If you don’t want to be like everyone else, broke, stressed, and stuck on a hamster wheel, focus on making your first 100k. As someone who grew up broke and is now a self-made multi-millionaire, I can tell you that the first 100k was the hardest to reach. But once I did, everything else changed. So in this video, I’m giving you an eight-step roadmap to your first 100k. So if I had to start from zero, the very first thing I’d do is eliminate everything that numbs you. And let me explain. So ask yourself, right? What is motivating you to reach 100k? Is it your toxic job? Do you want to provide for your family? Or are you just tired of being broke? Now, all of these were my reasons, too. But whatever it is for you, I need you to marinate with that pain, right? And use that pain as a superpower so that you can stay focused and keep on pushing on this roadmap. So I hated working in corporate America. Super toxic coworkers, had to work 12-13 hour days, and the pain from that made me want to make a lot of money and be my own boss. And so TikTok and YouTube’s algorithm, it knew that, right? So it fed me a lot of content about making money and side hustles. And every time I watched these videos, right? I felt good about myself, even though I didn’t actually do anything. Watching people talk about success or how to make money, that alone temporarily numbed the pain and the drive that I had to make a lot of money. And this sounds weird, but without the pain, right? Without the drive, I was more willing to accept where I was, which caused me to push less and to slow down on my path to 100k. And the only way to stay focused is by subtraction, right? Not addition. Meaning you need to get rid of all the noise, everything that distracts you or slows you down on this path. The reason is being in this constant state and this drive, right? That’s what’s going to make the next step and all the other steps a lot easier. All right, so the next step is to cut three very specific types of expenses for two reasons. Number one is this is going to allow you to take on more risk, and number two, you’re going to have more money to deploy later on to build passive income. And we’ll talk more about that later. Now, you’re not going to hear anyone else say this, but I don’t want you to stop buying the little things that make you happy. An example, iced coffee. The path to 100k is long and it’s going to require work, right? And you’re not going to get there by cutting out all the little expenses that make you happy. Think about it, right? The more miserable you are, the more likely you are to give up doing whatever is making you miserable. So, my recommendation is following the Pareto principle to cut out very specific expenses. All right, so the principle basically states that 80%of outcomes come from 20%of inputs. So, in other words, you want to focus on the few expenses, right? The 20%that takes up the most amount of your paycheck, right? So, for most people, this would be housing, your transportation, and your food. Starting with housing, and I’m saying this as someone who went through this. So, after college, right? I chose to live at home and commute 2 to 3 hours round trip every day for years in order to save money. My coworkers, they didn’t want to live at home with their parents because it wasn’t cool. So, they rented out luxury apartments that were pretty much walking distance to work. If you can’t live at home, get some roommates, all right? You want to minimize your housing expenses for as long as you can. Next is transportation. Now, depending on where you live, you will have to have a car to get around. So, ideally you have a used car that’s fully paid off. Otherwise, look into carpooling or public transportation. Next is food. So, I used to buy a lot of food in bulk from Costco. I would meal prep on Sundays for the entire week, and my lunch came out to be like $2 to $3 compared to my coworkers who were paying $18 to get salads from Sweetgreen. The point is to stack up your cash flow as much as you can because even though you’re working and you’re making money, you’re probably spending most of it right now. Later on, we’re going to use this cash flow to increase your active and passive income. But, real quick, I built a free 100k roadmap that breaks out exactly what to do over the next 7 days to set your finances up. This is the exact process that got me to my first 100k and thousands of people have already used it, so I know it works. So, whether you’re starting from zero or if you’ve already got some savings going, this is my gift to you. It’s completely free. Link is in the description or go to vincentchan.co/roadmap. All right, the third step is to apply the 44 framework. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression before that time is money. Meaning, if you want to increase your money, you have to increase your time. Now, many people are going to immediately point to their 9-5 job, right? Thinking that this is what is taking up all of their time and it’s what’s preventing you from building wealth. But, the reality is it’s not your job’s fault, right? Everyone I know built their wealth while working a full-time job. I built this YouTube channel while working 12 to 13-hour days in corporate America. So, disconnect the idea that your job is the problem. Instead, let’s look at your schedule. All right, so when I worked a 9-5, technically mine was like an 8-9 or 10 or whatever, but let’s just go with the standard 9-5, all right? If we follow the 44 framework, that means that you have two blocks of 4 hours that are currently unaccounted for. Your 5-9 in the morning and your 5-9 in the evening. Now, you can choose to unlock those 4 hours by waking up earlier or by sleeping later or unlock 8 hours by doing both. This is what I personally did for about a year, right? I did both, including also working on the weekends. Um, but I’m going to be straight up, this is going to suck and you are going to definitely need the pain that we talked about earlier to actually push through this. Once you’ve identified your chunk of time, just hold on to