How I Built $700k In Just 10 Minutes/Day

"To become financially independent you must turn part of your income into capital; turn capital into enterprise; turn enterprise into profit; turn profit into investment; and turn investment into financial independence." - Jim Rohn

"If you want to be financially-free, you need to become a different person than you are today and let go of whatever has held you back in the past." - Robert Kiyosaki

Don’t Worry, Your Eyes Are Fine

Yes, you read that right, this 10 minute daily personal finance routine helped me to build an over $700k net worth over the course of 7.5 years.

Now obviously there’s a little more process to the story, but this 10 minute routine was one of the bedrocks of my entire financial strategy for almost the past decade and it has paid HUGE dividends.

In today’s video post, I’m going to unpack my 10-minute daily personal finance routine that helped me go from a negative $174,000 net worth to over a $700,000 net worth in just 7.5 years.

And trust me, I’m NOT the smartest guy in the room. I just figured out a simple process that works 100% AND I want to share it with you.

Let’s get into it...

Hey friend, it’s Brad Long here with ZeroDebtCoach where we help 5 and 6 figure corporate burnouts escape their nightmare by teaching them how to effectively: 1) organize and optimize their financial lives, 2) eliminate debt and 3) accelerate toward financial independence by starting and growing an online business.

What It Takes To Win

Winning with money takes discipline. It takes strategy. It takes tactics. It takes determination. It doesn’t just happen, in the way that taking a nap happens...

Now depending on where you are with YOUR money, all of that may sound daunting to you. It may sound incredibly complex (i.e. “discipline, strategy, tactics”), but I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be incredibly complex.

In fact, I’ll go as far as to say it can’t ever be “too complex” IF you EVER want to actually win with your money.

No, it actually has to be broken down into small, bite-sized pieces that are digestible, repeatable and hopefully FUN enough to keep you coming back for more!!

That’s what we’re going to do today, have some FUN, AND we’re going to get you a new skill that will serve you well for the rest of your financial life.

Two Important Tools I Use

Okay, there are two tools that I use for my 10 minute daily routine. You can use any tools you like, but these are the two that have worked for me and that have helped me to “externalize” all the daily financial “minutiae” so that I can free my brain up toward more creative ways to increase income and decrease expenses.

Like I said earlier, this is the precise routine that helped me go from a negative $174,000 net worth to over a $700,000 net worth in just 7.5 years.

Tool #1: Personal Capital

As a person who has over 30 different financial accounts to monitor, I LOVE Personal Capital!

Why? Because it allows me with one username and password to login into a dashboard so that I can see the status of ALL of my accounts in one location AND to be able to drill down to the transaction level.

Now, if I were to log into every one of those accounts on a daily basis, that easily take over an hour and, I just don’t have that kind of time.

This tool helps me to login in and see all of my financial accounts at a 30,000 foot view, drill down maybe my most recent individual transactions and really give me an overall sense of where I am financially.

As a matter of fact, by using Personal Capital on a daily basis for over the past 6 years, I have twice been able to detect and respond to fraudulent transactions in a timely manner and have the situations resolved quickly. 

Personal Capital has been a HUGE asset and lifesaver in all of those ways. 

OH! And I almost forgot to mention, it’s 100% Free! There’s a link below for you to sign up and give it a whirl for yourself.

You can sign up for a 100% free account here.

Tool #2: YNAB (You Need A Budget)

Budgeting is THE most important tool in your arsenal if you ever want to win with money, period, hands down, 100% true.

It’s proven to be true for me personally ($143k paid off and $700k+ net worth built) as well as the 100s of financial coaching students we’ve taught over the year.

All of the most successful ones say exactly the same thing: “it would not have been possible for me to get control of my money and get out of debt without being on a budget and diligently tracking my expenses”.

Why YNAB?

If you’ve hung around this platform for ANY amount of time you’ll know I LOVE YNAB!!

