10 Ways to Grow Your Bank Account Tenfold Starting Today Don't try to master all 10 right away. As you gain more confidence, you will start to add more.
By Paul Argueta
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Most of you won't believe the headline of this entry, but the truth is, none of these strategies or tips will work if you do not take action. The biggest mistake that you can do is read the article and decide there's is no way you could implement all 10 techniques I outline below. So don't. Instead, just start with one that resonates with you. As you gain more confidence, you will start to add more. (For those of you who stick around until the end, we've included two super-special bonus tips.)
Now that we've gotten the housekeeping out of the way, let's get started. Here are the 10 ways to grow your bank account tenfold starting today.
Related: How the Founder of Dave's Killer Bread Went From Jail to Selling His Business for $275 Million
1. Develop new skills
The more valuable you become, the more you earn. What new skills have you developed in the last six months? If the answer to that question is none, then that might be one strong reason that the money in your bank account hasn't increased.
In this day and age, there is an unlimited supply of free online courses, master classes, webinars, books and online publications that can teach you almost anything. You have to take the initiative and enroll or purchase these courses or content.
Instead of listening to your favorite radio station in the morning, listen to an audiobook on Audible or a podcast in a field that you are interested in. Instead of watching Netflix during your lunch hour, spend that half hour watching a Masterclass or a pre-recorded webinar. You have to be willing to make the time.
If you want to be a millionaire, you need to impact a million people. If you want to a billionaire, guess what? You need to impact a billion people. How many people are you impacting right now? More skills usually means more impact.
2. Make money first. Save money second.
This holds especially true during the formative years of your life. Rather than preserving money when you don't have much, you should reinvest it in whatever you can test, attempt or construct in order to generate additional revenue. As soon as you're excellent at making money, you'll have access to a whole new universe.
Let's compare this strategy to sports. In sports, scoring points is when you are on the offense. Think of making money as the same thing as being on the offense. It is true that in any sport you are going to have to learn how to play defense, but it is impossible to score without having an offensive attack.
So how do you make more money? You develop more skills.
3. Passive income is 10 times more valuable than earned income
Most beginning investors focus on return investment, or ROI. More experienced investors focus on ROT, or return on time. Passive income of $100,000 per year is more valuable than a salary of $300,000 per year. Why is that?
Passive income is income you don't have to work for. Some people call this mailbox money, but these days with direct deposits, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle et al, it may as well be called email money.
What types of passive income streams could you establish? Jutst to name a few, you could:
- Create a course.
- Write an ebook.
- Own rental property.
- Do affiliate marketing.
- Earn dividends from stocks.
Those are but a few methods that you could implement to make passive income that you generate month after month, year after year, even though you may have only done the work one time.
4. Invest and re-Invest most of your income
Don't use your income to buy liabilities. Use your income to produce assets that will produce additional income. Now you might be asking yourself: Aren't I going to incur more debt in the process? Yes. And remember that there is good debt and there is bad debt. A luxury-car payment is bad debt, while investing money on a course or on an advertising campaign is good debt. It's very tempting to take your hard earned profits and splurge, but discipline yourself and reinvest your profits so that you can compound your income.
5. Build a money machine
Make it goal to develop some type of asset or portfolio of assets that become your cash cow. People who are wealthy don't work hard to get material goods. They don't need a job to pay for one of their luxuries.
There will come a moment in a your life as your wealth increases where you will pass what many refer to as the "great barrier." This is the point after which you will never broke agai, the point at which you've changed your family's history tree. You've broken the curse. In order to do this, you have build your money-making machine.
6. Invest only in what you Understand
When people don't know what they're doing, they end up losing money. Do what you love if you're an artist. If you have a strong interest in farming, you may want to consider purchasing a farm and using it in your leisure time. Find a way to make money off of what you're passionate about. The most common error individuals make is to spend money on things they do not understand. As a result, you wind up borrowing money against your home to purchase Bitcoin for $20,000.
This doesn't mean you can't study and learn more about a specific area of interest. You can. In fact, many entrepreneurs are forced to re-invent themselves every few years as new technologies emerge and disrupt industries. Just be sure that you understand exactly what you're investing your time and money into.
7. You can only control the time you put in
We all get 24 hours in the day. Everybody isn't spending their money in the same manner. You are the sole arbiter of your own time. For the next hour, you can choose whether you want to grow or watch paint dry. People who are more successful use their time wisely, while those who are less successful try to justify their lack of effort.