that. We’re going to come back to it later on. Now, the fourth step is to focus on your 9-5 job. Now, I know everyone wants passive income immediately, right? But, the truth is you can only build passive income if you have enough money coming in from active income first, right? So, that’s your 9-5 job. And then you use some of that money to build that passive income stream. The thing you need to know that it’s pretty common for employers to pay their workers the least amount of money possible where it’s just enough that they don’t quit. Like, how many people do you know that haven’t gotten a raise in the past few years, right? Or if they have, it’s like a 3%raise, which is less than the rate of inflation. So, essentially you are getting paid less than you did the prior year. So, here I recommend two things, all right? Number one is have the conversation with your boss. Find out what similar roles are paying with Glassdoor or Indeed. And then when you have the conversation, come in with a folder of all your accomplishments when you ask for the raise. The worst your manager can say is no, and if they do, you can consider job hopping for either more money, a new title, more responsibility, or a growth opportunity. Ideally, all of that. These conversations are never easy, and it’s something that I struggled with in the very beginning as well. But if you think about it, right? Having this 15-minute or 30 minutes of uncomfortable conversation, that could be worth tens of thousands of dollars to you in the form of a raise. All right. Now, step five is to build another active income stream with the chunk of time that you identified earlier. And this is where things start to tie together, right? So, in business, you essentially get rewarded based on the risk that you take on. The riskier something is that you got to do, the more money you’re going to make. And you’re not going to be able to take on risk if you don’t have any time, if you don’t have any money, or if your expenses are really high, which is why we focused on saving time and cutting the expenses in the beginning. The goal here is to increase the amount of money that we can deploy later on to build our passive income. All right. So, in that chunk of time that you’ve identified, this is what you’re going to start doing, okay? And if you only remember one thing from this video, let it be this. You see, the way most people look into building another income stream is they come up with a business idea or a side hustle, and then they try to fit themselves around that. But the way to make it sustainable and make the most amount of money is to find a side hustle that fits around them. The easiest way to find out what that means specifically for you is grab a piece of paper and draw out three circles in a Venn diagram. In the first circle, write down the things that you do for fun. So, for me, I’m going to put down eating new foods, video games, taking multi-day hikes, home DIY projects, making videos, and telling stories. Now, in the second circle, write down everything that you are good at, right? So, for me, it’s personal finance, um cooking Asian food, uh Excel or Google spreadsheets. Put as much as you can here, um and then in the third circle, write down things that people will generally pay you money for. So, I’m going to put down consulting, right? Teaching or marketing and data analysis. The mistake that a lot of people make here is that they only look at one or two of these circles and then they think about a side hustle or business to start. For example, I love to eat and one of the first types of content I ever made was an ASMR video eating channel, right? And in the beginning, I absolutely loved it, but I wasn’t able to monetize that at all. So, I ended up hating that entire thing cuz I was spending hours doing this work, but I wasn’t making any money. In other words, if you have something that you love doing, but it’s not something that people will pay you money for, it’s fine. Just keep it as a hobby, right? You don’t have everything you like, which is why we want to focus on this area that overlaps, right? This is what I call the profit zone, where all three circles intersect. So, let’s say we have Excel and data analysis, right? So, these are what I call technical skills, um but we also have storytelling and socializing and video and stuff like that, right? That’s what I would call more of a soft skill. We can stack these skills up and be a data consultant, right? To help businesses or people make decisions based on data. Because this role requires one, you need to understand the numbers and number two, you need to be able to present a way that people can understand. Or what I’m doing right now, right? I like making videos, right? I’m good at personal finance and I’m good at teaching complicated financial topics. So, I started teaching people about money on YouTube. Stacking the right skills is what’s going to make you more unique in the value that you provide, which will allow you to be more consistent with what you’re doing and make more money over the long term. But finding your profit zone is only half the battle, right? So, I always see people get really excited about starting a business, right? 