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I'm Rose. I'm 36 years old and I'm a millionaire with multiple income streams. But at one point in my life, I was shoplifting avocados from the grocery store. And I had so much debt that I thought I would never get out of it.
So when people ask me, "Rose, if you had to start all over again with absolutely nothing, what would you do?" I don't have to guess. I've lived it. So if I had to do it all over again today, here's exactly what I would do. I'm talking a specific month-by-month plan that works whether there's a recession or not, whether the market crashes or not.
Because here's the thing, starting with $0 is not an issue. The issue is that you don't have a plan and you're just winging it. That's why year after year, you find yourself in the exact same place financially. You need a plan. If you follow what I'm about to tell you, by the end of this year, you will have money saved. You will have income streams that didn't exist before, and you will be on a completely different life trajectory. Let's begin.
First off, this might surprise you, but if I were starting from zero, I wouldn't be scared. I wouldn't feel behind. I'd be excited. Why? Because starting with nothing gives you one massive advantage that people who already have a lot of money don't have, which is the fact that you don't have anything to lose. That means you can take risks, you can make mistakes and learn from them, and you can bounce back [music] fast. That's the advantage of starting from scratch.
So instead of feeling bad about yourself, which does nothing but demotivate you and just create more of what you don't want, reframe how you feel about your situation. This is the perfect time to start. You're in a great position to do this. You are not late. You are exactly where you need to be right now and from here you're going to move forward.
Step one is super simple. It's to get clarity. [music] My entire journey from broke to millionaire started right here. For years I was keeping my head in the sand. Didn't know how much I owed. Didn't know where all my money was going. I had no idea until one day I got so fed up with myself that I taped up a piece of paper on the wall in my living room, dug up everything that I owed and just added it all up. And it said minus $100,000. And the moment I looked at that number, as scary as it was, I knew things were going to change. I started tracking my numbers. And now I always know exactly where I stand financially.
It comes down to four numbers, two equations. Income, everything you are bringing in after taxes. Expenses, everything your income is being spent on, assets, everything you own. And liabilities, everything that you owe. Income minus expenses equals your surplus. It's the gap. This gap is your wealth-building ability. Having a surplus, creating this gap to be as wide as possible is the only way to get out of living hand-to-mouth and stop living paycheck to paycheck.
Because when you take this surplus to pay off your debt, in other words, lower your liabilities or to save and invest and increase your assets. What you do is you increase your net worth. Assets minus liabilities equals net worth. The more assets you build up, and the less liabilities you accumulate, the higher your net worth. Net worth measures how financially secure you really are. I don't care how much you make. There's people who make a million dollars and they're still living paycheck to paycheck. Because if you make a million but you spend a million, you have zero surplus, zero gap which to buy assets and pay off liabilities. So you have no net worth. So the moment that income source is gone, you get fired from your job. You've got nothing.
So from now on, I want you to make it a habit to get clear on these four numbers and two equations. What is your income and expenses? And what's the gap? And what are your assets and liabilities? And what is your net worth? Stop being scared of money. Stop avoiding your numbers. If it matters to you, you measure it. Keep your money top of mind because how can you improve something if you don't even know what your starting point is. So, getting clear on your numbers. That's the first step in the plan. Just block out 2 hours to do it on a Saturday afternoon. It doesn't take long. And to make it really easy for you, grab a copy of my financial freedom cheat sheet. It has all kinds of templates like budgeting templates, debt payoff trackers, and net worth trackers to help you start building that habit of tracking your numbers.
All right, step two. We are still in month one by the way because the first step shouldn't have taken you long at all. Step two is to start systematically brainwashing yourself with new inputs. What do I mean by this? You are where you are today because of the skills, beliefs, and habits that you had up till now. But the version of you that has $10,000, $100,000, a million dollars is not going to be the same version of you that has zero dollars today. The moment you acquire new skills, new habits, and new beliefs, that's when your finances change.
So my question to you is, what new inputs are you taking in to create this new version of yourself? Nothing's going to change if nothing changes. It's like a machine. If you input [music] X, you get Y. But if you input A, you get B. If you put in the beliefs and advice of poor people, you get broke. If you input the beliefs and advice of rich people, you get rich. It's literally that simple.
So if you don't like what you have, that's okay, 'cause you're in control. All you need to do is adjust the inputs. From now on, stop listening to broke people. Stop following people on social media that make you want to buy things or make you feel bad about yourself. And stop hanging out with people who inject fear and pessimism into your hopes and dreams. From now on, you need to protect your brain. Anything that you allow to enter your brain from now on needs to be a wealth-positive input.
