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When Can You Become A Millionaire? Or Free?

Here are the two main spreadsheets the Seven Dollar Millionaire used when writing The Thousand Dollar Journal and Happy Ever After.

They’re google documents, so feel free to copy them and use them as your own, but please be careful to leave them as you found them. We hope you can use them to illustrate the power of saving and investing for your own life.

The Seven Dollar Millionaire Spreadsheet

This is very similar to the sheet he created when asked by his daughter what’s the smallest amount of money you needed to save every day to become a millionaire in your lifetime.

He assumed a 7% return (you can change that assumption) and it showed it only took $7 a day to become a millionaire. You can change that too.

We have taken it one step further, to guess what it will feel like to be a millionaire then, assuming a rate of inflation, which you can also change. The only assumption you can’t change is that it will take 365 days for the earth to orbit the sun. We’ve kept that assumption.

Change any of the inputs in Cells C2 and C3 and scan down column C to see how long it will take you to become a millionaire. $7 a day making 7% returns will take 50 years.

Change the inflation assumption in Cell C4 and then scan down column E to see what being a millionaire will feel like then. The sooner you become a millionaire, the more valuable it will be. Save more!

The Freedom Formula Calculator

When can you be free? When can you stop working and never worry about money again? Use this calculator to find out.

There’s a column of inputs, in cells D9 to D14, coloured gold. In this, you can enter your income, the percentage of that you save, the inflation rate, the return on investments, a safe withdrawal rate and any assets you’re starting with today.

Below those inputs are the outputs. Columns C, D, and E are your income, savings and spending. These all increase over time driven by inflation.

Column F totals up your savings and portfolio growth over time.

Column I, meanwhile, calculates the total you will need to stop working (25 x that year’s spending, if you use 4% as a safe withdrawal rate).

Column H is where the magic happens. When your portfolio is bigger than 25x your spending, that’s when you’re free.

If it isn’t soon enough, you can change the inputs, but in the real world, you’ll need to make them happen!

START INVESTING HERE

Read as much as you can, in our books, on this site and others, about how to save and invest – but you also have to start investing. Here’s where we recommend you start. Scroll down to your country, and see the platform or operator we recommend. Some links will go straight to an account opening page, others are to platforms that can make a better recommendation than we can. But please start here. We currently get no commission or payment at all from this.