My Copy-Paste Strategy To Become Wealthy The Lazy Way

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, Grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. What if I told you that becoming a millionaire doesn't have to be hard or even take a ton of effort? See if you've ever felt overwhelmed by the idea of building wealth or having to work 247 just to try and hustle your way to building wealth. This episode's for you. I'm going to show you a simple way, the simple, proven strategies that anyone can use to build wealth. Strategies so easy you can literally copy and paste them in your life.

I can't tell you how many times I've had people come to me and say, hey, Mel, building wealth and making money, it's hard. Now, I'm not gonna lie. It can be, but it doesn't need to be. And I think that there's some very simple things that you can do to build wealth that. That in effect, you build wealth the lazy way. And in this episode, I just want to break it down. I'm going to give you eight of them that I think that you can put into your life. And number seven will surprise you. It's actually the one that got me to build my wealth and accelerate my path to financial freedom. And so stay tuned for that. But I think that that's the thing. Let's walk through these and look at them as if they were a recipe and things that you can cut and paste into your life. And that when you do, the stacking of these will put you on the path to building wealth the lazy way. All right, so the first one is this. And it may seem obvious, and you've probably. You've heard me say it over and over again, but it's that important. And that is this. The first one is to maximize your employer match, okay? To maximize.

The. Any kind of money or free money that you're getting from your job. So if you are working for an employer that.

Has a 401k and they match your contributions, let's just put some numbers to it. If, let's say that you. You earn.

You earn $50,000 a year. Okay.

And you have an employer, you know, that offers a 4% match, okay? That means that if you contribute $2,000, so you put 4% in, so you contribute $2,000 and then the employer.

They put in $2,000. So immediately.

You'Re at 4,000, but you only put in the 2,000. Okay, here's the thing. Over 30 years, this is where the power is. Over 30 years with an 8% return which you can get in the S P 500 type of index fund or ETF, that grows to half a million dollars. Just the match, okay? Just the man. So this free money as much as people say, oh yeah, I've heard that before. Think about it this way. If you're walking to, into a home and, and you see a bunch of hundred dollar bills on the ground, would you pick them up? Yeah. I mean most of you say yeah, no. Okay, maybe the owner of the home, it's their money and you ask them. But let's assume that it's not. Okay. What happens if, if you're walking to the home and the person says here, I got a deal for you.

For every hundred dollar bill you put on the ground, I'll put one on top of it and you can pick both up. Would you do it all day long? That's what an employer matches. It's you putting money down. So your employee, employer is going to match it and then you take both of them. Okay, so what's the recipe? What do you need to do? I need you to go and make sure that one, you're participating in the 401k of your, of your company. If you're not, I want you to go hr, I want you to sign up. Okay. Two, if you are participating, I want you to log into your 401k account and make sure that your contribution is at a minimum meeting or exceeding the match that your employer is giving. So if your employer is giving you 3%, you make sure you're at least contributing 3%. If they're giving you 4 or 5, 6%, then you want to make sure that you're at least contributing that. And, and then you could sit back and say, I'm going to forget about this piece for now and let the market do the work. Now I want you to, if you go through my stuff and all my training in my book building your money machine, I ultimately I want you to put away 20 to 25% of your, your income. But for this little piece of the cut and paste lazy strategy, just put there and make sure you get the match and then set it. Forget it. Okay, now you. There's a second step where you have to tell it where to invest and all that stuff. Different conversation, different time. But. But by and large, I just wanted a diversified ETF or index funds, maybe a target date fund, and that's it. Okay? And I have other trainings on that. The second piece of this, okay, the second cut and paste thing, is to put it on autopilot. Automate your savings and investing by making sure that you have set your 401 to an automatic contribution and you get the match. It's out of sight, out of mind. You don't have to make an effort. But every other piece of your financial world, I want it automated. The more that I can make the investing and the building of wealth automated without effort, the lazier I can be. The easier it is and the more likely that we're going to stick with it. That means that when you have automation, it is. It brings in consistency without relying on willpower and effort. So if you get the 401k in place and now you want to invest a little bit more and say you want to put it into a regular brokerage account and say you want a hundred dollars a month to go into a diversified ETF and you want it to go into a Schwab account, or you want it to go into a high yield savings account, okay, I want you to have it set on autopyte. I want you to log in to your banking and say, how do I make an automated transfer of this hundred dollars into a high yield savings account? Or you log into your brokerage account at Schwab at Fidelity Vanguard, and you say, how do I make sure that I have an automatic transfer of this $100 into this account and then an automatic investing into this ETF or this index fund, okay? And you can set those up that in a way that make it simple, okay. Out of sight, out of mind. Think about the math behind this. Okay? $100 a month in a diversified fund at 8% over 30 years will grow to 150,000. So in the first place, we had half a million. Now we got another 150,000. Okay? Starting out at basically $25 a week, okay? It adds up. It starts to add up. Okay? Now, in a high yield savings account, you're not gonna, you're not gonna get 8%. You're gonna get maybe 4% for a time. And it'll go down if interest rates come down. But the recipe on this, the steps on this, open the high yield savings account. Open the brokerage account, one or the other or both. Schedule the automatic transfers. Schedule the automatic investment. Let compounding turn the small amounts into significant wealth over time. So that's number two. Number three is skill up each year. Okay, I want incremental skill improvement each year. Here's the thing, we get to the end of the year and we all create like New Year's resolutions. We set goals, we do all these things, we sit back and go, I'm going to lose weight, I'm going to be a better father, I'm going to be a better mother, I'm going to be a better husband, wife. I'm going to, I'm going to learn Spanish, I'm going to learn piano, I'm going to do all this stuff. Okay, here's something we don't. It's all these achievements. What I want you to do is I want you to put a growth goal in place. What skill can you acquire that will allow you to get paid more? Okay, is it communication skills, is it technology skills, is it technical skills? What skill can you bring into your world that allow you to get raises, promotions, higher paying clients? One of the things that I did when I started to build my valuation practice, I was just a cpa. So I was going to get paid the CPA way. But then I got one designation, one certification and license for valuations. Then I got a second and then I got a third. So I had three licenses plus my cpa, plus for valuations. And all of those allowed me to present myself in a way that led to more money and higher paying clients. Think about this. A 5% raise on a $50,000 salary adds $2,500 a year. Now I get it, there's taxes on that, but let's just simplify it. If $2,500 a year I had to invest at 8%, it would grow to $250,000 a year in 30 years. Now, you know, forgetting taxes, I can hear it now. People go, you didn't think about taxes. No, I get it. I just want you to understand how little things make big differences in doing that. So your recipe on this one is to sit back and say, let me choose one skill to improve or to learn. Communication, technical skills, leadership, what is it, whatever that I know that I can parlay into a promotion, a raise or higher paying clients.

