10 simple steps to build wealth and retire early

https://levelupwithethanevans.substack.com/p/10-simple-steps-to-build-wealth-and

1. If you are not able to live on less than what you make, no amount of investment planning will help you.
2. The alternative to raising your income is cutting expenses.
3. With “extra” money after steps 1 and/or 2, first pay off any high-rate debt (bad debt).
4. Once bad debt is paid, build a cash cushion.
5. Now that you can weather a layoff or emergency, start investing.
6. If you have a 401k matching opportunity at your workplace, make this your first investment. Free money from your employer plus no taxes from your government. Too good a deal to miss.
7. Homes go up in value and you get to keep all the increase, but you get to buy them using someone else’s money and usually at a very low rate by having a mortgage. Buy a house you can afford in the nicest neighborhood with good schools. Then take care of it and wait. Rates are higher right now, but that will not last. They will go down as inflation retreats.
8. Mutual funds and anything managed by a bank will do worse than just buying an S&P Index Fund.
9. Hold stocks forever (more or less). Years. Decades. Day trading is a form of gambling. Sure, some people have made money. So have lottery winners.
10. Money accumulates very slowly at first, but the miracle of compound interest means that it explodes upward over time.

If you want to create generational wealth (e.g. $100,000,000+), the majority of the examples show that concentrated investments (big bets on one or a few things) beats a diversified portfolio. Popular examples are founders of startups that went public or early FAANG employees. Once that wealth is made, they move from wealth creation to wealth preservation (diversified portfolio).