My favorite way to do this is by listening to audiobooks. Use every spare minute you have, like when you're driving, washing dishes, or just getting your steps in, to listen to audiobooks like Think and Grow Rich, The Law of Attraction and Secrets of a Millionaire Mind. You have a lifetime of conditioning and negative money beliefs from childhood and from your past. So, you need to start counteracting that, creating new inputs to create a new financial reality. So, audiobooks are my favorite way to start brainwashing yourself with new inputs. I'll put links to my favorite ones in the description.
Okay, so by now you are clear on exactly where you stand financially and you're starting to reprogram your mind for wealth. Now you're ready for step three, which is to do sprints to hustle up $2,000 in [music] the shortest amount of time possible. A sprint, which is a strategy I talk about in my book at a zero, is a short focused 10-day [music] period where you cut out all non-essential spending in order to make major progress towards a financial goal.
So look at your credit card statement, your bank statement, every subscription, every habit that costs money, and look at every single place your money goes. If it's not absolutely necessary to function or keep the lights on, you cut it out for the next 10 days. Tell your friends you're saving money and start cooking every meal at home. Rice, chicken, meat, veggies, eggs. For $20 a day, you can eat super well. $20 is what most people spend on one lunch. Spotify, Netflix, YouTube Premium, gym membership, anything [music] that's bleeding $20 here or $50 there. Just for 10 days, you're going to deal with ads on the free version and you're going to work out for free at home.
The point is, you can do anything for 10 days, especially if you know it's going to put you on a completely different trajectory for your life. I once went to a 10-day silent meditation retreat and they took away your phone. You weren't allowed to read anything, watch anything, talk to anyone, or even make eye contact with people. And let me tell you, it was torture. But I was counting down the days, day 1, day 2, day 3. And just knowing that there was an end in sight made it actually doable. So if I can go without talking for 10 days, you can go without DoorDash for 10 days because when you finish this sprint, you will have accomplished three things.
First, you will have saved $2,000, which will get you out of survival mode. This is the first step in my financial waterfall that I share in my book. You'll also feel really accomplished. You're going to have this quick win under your belt, and that will give you so much motivation to do everything else you need to do next. Personal finance is not just about numbers. It's about feeling motivated enough. It's so behavioral. So, this is key.
And then thirdly, it completely resets your spending because after 10 days, you can go back and sign up for your Spotify, for your gym membership. You can start eating out again. But having that 10-day reset really makes you clear on what you can live without versus what you just got used to paying for but don't even really need. This is not about extreme frugality and spending less. After doing this sprint, you might find that you can extract the same amount of happiness spending $100 instead of $1,000. So, if you can do that, why wouldn't you? Because every dollar you don't spend is a dollar you can use to increase your income or your assets. More on that in a minute.
All right, step four. The next 3 months is for getting obsessed with one thing and one thing only, earning more money than you've ever earned before. That means finding the most valuable skill you have and selling it. Can you take photos? Offer photography services? Can you write? Offer copywriting? Can you code? Do freelance coding work? Can you communicate clearly? Offer AI prompt engineering services.
Before you say, "But Rose, I don't have any skills." Think of what would fall into each of these three circles. Things that you're good at, things that you love doing, and things that people pay really good money for. It takes a bit of reflection and brainstorming and maybe even asking trusted people around you for their opinion. But you will find that there are multiple things that you could put in each of these three circles. And whatever intersects all three is your sweet spot. And for this, since you are starting from zero, you want to lean more into what people will pay good money for. So if you have a hobby that you love doing, but it's not something that people would pay good money for, then just keep it as a hobby. You don't have to monetize everything.
On my financial journey, I knew I needed to find something that I could make a lot of money doing that I would also enjoy. So, while I loved dancing and I loved cooking and I loved doing a lot of different things, I also loved talking about finance and I knew that that's something that people could pay really good money for, especially compared to say opening a dance studio. And because I was broke and was thinking about how to make more money, I leaned into the one skill that intersected all three and would make me the most amount of money possible.
And don't be afraid to get creative. Think about combining skills. So, for example, you know how to do photography. That's a technical skill. But you're also really good with people. That's a soft skill. You can combine that to do portrait photography or wedding photography 'cause you need to know how to work with personalities to get people feeling comfortable on camera and get the good shots. Or you can take my example. I knew that I was really good at explaining complicated financial stuff. And I was also really good at encouraging people. So I combined that to start coaching people and teaching people about money on YouTube. When you combine things that makes you unique, that's when you can really start maximizing your earnings.
