Over three years ago I read The Miracle Morning.
I loved the book and it got me to thinking about how much more productive I could have been if I had discovered it early in my life (which would be impossible since it was published at the end of 2012, but still.)
As I read it I began thinking what an impact a morning routine might have on a person’s finances. That’s when I wrote Can Getting Up Early Make You Wealthy?, tying together the ideas of a miracle morning and finances.
Well, I must have been onto something because in May 2018 the author of the book teamed up with a friend (who is wealthy) to write Miracle Morning Millionaires: What the Wealthy Do Before 8AM That Will Make You Rich. I got this book not too long ago and have been reading it over the past couple months.
And I’ve really been enjoying it. It’s a combination of the first book’s principles with added insights/suggestions designed to help readers become wealthy.
The main parts of the book are as follows:
- Part 1: The Miracle Morning — An explanation of why people should get up early, how they can create systems to be sure they’re successful (i.e. that they actually get up), and suggestions for what they should with that early morning time.
- Part 2: What Makes a Millionaire — The four key choices you’ll need to make to become a millionaire, how to set millionaire goals, and how to leverage your time, talents, and resources to grow your wealth.
- Part 3: Three Personal Growth Practices to Power Your Way to Wealth — Self-leadership, energy engineering, and unwavering focus. These three combine to make people wealthy.
Notice what’s missing? Yeah, financial principles. He doesn’t talk about earning more, saving for retirement, and the typical money topics.
The book is more about how you think and manage yourself to create a millionaire mentality and action plan. It’s less about typical personal finance topics and tactics. The author does talk about investing some, but generally it’s used to illustrate principles he’s teaching.
This is why I like the book — it covers money success from a different point-of-view, one I think most people would find helpful.
Since I’ve been enamored with the morning and wealth for some time, I added to what I’ve written here with a guest post for Wallet Hacks called Five Morning Money Habits to Help You Become Wealthy.
Today I have that post for your reading pleasure…
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Tim Ferriss says that “if you win the morning, you’ll win the day.”
It makes sense because no matter how the rest of your day goes, if you had a productive morning, you’ve already put points on the board. You’ve made progress on the things that matter most. The day is already a success. The rest is gravy.
Author Hal Elrod shares the same sentiments in The Miracle Morning.
His formula is simple:
- Get up early (or at least earlier than you do now)
- Make progress on the things most important to you (those items that otherwise often get pushed aside because they aren’t as urgent)
- Win the morning and thus win the day
Do this repeatedly and the successes build up over time. Even if your progress is minimal, small gains every day add up to big wins.
This process, of course, works for any number of goals: educational, family-related, physical fitness, and, of course, money goals.
I’ve been a Miracle Morning follower in one form or another for years, so today I’d like to share five morning habits you can implement (whether you get up early or not) to help you become wealthy.
1. Take time to be thankful.
After counseling hundreds of people in financial messes, I can say that much of the over-spending, hyper-consumerism in America today is fueled by a desire for happiness. People believe if they just buy this or that, they will be happy.
Hence we have a society of unhappy people trying to purchase happiness by buying themselves stuff. All they end up doing is putting themselves in debt.
The cure for this is thankfulness.
My experiences are supported by research. Here’s how Psychology Today describes the situation:
A study recently published in Psychological Science shows that an attitude of gratitude tempers impulsive urges. The authors don’t say why gratitude forestalls impulsiveness, but their findings make sense within the context of my own research. I’ve found that people typically purchase impulsively for one of two reasons: to counteract a sense of emptiness, boredom or a void in their lives; or because they are not fully focused while they’re making a purchase. Gratitude is the antidote to both.
By focusing on what you have instead of what you lack, you are less likely to over-spend. Doing so will allow you to eliminate one of the key money mistakes that’s keeping millions from accumulating wealth.
You may feel that you don’t have anything to be thankful for. Let me assure you that simply by living in America you do, especially when compared to the rest of the world.
Consider this video as a source for inspiration:
- Freedom of speech and movement
- Your health and the health of your loved ones
- Drinkable water inside your home
- Income above almost the entire rest of the world
- The money people in your life
- Safe communities
The list could go on and on.
Taking time to be thankful each morning won’t be time-consuming. Simply set aside a minute or two to ground your day in gratitude.
Whether you do this through journaling or meditation, it will start your day off on the right note.
2. Exercise and eat well.
What does this have to do with your finances?
Well, here are some facts on the relationship between health and wealth:
- Heading to the gym has been linked to higher pay — 7% more for men, 12% for women.
- A very healthy person pays $120k less in healthcare costs from age 65 to 85 than a less fit person.
- Studies show that midlife fitness leads not only to lower medical costs in retirement but also to bigger nest eggs. Healthier people have an extra $500k in net worth as they hit retirement age.
- Exercise helps protect you from numerous costly ailments, from diabetes to stroke, with lasting, sometimes unexpected benefits (like a better back).
- On average, obese workers earn 2.5% less than those with normal weights.
- Being overweight costs an extra $65k over 40 years.
