if you've ever wanted to earn a million dollar don't instead focus on the first 100K because 100K is all it takes for your net worth to explode today I'll share two reasons why this happens in four strategies to help you reach your first 100K as quickly as possible first the critical mass threshold think of your money like a nuclear bomb when the bomb is triggered it unleashes a continuous Chain Reaction tiny explosions one after the other leading to a big explosion investing money does basically the same thing earning returns every year compounding and accumulating over time which sounds great but there's just one problem you need to reach critical mass first which is the minimum amount of materials needed to achieve a self-sustaining chain reaction to explode anything below that amount and the Chain Reaction will just fizzle out but once critical mass is reached well boom in finance 100K is the critical mass anything less than that then the power of compound interest won't be as effective here's what I mean if you invest $115,000 a year in the S&P 500 and get an average annual return of 7% your net worth will reach 100K in 5.66 years but 85% of that total 100K amount is from your Direct Cash contributions which is the $15,000 that you contributed every year the remaining 15% is from the stock market and it's compounding returns but immediately after you pass that 100K critical mass threshold that's when things start to get interesting if you continue to invest 15K a year into the S&P 500 and continue that Assumption of 7% return you'll reach a net worth of 200k in 4.08 years 300K in 3.2 years 400k in 2.63 years and 500k in 2.3 years thanks to the power of critical mass you'll be able to reach an additional 1,00 milestone in shorter and shorter amounts of time once you're at a 900k net worth it'll take you only 1.27 years to reach 1 million and if we break down the composition of that 1 million only 38% of it is from your Direct Cash contributions but nearly 62% more than half of it is from the stock market its compounding returns which is why going from a net worth of 900k to 1 million is 4.45 time faster than it takes to go from zero to your first 100K next 100K is a number that breaks all barriers I still remember the first time I logged into my investment account and I saw my portfolio Crossing 100K it might sound silly but I was genuinely shocked at how emotional seeing this number made me and I know it's just money and numbers on the screen but for someone who didn't grow up with money that moment was everything a 2018 study found that many of our financial habits are formed by the time we're seven that means our feelings about money are largely influenced by how people around us talked about it or behaved around it I grew up seeing my parents working every single day including the weekends to provide for me and my siblings I attended one of the most overpopulated high schools in the US that was under staffed and underresourced for most of my life none of my friends had money everyone practically lived paycheck to paycheck so even the idea of becoming rich one day was like a farway dream something that was reserved for some really lucky people but not me according to Harvard Business review one of the first steps you need to achieve wealth is to change your mindset surrounding it if you don't believe you can become wealthy or that wealth is accessible to you or that you're even worthy of it then you will never take the proper steps to achieve it and so actually seeing that 100K number on my screen under my name broke all those mental barriers and limiting beliefs that I built up over the years it allowed me to start believing in myself because I knew if I could get here then I will definitely make it one day and if you don't have 100K net worth yet don't stress about it here are four strategies to help you reach your first 100K as quickly as possible first creatively live below your means and I want to emphasize the word creatively because a lot of financial advice tells you to deprive yourself don't buy this or don't buy that but I believe that's the wrong approach 90% of diets fail because the more you hear don't eat pineapple pizza the more you want pineapple pizza money should be a tool to build the life you want not take away from it one strategy I swear by to creatively live below my means is a pral principle or the 8020 rule which states that about 80% of your total expenses come from around 20% of your expense categories like housing transportation and food meaning it's way more effective and easier to reduce this 20% of your biggest expense categories that contribute to most of your spending cost than it is to reduce 80% of to smaller categories like buying IC coffee actively using the Paro principle really starts to unlock new ways and ideas and how you can live below your means so take some time to look through your expenses and figure out how you can increase the gap between your earnings and your expenses as much as possible next automate your finances think about all the money decisions you have to make every single week should you save more money did you remember to invest in real estate stocks or index funds what about that credit card debt did you remember to pay off that phone bill in the book The Paradox of choice it says that when people have a bunch of options and decisions most people will simply do nothing one of the biggest reasons to why people have trouble managing their money saving and paying off debt is because they believe personal finance is all about willpower that if they just try harder they'll save more money if they just stop spending money then they'll