How to Spend like a Top Entrepreneur to Make Money

The article below may contain affiliate links from which I may receive some compensation at no extra cost to you. These commissions help keep the site going and can help you on your financial journey. Please read my Disclosure for more info.

Last Updated on July 26, 2021 by Tyler Clark

If you’ve read about millionaires at any length, you’ve probably learned they always “Spend below their means”. Or that they drive cheap cars and never spend any money and that’s why they’re rich. This can paint the picture that they’re super tight with money and live very reserved lives scrimping and saving their way to the top.

Makes sense right?

Don’t spend your money and you’ll inevitably have more money. Run a super tight business and save every penny and buy an old car and live in a shoe box.

So why wasn’t I seeing that? I was seeing people with major overhead, hundreds of employees and big spending. These people weren’t saving, they were spending to make their millions.

Save Like Scrooge to Get Rich?

I used to think of Scrooge and wealthy misers when it came to millionaires. I had this whole mentality of a tight pocketed, old grumpy bugger in mind. Basically, I was visualizing someone who never spent a single dime. The millionaires I worked with weren’t like this.

Instead, the millionaires I trained were good with money. When it was time to spend, they would spend. When it was time to borrow, they would borrow and when it was time to save, they saved. They were all good with using money effectively.

Nobody was really saving all their money.

Do Millionaires Ever Save Money?

I’m a natural saver and I think that hurts me a bit in business. I didn’t have much to spend on typically but, I think just having that saving mentality hurt me a bit in business. I would have grown other businesses faster had I spent more. If I made investments in the stock market and or real estate, they also would’ve far outpaced my savings had I held them until now. So this mentality had an affect on both my business and personal livelihood.

I wouldn’t classify the millionaires as savers like I was. As we said earlier, they were more strategic with their money. This doesn’t mean they didn’t save some of it, it just meant they saved it in different ways.

Millionaires didn’t really “save” money. They used their money. They may have saved money by not over investing in a weak part of their business or putting more money into a growing area but, that’s not really saving like I saved. It wasn’t saving money in the bank, it was saving money in parts their businesses. This was a much more active approach than what I was doing.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saving your money. In fact, I think it’s a very good practice.

It’s just not what the millionaires were doing with most of their money.

Spending in Their Regular Lives

They rarely bought the most expensive things they could find-I really remember seeing that. Have you ever known someone who seems to buy the most expensive things there are? They buy the top dog food, the priciest car or the fanciest new blender? We’d say they have expensive taste. I saw this with people I knew but rarely among the millionaires. They were so much more about efficiency. It was the balance of getting the best value and productivity for their money.

Fancy cars were sometimes around but they didn’t get a brand new one every year. They tended to keep the car for awhile and get a lot of use out of it.

I think when you work in business so much, you get a great appreciation for money. This doesn’t coincide with spending like crazy in business or in your personal life. You kind of realize the utility of money and that has a good effect on your spending habits both in business and personally.

How Aggressively Did They Spend?

I feel it’s a bit of a myth that millionaires are super big risk takers with money. You hear about these folks going broke several times before becoming successful and think, yikes, do I have to do that? I saw absolutely none of this. In fact, it was the total opposite. I saw tactical, intelligent spending, borrowing and careful risk taking. I saw this over and over for many years.

I’ll never forget one of my clients discussing that it wasn’t that he didn’t have the money to spend, it was that he could spend it on something better. He was thinking: “What was the best way to spend the money?” In other words, what was the best bang for your buck?

I found this to be a refreshing approach to spending. I didn’t like the idea of following the boom and bust path in business or in your personal life for that matter. I just thought it was too unstable. Maybe it works but I can’t really speak to that anyway. So, you could call the spending they did aggressive at times but warranted and never reckless. They weren’t swinging for the fence unless they knew they could hit a home run for sure.

What did They Spend on?

The millionaires who were excellent at using the banks and spending on their businesses. That was the trick. What can you spend on that will really pay off? If it will really pay off, is it even spending or is it investing in something you have a great deal of control over? This was far better than putting your money in a bank, (if you knew what you’re doing). In the case of the millionaires, they had great businesses to invest in so it was a no-brainer to put their money to work in this fashion.

Another area they spent on was when an opportunity came along. This was straightforward. You needed to outlay some cash to get something going. Nothing fancy here.

The last place I saw spending was in the form of financing because cash just wasn’t going to be on hand soon enough. This would occur on occasion. Most of the time, it was in the form of some kind of bridge financing. You have a good business and it’s going to get paid but, not soon enough to cover current expenses. Sometimes my clients had to borrow to bridge that time period.

Spending Like a Millionaire Works

The spending habits of the millionaires seemed to work out just fine for them. Their habits were good enough to make their businesses successful. Eventually, they had more than enough money to spend on anything they wanted. What do you think they spent the rest on?

Best of Wealth,

Tyler