- Between the cost of cigarettes and health-care-related costs, smoking can cost you over $1 million over the course of a lifetime.
A big portion of these results are related to exercising and eating well. So why not get those accomplished the first thing in the morning?
I’m not a morning person and used to dislike early exercise. Then I forced myself to do it. I felt great afterwards and seemed to have more energy throughout the day. In addition, I didn’t have to exercise at night (my previous option) when I was both tired and wanted to spend time with my family.
These days I’m at the gym by 7 am even though I’m retired. And I follow my workout with a healthy breakfast.
If you’re skeptical, just try it for 30 days. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy and can be done in the convenience of your home.
If you’re like the averages noted above, doing so will help you earn and save more, making a huge impact on your finances.
3. Educate yourself.
I believe you should be your own financial advisor.
The principles of becoming wealthy aren’t that difficult to understand. If you know them you can manage your own money and avoid being taken advantage of by unscrupulous people.
Here’s how easy it is: simply spend 15 minutes a day learning about money and you will be an expert in no time.
Better yet, this is one of the easiest tasks to accomplish each morning. You can read (books, blogs, websites, newspaper, magazines) or listen (audiobooks, podcasts) your way to expertise while also accomplishing something else:
- You can listen to a podcast while exercising.
- You can read a website while eating a good breakfast.
- You can listen to an audiobook while driving to work.
My preferred method during my work years was listening in the car (now it’s listening while walking). The thousands of miles I drove to and from work became a classroom for me, probably leaving me with more knowledge than I accumulated getting an MBA. Imagine what you could learn in a short period of time while doing something else. It’s really incredible if you think about it.
There are few free lunches in life, but this one allows you to grow your knowledge with zero incremental time investment.
4. Work on accomplishing your money goals.
Here is how Zen Habits recommends setting goals and accomplishing them:
- Set your goals.
- Set action tasks for each goal.
- Do the action tasks – one a day is ideal.
- Motivate yourself to stay focused.
- Review your goals often.
I’ve found this process to be quite effective as well.
On any given morning you could be doing any of these five steps and thus making tremendous financial progress.
There are almost a limitless number of goals you could consider, but let me suggest you break them down as follows:
- Earning — How much more do you want to earn and what steps can you take to get there? Maybe actions to grow your career or start a side hustle.
- Saving — What are your saving goals over the next year and what steps need to be taken to reach them? Consider creating a budget and using it to identify opportunities.
- Investing — What investments do you want to grow your savings exponentially over time? I prefer index funds but you may like other options.
- Other — What are other money-related accomplishments you want to make this year? Some popular ones include updating an estate plan, reviewing insurance for coverage and cost, and checking credit reports.
Whatever you want to accomplish, get the process down and work to make some progress every day.
5. Work on your career and/or side hustle.
I know, this tip could be covered in the above. But it’s so important that I wanted to separate it from the pack.
Of the three steps to becoming wealthy (earning, saving, and investing) the one that’s often the most neglected is earning.
There are a wide number of reasons why most people don’t focus on earning, but the truth is 1) if you build your career, you can make millions more and 2) if you have a side hustle you can retire much earlier.
These two facts alone make earning more worth its own time of focus each morning.
And don’t just take it from me. Millionaires back me up.
I’ve interviewed many millionaires and their stories are consistent — they spend a lot of effort growing their incomes.
And you should too.
So that’s my list of the five steps you should take every morning to grow your wealth. Anything you’d like to add or change?
eve says
Not easy making it a habit, but still its worth trying. thanks a lot for sharing
BSue says
If not married yet, make sure your future spouse has a similar money mindset or one that is complementary.
If already married already to a spouse with a similar money mindset, thank your lucky stars. Otherwise, do your best sales job to find a financial compromise you can both live with long term. After all, money is one of the top three reasons for divorce, and that will seriously derail any wealth plan.
KW says
I’d be interested in people’s thoughts about the difference between doing these things at night versus the morning. I’m a night person, I exercise at night, read at night, and work on finance/career stuff at night. What different benefits would I get if I did those things in the morning?
Apex says
I have some thoughts.
There is an entire spectrum of circadian rhythm difference in people. This is genetic and cannot be changed. You could divide the spectrum into 3 sections.
1. Morning Larks
2. Intermediates
3. Night Owls
Science has shown that the nigh owls are the smallest group, followed by morning larks with the majority of people in the intermediates. While intermediates could be pulled to one side or the other the people on the edges who are true morning larks or night owls cannot effectively transfer to the other side of the spectrum.
This is not a will power issue. This is a biology issue. Make a morning lark stay up late as a routine and do the majority of their productive work at night and they will be worthless walking dead zombies. The same is true of making night owls get up early and try to be start a productive routine in the morning.
Going to bed earlier doesn’t solve the problem either. Night people are not going to be productive at any time of the day after they first get up. If a night owl goes to bed at 8PM and gets up at 4AM – zombie. If they go to bed at 2AM and get up at 10AM – zombie. They need time to get their motor started and it takes a few hours to truly get going. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but they are truly not their best self for the first few hours they are up.