be debt-free but it doesn't work like that instead what you need to do is put your money on autopilot so you never need to think about it again here's what I do my income flows into my checking account and then automatically gets split up the first automation flows into a high yield savings account where I keep my six months of emergency fund the second automation flows into my second high yield savings account where I keep my saving goals like Vacations or down payments for a house the third automation goes into my investment accounts that automatically invest about 80 to 90% of it into index funds the fourth automation pays off all my credit cards in full on time every single time and I use my credit cards to pay for everyday expenses and bills studies showed that this helps you easily save 3.8 times more money because everything is on autopilot and you don't have to think about it anymore it's the same strategy that I've been using for years and has allowed me to finally control my money instead of it controlling me if automating your finances sound interesting to you I'm running a free challenge on July 1st where I'll show you step by step how to automate your money anyone can join but space is limited so secure your spot today I'll leave the link in the description and again it's completely free and you can win some great prizes next you need to increase your savings threshold because you can only save as much as you earn for instance if your salary is 4K a month and if you don't spend a single penny the max you could ever save is 4K a month which is your savings threshold and the only way to increase your savings threshold is by earning more money and the fastest way I found to do this is by prioritizing my active income Stream So I grew up thinking that I would get rewarded at work for just working hard keeping my head down and not asking for much but when I was actually kneee in Corporate America I realized that the people who made the most money were the people who weren't afraid to own their value and know how to sell that value to others and once I realized that I started playing the game and here's what I did so basically every year I would prepare for my performance review months in advance I kept this folder on my computer called wins where I stored all the wins Praises accomplishments and impact that I had on the company especially anything that I could quantify like if I worked on a project that generated the team $1 million or if I designed a new process that helped everyone finish a task 30% faster the purpose of the win folder is that so you can bring it with you to your next performance review so you can prove that you bring tangible value to the company and that's when you ask for the raise but keep in mind some of the biggest raises I experienced was when I joined a different company I sometimes saw a 40 to 50% pay bump which was significantly higher than if I stayed at that original company and just asked for a race but even if you keep getting raises just relying on your one active income stream to reach 100K net worth is going to take a very long time which leads me to my favorite way to increase how much money you earn and that's by exploring specific side hustles that play to your strength skills and natural advantages whether you believe it or not we all have natural advantages in something in our life what are you naturally better at than your friends and family for instance I'm good at Social Media Marketing I've been able to grow multiple accounts including this one I'm also good at cooking I love to try and recreate my favorite dishes from restaurants at home and I'm good at Finance because I have a degree in economics and I worked in finance for a few years but just because I'm good at these things doesn't mean I'm the best at any of these three skills far from it but all that matters is that I know more than the average person so let's use the cooking example if I were looking for a side hustle I could probably start an Airbnb experience and host group cooking classes in my apartment I can charge $90 to $150 per person which is still going right in New York City and even if only five people sign up every single week for my weekly classes I would make an extra $1,800 to $3,000 a month the first step for you is to figure out what you're good at so start brainstorming what you're better at than the average person are you good at soccer math drawing now think about how you can monetize your talent can you tutor others can you play competitively can you start a class but if you're like damn I'm not good at anything first chin up cuz I highly doubt that's true but if you really cannot think of anything then you need to learn desirable High income skills that someone is willing to pay you for there's copywriting social media marketing graphic design web design and more and the best part is you can learn all these skills online for free for instance I know Google offers a bunch of free courses trainings and certificates you can take a bunch of these digital marketing courses that teach you the basics of digital marketing and then you can apply for work on sites like upwork as you get more experience under your belt you can start earning more and even building your own digital marketing business which leads me to something something that you've got to start accepting and it's that even if you're trying your hardest to save 100K sometimes you still might feel like you're still not doing it enough and that might be because you don't know the six middle class habits that are keeping you broke click here to learn the six middleclass habits you need to stop doing immediately