savings are doing the majority of the work. This is why it can take almost 8 years to reach this milestone.

From $600k — $1 million net worth, compound interest is in effect and working for you. Your savings rate has less and less of an impact.

In short, once you have financial momentum, every subsequent $100,000 milestone becomes easier and easier to reach.

As Charlie Munger famously said:

“I don’t care what you have to do — if it means walking everywhere and not eating anything that wasn’t purchased with a coupon, find a way to get your hands on $100,000. After that, you can ease off the gas a little bit.”

You might find this demoralizing or a sign that the ‘rich always get richer’.

Unfortunately, no amount of social justice warriors will change the basic laws of mathematics. You can either choose to shit on the system or learn to play by its rules.

Build financial momentum as early and quickly as possible. Then let compound interest turn you into a millionaire.

Sprint if possible, but understand that this game is a marathon.

Making money fast is possible.

But making money easy is not.

I’ve seen writers come onto Medium and start making thousands per month from their writing instantly.

But what isn’t seen is that they’ve been writing online on other platforms for 10 years before joining Medium. They have already put in the invisible 10,000 hours of hard work.

Don’t confuse fast money with easy money.

Money is time at rest, and time is money in motion.

Money and time are tied together.

If you have stored money, you can put it in motion to buy more time. Money is a token you pay to get more of your time back.

If you have stored time, you can put it in motion to make more money. Time is the cost of making more money.

This is how money and time play out in your life:

• As a young adult, you have time and health but no money.

• In mid-life, you have money and health but no time.

• In later life, you have money and time but no health.

People are stingy with their money but careless with their time. You should do the opposite.

Build a fortress around your time and use money as the moat that separates you from things you don’t want to do.

You can always make money back, but you can never get your time back.

As Morgan Housel said:

“Money’s greatest intrinsic value — and this can’t be overstated — is its ability to give you control over your time.”

Providing value to society is a magnet for money.

Focus on making money, and you lose it.

Focus on solving a problem, and you gain it.

The bigger the problem you solve, the more money you get.

Steps to provide value:

1. Look at a problem that you are uniquely placed to provide a solution to.

2. Build a product or service to solve that challenge.

3. Monetize that product or service.

4. Test and iterate your product or service.

5. Scale the solution to more and more people.

I recently started a consulting business by finding a niche that I had deep expertise in that few others had and customers would pay a premium for.

I am at the stage where I am starting to detach my hours from the value provided through leveraging labor and digital products.

Becoming a millionaire is about finding a low supply, high demand problem. All you need to do is look. They are everywhere.

Money is a system, not a goal.

You don’t rise to the level of your financial goals, you fall to the level of your financial systems.

If making goals made you wealthy, every Tom, Dick, and Harry pining for $1 million would be rich.

Goals will help you set a direction. Systems will help you make progress.

The difference between wealthy and non-wealth is their systems for saving, spending, and investing.

As Tim Denning writes:

“Millionaires have goals. They turn them into habits. Habits form systems. Systems create financial automation.”

Look at your monthly income, then ask yourself:

1. What % do you save?

2. What % do you invest?

3. What % do you spend?

The greater the percentage of 1 and 2, the wealthier you will become.

Once you’re comfortable with how much you save and invest, automate. The best systems don’t rely on willpower.

The better the system, the better the financial health.

What does this mean for you?

Money is a game that you can win if you know how to play by the rules.

Use these timeless money lessons to win the game. And once you’ve won the game, use your self-awareness to stop playing.

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