How to be Millionaire in 2020 by Rajni Sehgal (best fiction novels .TXT) 📕

While a willingness to take risks is the hallmark of a millionaire, any action should not be taken randomly and without any considered thought. Rather, as in all good bets of life, an action should be based on a specific premise and not simply a haunch. Scout around for similar risks that were taken by others and know why they succeeded or failed. Research the methods adopted and the returns received down the road. Once you invest or

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take any decision after this elaborate exercise, you are still taking a risk but the chances of failure are substantially reduced.

Thomas Stanley in his book “The Millionaire Mind” investigated the behaviour, beliefs, and ideas that help millionaires make their fortunes. One thing he found common was that self-made millionaires inevitably took risks to build their wealth that others refuse to take. It is primarily a matter of the mindset of millionaires that makes them have the courage to conquer their fears. Successful investors carry out intensive research before taking a step but when they decide to pull the trigger there are no half-way measures. They may lose some but usually wind up winning more than they lose. The odds are always in their favour.

The ship mentioned at the beginning might be safe in the harbour but a moored ship goes nowhere. Similarly, aspiring millionaires who do not take risks ever reach their objectives.

Chapter 6

Don’t Whine About Your Mistakes, Learn from Them

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Learning from mistakes or failures and quickly moving on is the hallmark of millionaires. They do not have fear of failures and neither do they dwell long on them and whine about it. Millionaires continually try to analyse the reasons for any shortcomings and treat it as a learning experience not to be repeated. By minutely dissecting what worked and what did not in certain circumstances, they create the required business solutions that help them accumulate more wealth than the common person.

Treat mistakes as an inevitable stumbling block in your journey towards becoming a millionaire. It can be bad or even good if you can draw a lesson of not ever repeating it. But the simplest way to deal with it is to let it go. Don’t dwell long on it as it is unnecessary and a waste of time. Reflect briefly on what went wrong and ensure that there are no repetitions – EVER. As you climb up the ladder to be a millionaire, have dedicated teams to review failures and write detailed reports for your perusal.

One thing that you should never do is to indulge in a blame game for your mistakes. Don’t put the responsibility for the erosion of your wealth on the stock markets, recession, or anything else. You have made a mistake and it is only you that has to take the liability. Accept your failure, that’s it, and move on. The longer you stay at that point, the more opportunities you are missing out elsewhere.

Millionaires invariably experiment and come up with unique business solutions, regardless of making a few mistakes along the way. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos makes this case directly. “If you’re going to take bold bets, they’re going

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to be experiments. And if they’re experiments, you don’t know ahead of time if they’re going to work. Experiments are by their very nature prone to failure. But a few big successes compensate for dozens and dozens of things that didn’t work.”

So, stop whining about mistakes and work out a rehabilitation plan in case of any failures.

Here is how you can learn from your mistakes and get over them.

Re-evaluate Your Goals

If a mistake takes you off your goals, you have to re-evaluate them and take corrective measures. It might be necessary to shift goalposts too, if only temporarily.

Scrutinize Your Mistakes

When you realize that one of your actions has not given the desired result or might lead to a worse situation, make an in-depth analysis of what went wrong. You may have to take stringent corrective measures but most times, a simple change in direction can help.

Quantify the Discrepancy

Sometimes you can quantify what went wrong. It might be overly large investments made in a falling market or something similar. In such cases, you can specify the amounts lost as against the returns you expected from the investment. You have to make plans now to bridge the gap to make sure that there is no dent in your millions.

Categorize the mistake

Different mistakes call for different solutions. It might be an error of judgement, or over-ambition, or simply an issue beyond your direct control like a falling economy. Categorize your failures as it will make the task of creating a strategy to set things right easier if you know specifically what to deal with instead of generalizing a mistake.

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Self-introspect the Lessons to be learned

Don’t whine about the failures, instead introspect in-depth the reasons that led to them. The more thoroughly you give this exercise a thought the clearer to you will be the causes of your misjudgement or miscalculations. Draw your conclusions about the lessons that need to be learned and implemented so that they are not repeated again.

Take a broader look at the errors

Often the errors follow a specific pattern. Simply analyzing a single failure will not give you the broader picture of what is going off the mark. Combine the reasons for recent mistakes and if they have a trend, a single action will set the whole thing right.

A thing that you have to understand clearly is that for millionaires, no matter how hard they try, there are bound to be slipups along the way. The silver lining is that as an aspiring millionaire you can learn from your mistakes and ensure that they are not repeated through constructive measures. Set right the failures and move on to the next level of success.