Why? Because I believe it’s better than ANY of the other budgeting platforms out there, especially for doing a “zero based budget” like I recommend and I’ve tried almost ALL of them (i.e. “Every Dollar, Mint, Excel, etc.).

YNAB makes many of the things that are hard about budgeting super easy. So things like income and expense tracking, moving money around to different categories and most importantly, maintaining a zero based budget where absolutely every unit of currency has a name and a job to do.

If you’re not using YNAB, I have access to a 34 day free trial. The link is below to access the trial. You get a free month if you wind up signing up.

Go try YNAB.

The Whole Point Of Using “Tools”

Now, the overarching point of using tools is for you to get the details out of your brain. The tools, whichever one you use, are meant to be your external brain. 

David Allen does a great job of explaining this "external brain" in productivity in his book, "Getting Things Done".

David Allen “Getting Things Done”

Now, if you’re multitasking I want you to come back to me for a minute because what I’m going to talk about next is SUPER important.

Every. Single. Day.

If you want to get control of your finances, you must be looking at your numbers every single day. If you’re not looking at your numbers every day, you’re not going to maximize your potential.

Let me explain that a little more.

Looking at your numbers every day is pivotally important PARTICULARLY if you’re in more of a crisis financial posture like:

• You’re living paycheck to paycheck.
• Can’t pay all of your bills.
• Struggling to address and pay off debt.

Or maybe you’re even in a more proactive posture like:

• Close to the end of debt elimination, but you’re in an arm wrestling match with your larger debts like car loans and student loans for example.
• Finished eliminating debt and working on a fully funded emergency fund, but afraid you might “backslide” into debt.
• You’ve eliminated debt, have a huge emergency fund and you’re in an investment posture and laser focused on your next financial plateau which may include FIRE (financial independence retire early).

In other words, no matter where you are on your financial journey, I would argue that you should be looking at your numbers every day.

Why? Because there’s a subtle gamification that starts happening in the process. Your brain starts to engage your situation with much more creativity and much more forcefulness, especially when you start reaching some of your goals.

I’ve seen this happen in real time over the past decade with almost 100% of my private 1:1 financial coaching students, so I can attest that it works big time!

Call To Action 

You know I’m all about calling you to take immediate action, right? So, here’s what I want you to do.

1. If you haven’t already go ahead and give Personal Capital a try.

It is an amazing and free platform that will allow for you to do a daily check in on all of your financial accounts with just one login.

Here's the the link to sign up for Personal Capital.

2. If you’re looking for an amazing budgeting software I (and almost 100% of my students) have been using for over 6 years), sign up for a 34-day free trial of YNAB.

Again, it is an amazing platform and will help you more easily track your budget and expenses on a daily basis.

Here's the link to sign up for YNAB.

Struggling Or Feeling Alone?

Join Our Private FB Group: Zero Debt Tribe

Now, if this decision process is something you struggle with and you constantly feel isolated about, I’ve got some great news for you and it’s free.

Our private Facebook group, ZeroDebtTribe. It’s a group of like minded people that are all somewhere along this P2P/debt-elimination/on their way to FI continuum. So click the image above and apply to join us. :)

How can ZeroDebtCoach help you? 4 ways...

1. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and click the notifications bell to make sure you get our new videos every week. 

2. Download one of our free personal finance guides. You’ll learn some of the exact strategies I teach my private coaching students on how to organize and optimize their finances, obliterate debt and move on to financial independence by starting and growing online businesses.

3. If you’re looking for a community of motivated and like-minded people, go ahead and get on the waitlist to join our private financial coaching community. We only open it for new students a couple of times a year, so make sure to get on the waitlist.

4. If you need some help right now because you’ve got a burning issue, you need a problem solved, you want to talk through a complex situation, click on the button below.

All that said, let's keep on building your financial acumen and make this your best year yet!

Thanks so much for reading and we’ll see you in the next video post!

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