Night owls are slow starters but they finish the day with power and energy. Morning larks are fast and powerful starters but they finish the day with no energy left as they have used it already.
Both can be extremely successful.
In fact all the benefits I hear about from an early start seem just as powerful for me with a late finish.
1. Its quiet.
2. There is no one else around.
3. I am getting more done after dark than most other people got done all day.
The only benefit that I see in the morning routine is that it can set the pace for the day and help get it off to a good start. As a night owl since I am a strong finisher the getting off to a good start thing doesn’t seem to be that important for me. I just need to finish well.
As a result of these biological differences, I do not prescribe my routine for anyone else. You have to be true to who you are, who your circadian rhythms make you. I recognize that morning larks cannot be night owls. I have yet to meet a morning lark who recognizes the reverse about night owls.
Here is how this has worked for me personally.
1. In college I knew many people who would get up early in the morning to do their studying before test day because they just couldn’t stay up and focus on studying (morning lark out of gas). I always studied into the wee hours of the night to make sure I was not on the pillow until I knew I was ready. I had plenty of energy to just keep going no matter how long it took. If I went to bed early and got up early to study I would be in a fog and it would not be productive at all (night owl getting a slow start).
2. My work schedule was somewhat flexible. I often didn’t start my day until 9:00 and stayed until 6:00. I had the occasional early meeting that I would drag myself to, but I did my most productive work late in the afternoon. Mornings were not that productive for me, even with a late start.
3. I worked multiple side gigs and did all the work after hours often into the wee hours of the morning. I was more productive than at work because there was no one there to bother me. I could get 4 hours of uninterrupted work from 10pm – 2am. I don’t know how early one would have to get up to get in 4 hours of uninterrupted work in the morning before family started getting up.
It seems more people throughout history have been successful being early risers. Benjamin Franklin had a common saying about it 250 years ago. I don’t discount the power of that formula. I do reject the notion that it is universal and that it will make everyone better. I believe that for night owls, trying to follow an early morning routine will make them worse.
I also believe anyone who is a night owl or an intermediate can be just as productive with a night routine as a morning routine. Only the morning larks cannot make that work. However I think most people who are not night owls would be more successful with a morning routine than a night routine. If biology is not working against you it is just easier to ensure something happens if you do it first. That is why mornings can be “miracles” for many people. For true night owls however, the book would need a new title: “The Nightmare Morning”
Phillip says
I like simplicity. I think these bullets cover it:
– Set your goals.
– Set action tasks for each goal.
– Do the action tasks – one a day is ideal (note – break your big actions down into pieces and make sure you accomplish that piece for the day. If there are small goals, complete more than one. Track progress towards your big goals weekly/monthly/yearly).
– Motivate yourself to stay focused. (note – if this means being thankful, staying healthy for your family, etc., use these motivators. Figure out what makes you happy and what you want and make sure they align with the goals you set.)
– Review your goals often. (note – things change and you need to adjust as needed. Sometimes your initial goals are unrealistic and you need to adjust. Some get hit early and you set bigger ones.)
I’m an “Intermediate” per Apex’s definition. I don’t really start working till 9AM and I work from home most days. Never been an early riser and never needed to be. But I always maintain focused goals and make sure I hit my target steps towards my big goals by the end-of-day, EVERY DAY.
Apex says
This article pretty much sums up my point about night owls and energy peaks based on circadian rhythms (however, they use the terms chronotype and biological clock which I always thought was about having babies).
The money quote is the following: “Night owls aren’t owls by choice. They are bound to a delayed schedule by unavoidable DNA hard wiring. It’s not their conscious fault, but rather their genetic fate.”
https://www.inc.com/julian-hayes-ii/ben-franklins-early-to-bed-early-to-rise-mantra-is-a-myth-heres-what-you-should-do-instead.html
TF says
This post reminds me of MI151 where I found the recommendation for “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. A way to build your morning habits – and other healthy habits.
Ted says
BSue offers wisdom above
I have often have found that women get with men hoping to change them
Men get with women hoping they will never change.
BSue says
Either spouse may have to grab the checkbook for a while. A bounced check can cause a kneejerk reaction from folks with money minds. Heh!
Mex-Tex says
I fully support Point 1 above on Take Time to be Thankful, aka Gratefulness. Here is a link to the incredibly good TED talk on Gratefulness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtBsl3j0YRQ. It is extremely popular (over 2 million views), with subtitles in 38 languages, and lasts 14 minutes. Watch and you will get the top ideas on how to be grateful and why it will make you happy. Speaker is a Austrian benedictine monk who works extensively with Buddhists and is practical and inspiring.
Mark says
If you want to start working out from home as part of your morning ritual, Kat Musni is about as much fun as you can have while sweating. She has been making workout videos for years and has over 400 of them grouped by type in playlists with everything from Beginners to Insane HIIT. When I need a change in my exercise plan I keep going back to Kat’s Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP0YQTklvNoPfV6fPZH_ZjQ
Kat was recently invited to American Ninja Warrior tryouts and it has been fun watching clips on Facebook as she trains very differently for those challenges!
Enjoy!