How to Get Rich With 90 Minutes of Work

I just wrote a A Simple Guide to Financial Freedom based on my experiences with Financial Freedom. Consider giving it a read if you are interested in this topic.

Getting rich is simple. But not easy.

Here is how. In 3 steps and roughly 90 minutes of work.

This is a proven plan that has already worked for countless people. And it is working for me. Slowly, but surely. Every day you’ll move a bit closer to your goal — whatever that may be: financial freedom, retirement, etc.

Step 1: Decide your savings rate (60 minutes)

Getting rich can be summarized with the following:

Spend less than you make.

The ratio between your income and your expenses is what we call your savings rate. This rate will determine how quickly you accumulate wealth.

Most households have an abysmal savings rate. Somewhere in the low teens. If you want to get rich, your goal is to make your savings a much higher percentage of your income. Aim for 50%+.

Take a moment to play around with this tool to get a feel for the different savings rates. Notice how elite savers (66%+) can retire in less than 10 years with a portfolio starting from zero!

Pick a savings rate based on your financial goals. The tool should help you figure it out. If you want to create a more detailed plan, ProjectionLab is great for that (free version is enough if you don’t want to save your plan).

Step 2: Auto transfer money from your bank (10 minutes)

To make things simple — and to make sure we stick to our goals, we’ll set up an automatic transfer of money each month.

Your savings rate from step one will determine how much to transfer.

Set up automatic transfer from your bank to your trading platform of choice. Preferably the transfer should be at the beginning of the month when you have just been paid — that way you won’t have excess money tempting you to buy stupid stuff.

Step 3: Auto invest in an index fund (20 minutes)

Put your money to work. Invest your savings in an index fund and see your money grow over time.

Most trading platforms should have an auto-invest option that will allow you to automatically invest on a monthly schedule. Do that.

By investing every month you will dollar-cost average into the stock market. And when you combine that with a good index fund your are exposed to the full might of the best companies in the world. When they win, you win.

Now wait

Most of us want to complicate things with more complex and convoluted ideas/strategies/tools/etc. But a lot of that will likely hurt us more in the long run. The more complicated your system is, the harder it will be to stick to it — and sticking to it is really all you need to do.¹

To get rich you simply have to spend less than you make and invest the difference. If you do that with a long term horizon you’ll be wealthy.

The hard part is the patience and discipline required to spend less. That’s why it helps to set up a simple system that will invest your money every month instead of blowing it on useless purchases.

Something beautiful happens when you automate all of the steps away — you start to feel less anxious about your finances. At least that happened to me. When I know the system is running it means I’m moving towards my goals. Without me actively doing anything at all.

Once you decide on a goal and automatically transfer the required funds away from your bank account, the remaining funds in your account are yours to play with. You don’t have to worry about how much you want to save this month. That is already taken care off.

Give it a try. It takes less than two hours and may just change your life.