Number two, take a course, find a mentor, get certified. Number three, the big one, apply the skill to increase your income. All right, so that's the recipe for this one. That leads me to the number four way to cut and paste is, and this sounds odd, but it's real, is use tax advantaged accounts. Okay. Taxes are a big number for us. Depending on the state you live in, it can be as much as 50% depending on your income. So the more I can use the tax code for what it was meant to do and use it to my advantage, the more I can save tax dollars, the more money I have in my pocket. So when you look at things like a Roth ira, during my lower income years, I don't need the tax deduction. It's not as valuable. But when I get out in my retirement years, it's 100% tax free. I want to use tax advantaged accounts, whether it's a Roth, whether it's an IRA, whether it's a 401k to take advantage of tax savings. So I have more in my pocket that allows it to grow. $200 a month into a Roth IRA at 8% over 30 years is another half million dollars. And that half million is 100% tax free. Now, there's limits to Roth. I get it, your income's too high and you can't put more than, you know, a certain amount away depending on your age. That's fine. There's limits on all these things. Even for one K has limits, okay? So you have the ability to use the tax code to your advantage. Now you don't need to be a tax professional. What you need to do is have a tax understanding and say, does it make sense to do a 401k? A Roth and HSA? And I have spent, I have specific episodes just on those. If you're unsure about that, and I go into it in my, in my book. But you can start to contribute $200 a month and allow it to run and it can be tax free or tax deferred. Okay, that leads me to number five. The number five thing, and this is something that is, is important to, to look at, is I want you to adopt a buy and hold mentality. There's a lot of people that have a lack of patience with their investing. They want to get in, they want to get out, they want, they. I call it the beanstalk syndrome. You don't just take the beans like, like Jack and the Beanstalk, throws them out the window and wakes up the next morning and the beanstalks fully grown. That's not. Our investments grow. It takes time. But here's the other thing that happens when you invest in a diversified portfolio. The Stock market historically goes up 8 out of 10 years on average, the returns are 8 to 10%. The probability of success.