Remember the two equations, income minus expenses, assets minus liabilities. The idea is to sell your time at the highest possible rate so that you can bring in more income to increase the gap and then use that gap to buy more assets until one day your assets throw off enough income that you don't have to work anymore. At that point, your money works so that you don't have to. But until then, selling your time is how you make an income.
So that was months 3, four, and five. 3 months to make a focused effort to start earning more. Once you start earning more, you've got more money to work with. You've increased the gap. You can use this gap to increase your savings and investments or to pay off debt. Now, there's a lot of different financial goals and priorities competing for your attention, but here's the order in which to prioritize in order to reach financial freedom as fast as possible.
We already covered the first step, which is to save $2,000. Next, I want you to work on paying off all credit card debt, maxing out 401k employer match if you have it, and this is the most important part, saving a full six-month emergency fund. You should know exactly what you need to spend every single month in order to live and keep the lights on. We're not talking going out for lobster. Just what you need to live on monthly. Multiply that by six and that is your emergency fund. Take this six-month emergency fund, open up a high-yield savings account. I'll put links to my favorite ones below. And stash that money in there. It'll earn interest, which feels great. And you also get the security of knowing that no matter what, you've [music] got cash to cover you.
This is going to be months 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. That's 5 months [music] to do it. Make a focused effort because this is a game-changer. Once you have that amount of money stashed away in the bank, you get out of survival mode. Your ability to plan for the future goes from very, very short term, living paycheck to paycheck, month by month, to being able to make moves for the long term. And by the way, all these people are going to tell you, "Oh, you shouldn't have that much money sitting in the bank. You should invest it." Don't invest it. This is not to be touched. This money cannot fluctuate due to the market. It's not time to invest. Not yet. [music] That's coming later.
All right. Now, it's time for step six. We are now in month 11 and this is where we start to invest. [music] But it's not what you think. I don't want you to invest in the market yet. I want you to invest in your skill. Because yes, the stock market grows your money at an average of 10% per year. It's great. It compounds. Investing $1,000 now in the market is not going to change your life. Because $1,000 is still a very small amount of money to invest. But if you invest $1,000 into a course or certification that allows you to make $20,000 more per year and then you invest that additional $20,000 a year over 20 years, that little income increase becomes $1.2 million.
When you're starting with very little, there's nothing more powerful than investing and increasing your earnings because your earnings is what you use to then invest. And then that investing is what grows into wealth. If I'm making $50 an hour, I'd spend $1,000 on a training or certification that gets me to $75 an hour. No two-year graduate degrees that are way too expensive. They take too long and they don't immediately translate to higher pay. The math on graduate degrees just doesn't work. I'm talking sales training, coding boot camp, real estate license, project management certification. If you're a photographer, I'd invest $1,000 in upgrading your equipment so that you can book higher-end gigs. If you're a freelancer, a consultant, I would invest $1,000 in going to conferences, joining masterminds, and networking with people who are where you want to be. Every great money-making opportunity I've ever had came from knowing the right person at the right time. Anything that allows you to take that skill that you identified in step four and sell your time at an even higher rate.
Step seven, invest. So, now we are in the final stretch, month 12. By now, you've worked hard all year on improving your standing on these two equations and four numbers. Now, it's time [music] to invest. I'd start with index funds, which are basically one purchase that gives you instant access to tiny pieces of hundreds and thousands of different companies. It's [music] instant diversification without having to pick individual stocks. Start buying index funds every single month. Because of the compounding returns of the stock market, every little bit adds up and grows exponentially. At a 4% dividend yield, $6,000 invested generates $240 in passive dividend income every year. That's $20 a month. Doesn't sound like much, but wait till you see how good it feels when you take yourself out to lunch and you can pay for it with money you didn't have to work for.
And next month, you add another $500 to it. And next month, you add another $1,000 to it. And the month after that, another $1,000. By December, that $20 becomes $64 a month. And if you keep feeding it, that becomes $100 a month, $500 a month, $1,000 a month, $5,000 a month. If you follow this plan, in 12 months, you will not recognize yourself or your finances. And next year you'll move even faster because you've already spent this year building the foundation. Next year you can think even bigger, invest more, start that business, leave that job, and take more risks. So don't waste another year. Make this the year that puts you on a completely different life trajectory.
And if you want my step-by-step cheat sheet with templates and the exact actions to [music] take and accounts to open, grab my financial freedom cheat sheet. Link is below in the description. And if you want more real talk and coaching on money mindset, watch this video next. [music] Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Bye. [music] [music]