1. Automate your finances.

If your financial plan isn’t on auto-pilot, change that immediately, encourages self-made millionaire David Bach. Automating your finances — sending your money automatically to investment accounts, savings accounts, and creditors — allows you to build wealth effortlessly.

It’s “the one step that virtually guarantees that you won’t fail financially,” Bach writes in “The Automatic Millionaire.” “You’ll never forget a payment again — and you’ll never be tempted to skimp on savings because you won’t even see the money going directly from your paycheck to your savings accounts.”

Simply link your accounts, so that money from your checking account to your savings account, and set up the exact day you want to make transfers.

In addition to never making a late payment again, automation “frees up valuable time and allows you to focus on the fun parts of life, rather than spend time worrying about whether you paid that bill or if you’re going to overdraft again,” writes Bach.

2. Invest your ‘spare change.’

Investing is one of the most effective ways to build wealth, and contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a lot of money to get started. The key takeaway: Start investing sooner rather than later to take full advantage of compound interest. As Bach explains, “the miracle of compounding can transform a relatively small but consistent amount of saving into major wealth.”

3. Ditch the small, daily purchases, such as your morning coffee.

Just as you can put your spare change to work, you can put this money to work. A Sh. 50 daily coffee amounts to about Sh. 350 a week, or Sh. 1,500 a month, and Sh. 18,000 every year. Cut back on that expense, and direct the money towards an investment account, the financial advisor suggests: “We all throw away too much of our hard-earned money on unnecessary ‘little’ expenditures without realizing how much they can add up to.”

4. Come up with specific money goals.

“The number one reason most people don’t get what they want is that they don’t know what they want,” self-made millionaire T. Harv Eker writes in his book “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.” “Rich people are totally clear that they want wealth.”

To reach that level of clarity, he suggests writing down goals for your annual income and net worth. Like all goal-setting, be realistic, but don’t be afraid to challenge yourself. After all, the wealthiest people aren’t afraid to think big.

5. Save, don’t spend, unexpected cash.

Pretend that extra money, such as a bonus, birthday check or any windfall, doesn’t exist. Get in the habit of putting any surprise cash, even if it’s just that little cash you found in your coat pocket, to work. Apply it to student loans, debt, your emergency fund, or an investment account. It’ll add up. Plus, establishing this habit early on will help you avoid lifestyle inflation when you get more surprise cash in the form of a raise.

6. Tell yourself you deserve to be rich.

The wealthiest individuals believe that “success, fulfillment and happiness are the natural order of existence,” self-made millionaire Steve Siebold writes in his book “How Rich People Think.” “This single belief drives the great ones to behave in ways that virtually guarantee their success.”

On the flip side, the average earner remains average because theyexpect to, the self-made millionaire explains: “The masses think they aren’t worthy of great wealth. Who am I, they ask themselves, to become a millionaire?”

Try asking yourself, “Why not me?” After all, that’s what the millionaires and billionaires do.