Goes up the longer you hold. There isn't a 20 year period where the stock market went down when you look at a 20 year period on a rolling average. So when you start to look at the, the math behind that, the longer term buy and hold makes sense. On investing, I'm not talking about trading, I'm not talking about speculating, I'm not talking about. But the fact is, is data shows you cannot time the market. Even the best traders that have the biggest computers, the best algorithms, the best information, the best anal analytics, all the big firms, when you look at them over the long term, they cannot beat the market. They, they might beat it for a year, two years, maybe even three years, but long term, they don't beat it. So if they can't do it, there's no way we can. When you look at a buy and hold strategy and you have it properly invested in a diversified portfolio, the market will do the work for yourself. I'll give you a for instance. I have a client that had about $450,000 in their 401k. They left their job, they rolled the 401k into an IRA at a brokerage account. They got a new job and they have a 401k there. And they just went about their way. And they haven't looked at it. They didn't look at it. And when we sat down, I said, hey, where do you got, what do you have? And we're walking through it. And I said, what about that account? And we looked at the account. It was over $800,000.

Point being is that, that the market did the work. They didn't reallocate, they didn't look at it. They didn't do a lot of stuff that they could have done. But in the process it grew tremendously. So what's the recipe here? Open a brokerage account. If you don't have it, make sure that you buy a diversified ETF index fund, that kind of thing. You can do it in your 401k. You can do it in a brokerage account. You can do a combination of it. You can look at things like the spy, voo, vti. I'm not recommending them. These are the kinds of investments you go in. They're diversified. You know, it's a total stock market or It's a S P500. And so you have low risk, high liquidity, low expenses. Okay, commit to holding it for over 10 years, 10 plus years. No matter what's going on in the market, market goes up, I'm buying. That's my strategy. Mark goes down, I'm buying. In other words, I'm buying all the time. And in the long term.

My wealth grew in the long term, it just happened as part of the process. Kind of lazy. Okay, leads me to number six. Number six, kind of an interesting one. This is turn homes into rentals. And this is, this is something that we did. I, I love real estate, but I don't love being a landlord. I don't have a lot of direct ownership in real estate. And in my work with my clients and in my book, I talk about when real estate should be investment. I don't think it's the first place to invest because it's complicated, there's friction costs. And if you buy the wrong property that has problems, problem tenant, problem structure, anything like that, it can destroy you financially. So I, I want people to wait to.

Buy real estate as an investment until they have critical mass in their portfolio. But this is the one exception, and that is to turn your residence into rentals. I have a handful of rental properties and those rental properties, I did not buy them initially to be a rental property. I bought them initially to be my home and I lived in them and then when I moved out, I turned them into rentals. So I converted my residence into a rental. And now you, you take what turned out, turns out to be a large living expense, your home expense, and turn it into a wealth building asset. And so if I look at a home, and now the beautiful thing with real estate, it's the only investment that has four characteristics to it. One, it will appreciate. Now the stock market will appreciate also and other investments will appreciate also. So that's when the value of the real estate goes up. But two, there's equity buildup even if the real estate doesn't appreciate. If there's a mortgage on the property and you have a tenant in there paying the rent that pays the mortgage.

As they pay the mortgage down, you're building equity in the property. So there's equity buildup, there's cash flow that's from the rents and there's tax shield from the expenses and depreciation. So it's the only investment that has those four characteristics. Most other investments will have one, two, or maybe three of them, but not all four. And so that's why I love it, but I don't love it to start because if you get the wrong property that requires maintenance or you can't you've got a bad tenant that doesn't pay and you got to evict. Any of those things can destroy you because you don't have the cap. You don't have the critical mass in your portfolio to carry it. So, so in this one, this is about turning your residence when you move into a rental, kind of hacking it, if you will. So here's the thing, here's the recipe for this one. Assess the rental potential of your home when you move. So if I'm buying in an area, is this something that we can rent? Like even where we live now, we live.

On the beach. Basically, if, if we wanted to and wanted to not live here anymore, renting this would be easy. You got 180 degree view of, of Catalina Island. You can hear the waves at night. It's a beautiful property in a beautiful location. So we can do that. Assess the rental potential of your home when you move. Keep the property instead of selling it and turn it into a rental. I've got one rental that was a residence of mine that I rented in 1996. Do you know that I have the same tenant in there since 1996? Takes care of the property, great tenant. If I don't cash his rent check on time, he's the one calling me. I'm going, hey, did you get my check? That's what you want, okay? Use the rental income for reinvestment to give you financial flexibility and everything. So that's number six. Now on to number seven. This is the one that actually helped me accelerate my build to financial freedom. And that is this number seven is invest windfalls as lump sums. So this was specific because of my business. My business was big projects. I would get, I would have income, income, income, but then I would get this project for 50,000 or a project for 100,000. I don't need all that money. And if I went and spent it, then that's great, I had some fun. But then it didn't get me anywhere. I call this leapfrog funding, where if you get a large windfall, maybe you get a big bonus, maybe you get a big client and you get money in. I want you to take a substantial portion of it and invest it. And here's how I, I did it and here's how I recommend my clients do it is you have a big sum that comes in, maybe it's 10,000, maybe it's 20,000. Whatever it is, once you take a little slice of it.