Chapter 7

Generate two incomes — or more

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There is one facet that is common to almost all millionaires around the world and that is having two or more sources of income. It is not seen by them as merely a survival technique but as a means to build wealth. The thought of having multiple streams of income is like having a diversified investment portfolio. When one stock suffers the others make up for it. When none suffers, they will be roping in tons of money.

That millionaires have various sources of income is borne out by Tom Corley in his book “Rich Habits”, a result of his five-year study of the rich and the poor. He found that –

65% of millionaires had three sources of income

45% of millionaires had four streams of income

29% of millionaires had five or more sources of income

There are two components to earnings – active income and passive income. Active income is what you have when you start your climb to becoming a millionaire. It might be a job or a business that will act as a springboard for greater things to come. Passive income is what you get from investments from accruals of active income.

Another trait of millionaires is that they have their own business. So if you already have one, you have a definite edge. If you don’t, think of starting one. From being an employee turned business owner, the leap to a full-time business owner and then to a self-made millionaire will be quicker.

Start with Active Income

Start with a focus on active income to build your passive income. Be at your job till the time you have enough resources to generate passive income. You will be forced into

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active income when you are starting from scratch. But if you do not save from this stream your choices will be limited, you will be stagnant in life, and the dreams of becoming a millionaire will disappear into thin air.

When you consider savings, there are two ways to do so.

Initially, cutting expenses to the bare minimum and living a frugal life. This might be difficult when you have a family to support. Next, earning more through side businesses or side hustles and utilizing the income generated for further growth of passive income.

For many though, the two are not stand-alone actions, rather you can do both to quickly build up your savings. But the difference is that cutting expenses from active income (salary) is immediate while earning more to build resources is long-term.

Move on to Passive Income

When you are working towards making your millions, you have to fall back on passive income. This again falls into two categories.

The first is when you build something like your business that provides value and capture a part of the value to accumulate your stash. The next is when you lend money to someone (stocks and investments) who will build value on that and then pay you for that money.

In both cases, you will need savings. When you are setting up your business, you are sacrificing present active income (job) for future active and passive income. In the meanwhile, you will need a cushion to pay for your expenses. It can either be from your savings or a temporary job. When you lend money, you are lending your expenses. It can either be from your savings or a temporary job. When you lend money, you are lending

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your expenses. It can either be from your savings or a temporary job. When you lend money, you are lending your savings which will be put into sweat equity by someone to make it more for you.

An ideal example of starting with active income and moving to passive income is that of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Even though Facebook has over two billion users on its platform, it does not make the money that gives its owner billionaire status from the content or its user base. Instead, Mark has generated passive alternative sources of income from the same platform. In short, he has diversified keeping the core business intact.

Mark accrues his wealth from digital advertising which accounts for 85% of the total revenue of Facebook – Self-Serve Advertising, Targeted Advertisements, Messenger Ads, and Video ads. Data generation is another cash cow of Facebook.

Common Passive Income Options

In your quest to be a millionaire, what are the possible future streams of passive income that you can explore?

Dividends from investments and partnerships

Royalties or future inflows from any products you sell, license, or patent

Interest from loans made to individuals (private notes) or companies (bonds, notes)

Capital gains from the sale of investments

Rental income if you are into real estate

Business income which though considered active might be passive too if you have a strategy that generates income without direct active work.

The critical point here is that for being a millionaire, you HAVE to generate more than one income to hedge against any erosion of wealth in the future through unforeseen circumstances. It might be a sudden economic recession, a viral pandemic, or a natural calamity that hurts the financial markets. Only if you have multiple sources of income can you ensure that your millionaire status does not take a beating.

Chapter 8

Associate with millionaires

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It is natural for all upwardly-mobile aspiring millionaires to think that stashing wealth is all about making financial decisions, investments, savings, and anything connected with money. But there is another aspect that is really important if you want to be a millionaire – start hanging out with millionaires! The idea behind this is to surround yourself with the people whom you want to emulate, with those with whom you would want to share your vision.

You will ultimately have thought processes like those you associate with. When you align your mind with other creative and powerful ones, it will ensure that you grow exponentially towards your objective.

The essence of this principle is very well put forward by Steve Siebold, self-made millionaire and author of “How Rich People Think” for which he has interviewed almost 1,200 of the world’s wealthiest people.

“In most cases, your net worth mirrors the level of your