How to Become a Millionaire by Investing $5 a Day

I love saving money and I love investing money. That doesn’t mean I live a total frugal lifestyle. It just means that I weigh up the pros and cons of my purchasing decisions.

If I was preparing for a job interview and I was presented with an opportunity to buy a top of the range black tie for $100 versus an average tie that gets the job done for $20, I’d choose the $20 tie.
How to Become a Millionaire
Some of you are saying “of course you would choose the cheaper tie! Who wouldn’t?” While others of you are saying “are you serious? You have to look your best for a job interview!”

The thing is that difference of $80 actually gets me two and a half weeks closer to becoming a millionaire.

I believe that anyone in the western world today that is under the age of 30 is pretty much guaranteed to be a millionaire at some point in their life. Because of constant inflation of the dollar, being a millionaire is definitely not what it used to be. It’s just SO EASY to be a millionaire now.

In fact, I’m going to show you how to become a millionaire by saving and investing as little as $5 a day.

Here’s how.

How Investing Just $5 a Day Can Make You a Millionaire Faster Than You Think

Think about your daily expenditure. How much do you spend each day? How much do you pay for coffee? Lunch? Dinner? Snacks? Transport?

I know people that pay for 4 cups of coffee a day or more! That’s at least $10 in Australia (in fact, I honestly don’t know any coffee shops that do a coffee for only $2.50).

Now, what if I told you that you that if you just halved your coffee intake and instead, invested that extra $5, that you could be a millionaire in 32 years from now?

You might be thinking that 32 years from now is a long time. Well, if you’re 30, you’ll only be 62 and you will still have a long road ahead of you. Plus, how would an extra million dollars in retirement sound?

But not only are you a million dollars richer, I improved your health and wellbeing by making you cut down on your coffee intake each day :) That’s a double-whammy!

Now, this strategy is an aggressive strategy which provides consistent returns of 15% per annum. However, these kinds of returns are not uncommon for those savvy in the financial markets. This scenario also assumes that you don’t have any other wealth or investments other than just $5 a day. Pretty cool, right?

So, let’s take a more conservative approach.

What if you invested just $5 a day at 8% return?

  • After just 10 years, you’ll have $26,449
  • After just 20 years, you’ll have $83,539
  • After just 30 years, you’ll have $206,792
That’s a pretty simple way to make some great income isn’t it? Just by simply putting $5 a day into investments rather than consumables.

Strategic Ways to Save That $5 a Day

Now, you might say that “there’s no way I’m cutting down on $5 a day! I need it all!”

Ok, so if that’s the case, let me throw some other suggestions out to you:

  1. Reduce your rent by $35 a week. Try negotiating a cheaper deal with your landlord to save you that $35 a week or perhaps consider moving to a cheaper accommodation. A simple change in rent could mean you don’t even have to think about saving that extra $5 a day.
  2. Cut down on expensive meals. Do you really need to have that $50 meal every week or can you get by with sometimes having a $15 meal?
  3. Negotiate prices. So many things for sale can be negotiated. I recently purchased a new tyre for my car and negotiated it down from $165 to $125… that is the equivalent of 8 days of saving in just a 1 minute conversation! That means I could spoil myself with a coffee a day for over two weeks and still not feel guilty :)
  4. Buy a cheaper car. Do you really need a $35,000 car or would the $30,000 car be just as good? That $5,000 saving is the same as one and a half years’ worth of daily $5 savings.
  5. Get a cheaper haircut. Do you really need to pay $150 for a haircut? Crikey! It amazes me how people spend this much. You know what, I just get my family to cut my hair :)… it saves me about $400 a year and 80 days of savings (nearly 3 months!)
There are a million different things you could do to find that extra cash… perhaps that’s a post for another time.

The other alternative is to MAKE an extra $5 a day. And you know what, it’s REALLY NOT that hard to make an extra $5 a day. Perhaps you don’t even have to make a sale every day. Perhaps you just make one sale a year that is worth $1,825… if that’s the case, you’ve got your $5 a day covered! Pretty simple, don’t you think?

Why Becoming a Millionaire Won’t Take You 32 Years

The thing is, as you can see there are MULTIPLE ways to save and invest that $5 a day and they are all so SIMPLE to do. In fact, a lot of the decisions you make won’t reduce your quality of life AT ALL. It will in fact INCREASE your quality of life because you will develop a stronger sense of confidence and self-worth knowing that you are disciplined in investing, you’re setting yourself up for your future and you’re progressing towards a meaningful goal.

Imagine combining all of the elements above. Reducing your rent slightly, cutting down on expensive meals, negotiating prices, buying a cheaper car, getting a cheaper haircut. And we’re just getting started…

If you did all of that, do you think that over the course of a year you could average a saving of at LEAST $10 a day? That’s only $300 a month… It could change your life.

Over to You

The message is that the little things DO add up.

Do you have a budget?

Are you keeping track of your income and expenditure?

Where are you throwing money around and what opportunities are there for you to save $5 a day?