And set it aside for your celebration, give yourself a gift you deserve it. You should be celebrating. Okay, Number two, actually, that, this, that should be number two. Number one should be make sure you have money set aside to pay the taxes on it. So that's number one. Number two is the slice for celebration. Number three, if you are in a situation where you're not in a regular job or you don't have regular clients, and, and maybe you have 30 days or 60 days before your next, next revenue generating activity. If you do things online and maybe you're doing a launch every quarter, I want you to set aside enough money to carry you to the next revenue generating activity. So you'll have taxes, celebration, and enough to carry you for the next revenue generating activity. And then you have the amount left over. That amount left over. I want you to invest, okay? I want you to invest it. And lump sum invested, what I call leapfrog funded, okay? That means that you might have 10,000 left over invested. So like when I got big projects for 50,000, 60,000, you know, 40,000, there conceivably is 20, $30,000 left over and I could invest, I put it in a brokerage account or I put it in my defined benefit plan, all those things. So I was, I would get these big jump chunks over the years as well as the small stuff, okay? So things like bonuses, tax refunds, inheritances, use them to your advantage to leapfrog you forward on your finances. This was huge in moving me forward on my road to financial freedom. So let, and then put it in a diversified fund. Let it grow without touching it. All right, that leads me to number eight. Okay, and, and the last one in this, number eight is this. This is another thing that allowed me to get paid more and get things that others wouldn't get, like promotions and raises and things like that. Take on the things that other people would avoid. That's number eight. Okay, here's what I mean by that. When I was working for the big consulting firm in downtown Los Angeles, when I first came out of college, that's where I was. I was at a big consulting firm. We were doing mergers, acquisitions, valuations, consulting, that kind of thing. I got a reputation for taking on the projects that no one else wanted. If it was this unicorn of a project, this one off, this wasn't consistent with what they did. And they go, I don't, we don't know how to do this. They go, oh, let's get Mel. We'll give it to him. He'll figure it out. That's what I did, but it gave me a reputation but it also put me in a position where, one, I developed additional skills that others didn't develop. Two, I was more valuable because I was such a utility player in the process.

Three, I was able to tackle things and they were able to take on projects they wouldn't otherwise take on because I was there. So I got paid more, I got higher raises, I got quicker promotions. And so I want you to look for places and ways for you to take on the things that others would avoid, because in there lies your distinction, your separation, and your increase in value in the marketplace. Small side projects like this can create significant financial rewards over time, which is what happened to me. So look for opportunities or problems that no one else wants to handle and look at and say, do I want to handle that? Offer the solution. This is the recipe. Offer the solution and take ownership of those projects. That's going to leverage. You'll have that to leverage your success, to negotiate raises, bonuses, or new clients. That's the game. That's the game. So those are eight ways that I think you can cut and paste building wealth in a lazy way. Okay, wealth isn't reserved for the rich. It's. It's built through consistent, intentional actions. And frankly, the lazier it is, the better off you are, because then you're not involved in, in.

Making mistakes and always having to turn the dials and pull the levers. Now, that doesn't mean set it and forget it. I am very much involved with everything that goes on with our wealth, our money, my clients, and doing that. But what I don't want is to feel the pressure that you need to be on it and checking your account every day and, and, and hourly and all that stuff. I want simplicity because complexity brings risk, risk brings losses. So lazy way is focused on simplicity. Simplicity is repeatable. So automate the decisions, make it easy. Follow the discipline, follow the process. Focus on small, consistent actions stacked over time. If you just took half of these, cut and paste them into your life, you could change your financial structure by hundreds of thousands of dollars in a short period of time. Leverage the opportunities and make it happen. All right? Follow the recipe and you'll prove that becoming a millionaire or building wealth isn't about hustle. It's about working smarter and letting your money work harder for you than you did for it. All right? I hope you found this value. I hope you take some of these and cut and paste them in your life and let me know how it goes. All right? I'm here for you. If you have questions, comments, let me know, do me a favor. If you haven't done so already, subscribe to the show, okay? And then share it out. It's a better journey to do this with friends. All right? So if I hope I get a chance to see you on the road to your financial freedom, and I hope to see you soar. And until I get a chance to do that, always, always strive to live a life.

Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneur show with me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to melabraham.com group and I'll see you there.

And that's it for this episode of building your money machine, where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue, continue to get this information and this message out to people because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright, and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.