3 Surprising Tips to Retire with An Extra Million Dollars

Your money can work far harder than you can. The power of compound interest is totally mind-blowing… deceptively small adjustments can help you build massive wealth, allowing you to be at choice with what you do with your time, change your family’s future and support causes that you believe in.  

Ready to get your money working harder for you?  

Here are just a few of my hottest tips…

Tip #1: Put Your Lazy Assets to Work

If every dollar was an employee of your company… who has been hanging out by the water cooler and not earning their keep?

In this context, lazy assets are things you own that have monetary value that are generating low returns… or aren’t generating a return at all.

Maybe you have investments that aren’t performing well.  I’ve worked with many clients who once kept most of their money in cash because they were afraid to lose money, while inflation ate away at their purchasing power.

Or maybe you could sell personal property that isn’t bringing you joy and fulfillment and use the proceeds to invest. 

For example, one of my clients decided to sell an RV that he and his family no longer used. Another client decided to sell her $10,000 in designer purses to free up cash to invest.  And another sold a rental property that was underperforming.

What if you could put $205,000 in lazy assets to work at 8%?

That alone would turn into over a million in the next 20 years!

Tip #2: Plug the Money Leaks In Your Portfolio

When I work with financial coaching clients, I can typically spot 2-5% in money leaks in their portfolios right away, sometimes even more.  

For example, most Big Box advisor financial planning models have a certain percentage of your portfolio allocated to assets that are massively underperforming and leave your money exposed to big market crashes and corrections.

If you had a $500,000 portfolio earning 5% when it should have been earning 8%, by plugging this money leak, over the next 20 years your money would generate over a million dollars extra!

I particularly love this strategy because it doesn’t take a lot of time to implement.

Tip #3: Transfer the Money You “Save”

Have you ever gone to a grocery store and gotten a receipt that says “you saved” some amount of money?  Or gone shopping and bought a dress for 20% off?

Where is that money now?

I’m guessing it’s NOT sitting in your investment account or savings account so it didn’t really get saved… it just got spent on something else.

But what if you actually TRANSFERRED that money from your regular account into your investment account and got it working for you?

The average family of four in the United States spends $960 per month on groceries.  Statistically, you can save 30% on groceries by making a list and sticking to it, which would equate to $279 per month.  

What if you auto-transferred that amount into your IRA or brokerage account?

The average car payment in the United States is around $500 per month. What if, instead of financing a fancy new car, you bought a used car that you could purchase with cash and invested that money instead?  

Or what if you paid off your existing car loan, and started auto-transferring that same amount into investments so that you set yourself up to earn interest instead of paying it?

Transferring $1800 per month turns into over a million dollars at 8% in 20 years.

Depending on your unique situation, you could pick one of these strategies… or mix and match!