This article enlists 14 habits, values and ideas which are practiced by millionaires. By applying these habits can help you improve your financial situation and achieve the goals – personal and professional.

1. Work for Yourself

Whether you work as an employee, or own a company, the bottom line is that you work for yourself.

Remember – You are the owner of your personal brand or company called Your Name, a company with one boss and one employee: You.

If you work as an employee, it is because your personal company decides to sell your time in exchange for money. The boss you have in your current job is actually your #1 customer… If you are not satisfied with this customer, your personal business can decide to make a change at any time.

This is the mentality with which millionaires see the world and apply it in their life.

So what can you do to improve the services your personal company offers to your customers?

2. Better Effective and Efficient Work Than Hard Work

Contrary to what most people say, those who earn the most money in each area are not those who work the longest hours, but those who work the smartest.

The goal is not to work hard. It is to work few hours possible to perform your tasks effectively and to have the maximum amount of time available to devote to your family and friends and to what you enjoy most in life.

Working 80 hours a week may seem to give better results than working 40 hours. But it will not bring you happiness or quality of life. Focus on the more important tasks and leave the minimum time possible for the less important tasks. Be effective and efficient at the same time.

3. Take Control of Your Life

If you want to achieve a better financial situation, you must first take responsibility for creating the new financial situation you want. Successful people don’t wait for money to come to them. They go after it, even if it means making decisions and risks, facing challenges and making mistakes.

Taking charge of your life means stopping blaming your circumstances for your financial problems and starting acting to get what you want. For example, it’s not a boss’s fault that you receive a minimum wage, but your responsibility to find a better customer, probably in a better industry, who pays more for your time and work.

4. Look for Opportunities Around You

Have you ever found a four-leaf clover? There’s supposed to be one in 10,000. They’re hard to find, but if you look hard enough you’ll end up finding one.

The same goes for opportunities to make money, if you don’t look for them they will go unnoticed in your eyes.

Where there is a person with an unmet need or a new way of meeting a need, there is an opportunity. Keep looking and analyzing every opportunity you find to do something about the present need to make more money.

5. Do more than what is expected of you

Everyone expects you to do your job and do it well. By nature we tend to adapt to those low expectations other people have of us, so we work as little as possible.

But what if one day you decide to do a little more than what is expected of you?

Imagine you buy a product online from two different sites. The first site sends you your product and the second sends you your product plus a small gift… Who are you going to buy from next time?

It is this little gift that makes you stand out. A little extra effort is worth it.

6. Make Your Money Work for You

Robert Kiyosaki says, “We go to school to learn how to work hard for money… I write books to teach people how to make money work for them.

According to Kiyosaki, the key to achieving financial independence is to understand the difference between assets and liabilities. An asset is something that puts money in your pocket while a liability takes it out of your pocket.

Examples of assets are interest on bank deposits, dividends, rental property and royalty income. Don’t let your money rest in the bank, instead make it work for you.

7. Get oriented to solutions

Every problem has a solution. Think of your problems as challenges that allow you to learn and grow, instead of thinking of them as burdens.

Have you ever gotten stuck on a problem you thought you couldn’t solve?

Systematically analyze your problem and focus on finding solutions. You’ll avoid the worries and enjoy life much more!

8. Invest Your Money In Increasing Your Income

The best way to spend your money (and your time), is to invest in increasing your ability to generate income. It’s common sense to say that the best way to use your money is to invest it in yourself.

This is why many people choose to study instead of working or going on vacation; to get a way to work that provides them with more income.

Most people invest only the MINIMUM possible in their own personal development in order to have an income that is comfortable for them. Anyone should spend some time and money on professional development, whether it be reading books and magazines, writing articles on the internet, signing up for courses and seminars, etc.

But in addition to developing professionally, if you want to increase your income it is advisable to work on your personal development at the same time. All areas of our lives are connected, so what you do in your free time affects your work as well.

For example, practicing your communication skills in your free time can allow you to improve your work and increase your income at the same time.

Also, investing money in having fun can be as important as investing money in studying if you really need to do something that will distract you from the boredom of routine and open your mind to new ideas.

9. Offer Value

Let’s understand this with an example of Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft. He is one of the richest people in the world, who has been largely responsible for bringing computers into homes, creating the world’s most popular operating system. And now with his fortune he is engaged in philanthropic work around the planet.

This man has created his wealth in the service of other people.

10. Plan and Act

Planning allows you to consciously define what you want to achieve, helps you focus on your goals, and allows you to review whether you are staying on track or moving away from it.

Above all, planning is important because it involves a learning process. That is, in order to set your objectives and goals to be achieved, you must study how to carry out those objectives, how you should establish them, what time frames and activities you can include to achieve them, etc.

11. Have Passive Income

The “traditional” way of having an income is through a job, getting paid every month. Your company pays you for your work time. A completely opposite way is to have passive income. This means that you create a system that provides you with income over time even if you do nothing for that system. Hence the “passive”.

You must spend some initial time creating the system, but after that it will run on automatic pilot and provide you with money even while you sleep.

Some examples:

• Bank deposits, dividends and other investments.
• Writing a book, composing music or any other copyrightable product.
• Online marketing, creating a website to promote a product or the products of others in exchange for a commission.
• Create a business that you do not work for, but own.

12. Don’t Give Up

Whatever you do, you’ll find obstacles in your way.

Millionaires take risks, if they want to gain something in return and every risk they take includes the possibility of failure. If you don’t take the necessary risks, it will be difficult for you to improve your financial situation.

Millionaires see failure as a natural part of life and are not discouraged by their mistakes. Your failures are a way to learn and grow, one more step you must take to achieve your goals.

13. Don’t Try to Make It Perfect

Perfectionism leads to inaction, procrastination and losing sight of the most important things in your personal life and work.

Nothing is perfect. Focus on doing what is most valuable to you and try to achieve the best within your current possibilities. In exchange for thinking about something perfect, think about something that can be optimized and improved over time.

14. Save

Spending all your money is tempting because if you only spend a part of it it will turn out to be something else you want to have or do… The way of life that shopping compassionately provides is more attractive than having your money in the bank.

But what about the day when you have $0.00 in the bank and you’re out of work or an emergency arises? The most logical thing is that you have to make a loan… That’s where we got off to a bad start.

Or what if you find a powerful business idea where you need capital to start creating your own source of passive income? Well, what usually happens is that, if you don’t have some money saved up, you have to let that idea fly so that someone else can take it.

Even the wealthiest people in the world have their bank accounts backed up financially for emergency. The only solution to the spending spree virus is to commit yourself to saving a fraction of your income before you start spending it.

Keep 10% of your money in a savings account and don’t touch it unless it’s for a life-and-death emergency, or for an investment that will return more than you had (and as you know. It’s worth making mistakes while learning to invest with a guaranteed return).

Money Saving Tips:

1. Think before making a major purchase. Don’t buy things you don’t really need or won’t use regularly, use your money wisely.
2. Take advantage of discounts and offers. Buy whenever you can below the normal selling price of a product.
3. Avoid debt. Debts take money out of your pocket every day. Pay your mortgage early, as you can save a lot of money on interest. Use your card credit only for important situations where you are guaranteed to pay it off quickly.

Finally, think… What habit do you think you can add to your life for the benefit of your finances and your wealth?

Author Bio:

Hi, I am Nikesh Mehta owner and writer of this site.

I’m an analytics professional and also love writing on finance and related industry. I’ve done online course in Financial Markets and Investment Strategy from Indian School of Business.

I can be reached at nikeshmehta@allonmoney.com. You may also visit my LinkedIn profile.