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From Broke Grad to Multimillionaire

9 Ways to Get There Faster

An Excerpt from Automatic Wealth for Grads ... and Anyone Else Just Starting Out

To earn significantly higher raises than the average person, you must perform at a significantly higher level than your coworkers. "So long as your work performance is ordinary, you can't expect anything more than an ordinary salary," Masterson says. "But if you change your work habits and contribute substantially more than your fellow workers, you can rightly expect to be paid substantially more than they are getting." You might think that sounds like it is easier said than done, but it actually is easy to do. By investing 15 percent of your income starting with your first paycheck, and getting slightly higher than average raises, you can get wealthy quickly and very, very wealthy by the time your friends and colleagues start to think about planning for retirement. Sharing an apartment won't be like sharing your cramped dorm room in college. You'll have a lot more of your own personal space, and you shouldn't have a problem avoiding the need for bunk beds. Assuming that you start out at around $30,000 a year, it is important that you spend no more than around $750 in rent per month. "Minimizing your living expenses will make a big difference in helping you to accumulate wealth," Masterson says.

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