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Because there’s only so many jobs and and gigs that you can do in one week. And one of the lowest effort ways to build wealth and generate passive income is by investing in the stock market. Let’s say we can only invest 20 bucks a day, and we’ll use the S&P 500 as an example, um which has had an average return of 10%since the 1950s. If you invest just $20 a day, you would reach 100k in about 8 to 9 years. And if you want to get there even faster, cut more expenses, increase your income, and invest more money. If you want to start investing, the first thing is to decide how much of your income you’re actually going to invest every month. And you can start really small here, even $5 works. The next step is to decide what to invest in. The easiest for beginners is with index funds and ETFs. And I personally made a lot of money from simple long-term index fund investing, and it’s safe and it’s low maintenance. There are a ton of options out there, but again, the most popular one is the S&P 500, which includes the top 500 largest companies in the US, all packed into one investment. You can invest with whatever investing app you want. The main thing you want to look out for is that it offers fractional investing, which means that you can invest with as little as $5. I made an entire video on how to invest for beginners over here. I do a full walk-through step-by-step. I’ll also leave a link down below if you’re interested. All right, so the next step, and probably the most underrated one, is to avoid falling for lifestyle inflation. I have a friend who literally just graduated law school like a month or 2 months ago, and she has a 250k offer already in hand. She’s studying for the bar exam right now and doesn’t start working until October. But she already bought a brand new BMW and is already looking to move into a penthouse apartment. Now, some of you might be like, “Okay, she’s fine, right? She’s making multiple six figures.” But here’s the problem. Let’s take Benita and David. Both increased their incomes dramatically, right, into their late 20s, right? Benita goes from making 60k at 25 to 120k at 30. Same thing for David. But Benita kept living like he made 60k, and he was investing the rest. On the other hand, David started spending more money to match his 120k salary, right? A bigger apartment, a nicer car, etc. By the time they’re 40, right? Benita already has hundreds of thousands of dollars invested. David might not have anything invested, or worse, he has to pay all this new debt off from his fancy lifestyle. It might not seem like a big difference right now, right, in their 20s or early 30s, but in years, right, in 10 years, that is the difference between having to work until 65, 75, 85, or retiring early. Now, I’m not saying to live like a monk. I want you to enjoy your life, but you can set up a rule for yourself. So, for example, um my rule was whenever I got a raise or a bonus, I only increased the cost of my living or my life at most 10 or 20%of that raise. Everything else, I funneled that money back into my investments, my retirement accounts, um into my business, or into education. Remember, the goal here is to get to 100k as quickly as possible, right? You are going to need to sacrifice some luxuries in life now for a bigger reward later. It ultimately boils down to do you want to be rich, or do you want to look rich? Now, remember what I said in the beginning, right? Even though I have multiple seven figures now, it was reaching that first 100k that made the biggest difference and was the one that changed my life. And the reason for that is because of the critical mass theory. I want you to imagine rolling a snowball down a very snowy hill, right? When you roll it, it’s going to pick up more snow, it’s going to get bigger, it’s going to get faster, but you’re not going to actually notice this until it picks up enough snow first to reach critical mass. In finance, 100k is that initial critical mass. And here’s what I mean. If you invest 15k a year in the S&P 500 and assume a 10%annual return, right? Your net worth, you will have 100k in 5.36 years. However, 80%of that total 100k came directly from your cash contributions, right? Your active income. It’s that 15k that you originally contributed every year. And it’s only the other 20%that came from investing in the stock market. But once you pass that 100k critical mass threshold, this is when things start to get interesting, right? If you continue to invest 15k a year, you’re going to reach a net worth of 200k in 3.53 years. Then you’ll reach 300k in 2.64 years, 400k in 2.11 years, and 500k in 1.75 years. So, you can see, right? The amount of time it requires you to reach an additional 100k financial milestone gets smaller and smaller. Once you’re at a 900k net worth, it’s only going to take you 0.95 years to reach 1 million. And now, if we look at what makes up the total $1 million, right? 32%comes from your direct cash contributions or your active income, whereas 68%, right? Almost 70%of that is coming from the stock market alone, which is why going from a net worth of 900k to 1 million is nearly six times faster than it takes to go from zero to 100k. That’s why it’s so important to do everything you can to reach your first 100k, right? And the biggest lever to get there is by increasing your active income and building multiple ones. And that’s because if you think about your income streams like a chair, right? If you only rely on one, your 9-5 job, that is a chair with one leg. That one leg is holding up your entire financial life, right? If you lose your job, you get sick, whatever, then that leg breaks. And then there’s nothing else holding up your chair, which will impact the rest of your financial goals downstream, significantly delaying it. But if you have additional streams of income, right, whether that’s from a side hustle or business or passive income from your investments, right? You are essentially adding more legs to this chair. And the more you can add, the stronger the chair becomes. And even if you lose your job, right, one leg falls off or breaks, you still have the other legs. That’s important. Now, the single most important reason that the 100K changed my life is that that is when I realized my money started working harder than me. And it was also when I realized that I was able to start thinking bigger, right, start thinking long-term. And that’s what I’m trying to help you unlock, because I’m sure you have even bigger financial dreams than a 100K, but you cannot get to 1 million, 2 million, or more until you pass the 100K milestone. And that leads me to something that you’ve got to start accepting. And it’s that even if you were trying your absolute hardest to get a 100K, sometimes you might still feel like you’re not doing enough. And that might be because you don’t know all the financial accounts you actually need and how to use each one the right way to build wealth.