How to Save a Million Dollars Getting Sober
Jim (Giacomo) Giammatteo
screenplay writer, ghostwriter for novels and more, and bestselling author. Nonfiction books on grammar, careers, publishing, and writing. Novels on mysteries and fantasy.
It’s easy to save a million dollars — wrong.
It’s easy to get sober — wrong again.
But for those of you with enough drive and ambition, you can succeed in both. The best thing is that getting sober will help you get the million dollars. Here’s how:
You’ll start off with a deficit because getting sober requires assistance, and assistance costs money. But you shouldn’t think of the cost of as starting with a deficit; think of the cost of as an expense or better yet think of it as an investment. An investment in your future.
If you think that it can’t be done, read on.
Let’s assume that you are twenty-five years old, and you’re working at a job making $50,000 per year. How much would you have to save to be a millionaire at 65?
I started doing research on this and found several reports, some of which were a little aggressive in their “assumptions,” so I chose a more conservative analysis.
From a Report Done by CNBC
The charts below are from a report done by CNBC on how to save a million dollars by the time you’re sixty-seven. The retirement age is a couple of years higher than the one we used, but they also based it on starting at the age of thirty, which is five years later than the age we used.
So let’s analyze the chart provided by them. As I said, it’s more conservative.
982 per month
$11,769 per year
A six percent annual return:
21 per day
610 per month
$7,413 per eight percent annual return:
An eight percent annual return.
12 per day
366 per month
$4,552 per year
A 10 percent annual return:
7 per day
213 per month
$2,755 per year
When you look at the charts, it’s apparent that if you calculate based on ten percent per year, the amount you need to save per day is extremely small. But even at four percent, (which anyone should be able to do if not drinking or doing drugs) the daily amount isn’t out of reach. In fact, if you are now living a clean and sober lifestyle, and you’re not spending money on alcohol or drugs, it should be well within your reach.
Cost of Drugs and/or Alcohol
The average cost of drugs for an addict is from 75–
200 per day and that is a conservative estimate.
An alcoholic can get away cheaper, but only if they’re “slumming” it, and not stopping in at bars to have a drink or two. If they’re drinking outside, the numbers add up quickly.
Mind you, this is the average cost, so your expenditures may be higher or lower.
If you have an addiction problem, get it treated. That is if you want to save a million dollars.
Take the money you were spending on your addiction and put it into savings. Before you know it, the dollars will add up. And if you’re not interested in saving a million, there are still many benefits to getting clean and sober, not the least of which is living a happier, longer life.
Just for grins, I listed a table below that shows what would happen if you invested $75 per day at four, eight, and ten percent for a period of thirty years.
Before you say “I couldn’t do that,” think about this:
If you saved just ten dollars a day for thirty years you’d have $653,000 assuming a ten percent annual return.
Not a bad reward for fixing your life.
Don’t wait. Call us today!
Originally published at www.intoactionrecovery.com.