It's a lot easier to grow and succeed if you put in 90 or 100 hours a week than it is to put in 30. There will be no way for them to catch up with you in a few years. Stop trying to figure things out. In life, there are ways to save time. No one else can put in the hours that you can. When the future is sacrificed for the sake of the present, be wary, because the present will pass quickly and the future will come before you know it.
8. Always negotiate in business
You should bargain on everything business related — not because you're cheap, but because you want to get the most value for your money, which you likely earned via hard work.
Keep in mind that money is only a unit of measurement. The more in demand your work becomes, the more you recognize money as a tool used to propel your interests forward. This tool can also manipulate reality. When others are saying that something has never been done in an effort to discourage your efforts, you can use the same Jedi mind tricks that leaders like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Oprah Winfrey used (and still use) when pushing their visions forward.
Disclaimer: There are certain things like your faith, your health, your time and your family that should remain sacred and non-negotiable. It's important to keep balance in your life.
9. Stop trying to impress people
Not including this would be a disservice to you. You don't have to keep up appearances if you don't have the money. Stop trying to impress people whose opinion of you doesn't matter, or worse yet, people who aren't paying attention to you.
Most people spend their time in their own heads focused on their own personal challenges and insecurities. As cold as it sounds, people aren't thinking or talking about you as much as you think; not because you aren't interesting, but because they're too busy dealing with their own personal struggles. You're the same way. Accepting this can be very freeing. Once you remove the shackles of trying to maintain the status quo, you will do amazing things.
10. Use other people's money to build wealth
You can only accomplish so much with your own resources. To generate true wealth, it will take time, and the returns are never as fast nor as great as you'd like them to be. To speed up the process and see greater returns, you will have to master the art of leveraging other people's money. The rich and extremely wealthy do this every day.
Banks exist for this same reason. Your money goes into the bank, and the bank provides it to someone who can earn more money with other people's money than you could have ever done on your own. If you own a home, then you have already practiced this principle. For example, say you have $30,000 worth of cash that you'd like to use as a down payment. You then get $70,000 more from the bank, which is probably owned by other people (but insured by the bank). You purchase a $100,000 home and now owe the bank $500 a month to finance the 30-year mortgage. You technically used other people's money.
Let's say you decide to rent the property out for $700. Now you've got good debt, tax deductions and a net profit if $200 every month. And you didn't have to invest the entire $100,000 to begin with. As a result, you have a renter who is now paying for your home in addition to covering your bills and mortgage. On average, property values rise by a factor of 10 per decade. If the property is paid in full in 20 years, your $30,000 will be worth $600,000, which, my friend, is how the super-wealthy grow rich using the money of others.
Other people's money isn't only used for real estate. It can be used in a wide variety of financing, and over the years it's gotten more and more creative. Recently, we learned of a mortgage company that's allowing people to leverage their crypto without having to sell it, in exchange for a home mortgage! Anything is possible.
Related: 4 Skills that Miami Heat Head Coach Erik Spoelstra Used to Go from the Dungeon to the Corner Office
Now, as promised, here are two more bonus tips. And while it may seem that these tips are common sense, they aren't always common practice.
Bonus tip #1: Develop evergreen skills
Technology is always evolving. Much of this has to do with the technological advances that allow us to communicate with one another, and fortunately for you there are certain skill sets that are considered evergreen and will forever be used.
The art of selling will never go out of style. If you have sales skills, you will never be in short demand, and as an entrepreneur you will always be able to promote your product. If raising money is part of your entrepreneurial journey, you will regularly be pitching your dream. If you have spent your life avoiding sales, you've done yourself a disservice. Start by taking classes on public speaking or communication, or join a group like Toastmasters.
There are actually many more evergreen skills to consider, including, but are not limited to: copywriting, content creation, search engine optimization, coding and app and website design.
Bonus tip #2: There is no perfect time to start
In the movie Inception, the characters had the ability to create their own world. They became architects of their own minds. Whether you believe it or not, you can do the exact same thing.
Here's the catch: The timing will never be right. Your finances will never be in order. Your education will never be complete. You might be too old, or you might be too young. You might not be ready for a relationship, or your relationship wouldn't handle the struggle of entrepreneurship. Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing. If you're waiting for the perfect situation or perfect environment in which to get started, you will never get started and neither would have any of the greats before us.
You did it! You made it through the entire list. Remember: Pick one strategy right now and start implementing it today. Even if you completely screw this up and only double your income, you're in a better place, right? Cheers to your success!
