Here’s a simple tip to begin your wealth-building journey today
Building wealth is rarely an easy task. It requires a high level of commitment to start the process and the discipline to remain on track every single day.
If you can maintain that consistency over the years, your savings and investments will grow through the power of compounding, according to <a Neal.
“62% of people are living paycheck to paycheck, and I do not think it’s because of income. It’s just because of the lack of <a t get when they were younger," O'Neal said on the Power Players With Brian Sozzi podcast (see video above).
O’Neal is the bestselling author of “Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck.” He suggests that creating a financial margin is a practical way to start building wealth.
“I believe your greatest wealth-building tool is margin,” he said. “It’s not your income. It is margin. And margin is simply, what if I have $5,000 coming in? If my expenses are at $4,000, that means I have $1,000 in margin. But if I got $5,000 coming in and I got $6,000 going out, that means I’m negative $1,000. Now I can’t do anything but borrow money, put it on a credit card, or borrow from friends.”
The number of households struggling to live paycheck to paycheck remains a significant issue throughout the United States.
According to the latest US Census Bureau data, approximately 34.5 million Americans—roughly 10.2% of the population—live below the official poverty threshold. That benchmark is set at approximately $33,000 for a family of four.
<a Neal discusses this challenge based on his own personal history; early in his career, he actually lived out of his vehicle in a Walmart parking lot.
However, by maintaining steady discipline regarding his savings and investments—combined with a significant amount of hard work—he was able to transform his financial situation completely.
“People are not getting ahead,” O’Neal said. “And they can’t get ahead because no one is really giving them the strategy. A lot of us are getting our information from TikTok, from Instagram, from people who are not accredited in this field and do not understand the true essence of money. And that is one of the things that I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t in that category.”
