The Rachel Cruze Method: 5 Wealth-Building Habits Proven to Create Millionaires

Financial advisor Rachel Cruze has built her career around one central premise: becoming a millionaire isn’t a matter of luck or inheritance—it’s the result of consistent, deliberate habits. Growing up in a household shaped by her parents Dave and Sharon Ramsey’s financial transformation (including their recovery from bankruptcy in the 1980s), Cruze developed a unique perspective on money management that has guided millions seeking to build meaningful wealth.

The gap between aspiration and reality looms large for most Americans. The real median household income in 2023 stood at $80,610—and that’s before taxes, mortgage payments, grocery bills, and utility expenses chip away at purchasing power. Yet despite these constraints, Cruze insists the path to millionaire status isn’t impossible; it simply requires abandoning conventional money behaviors and embracing five fundamental practices.

Breaking Free From Debt: The Foundation of Wealth

The first practice Cruze champions is perhaps the most transformative: eliminating debt entirely. This principle sounds intimidating when you consider that most Americans carry multiple debts—from credit cards charging devastating interest rates to mortgages and student loans.

What sets Cruze apart is her refusal to view debt as inevitable. Having grown up in a post-bankruptcy household, she witnessed how debt elimination could completely reshape financial possibilities. “That forced me to live within my means,” she explains. “When you’re not sending payments to banks, those dollars can work for you through investments instead.”

For those already in debt, the solution isn’t an all-or-nothing approach. Cruze recommends starting with the smallest debts first, creating momentum and psychological wins that fuel continued progress. While this journey may be the most challenging of all five habits, it serves as the essential groundwork upon which all other wealth-building efforts rest.

Spending Intentionally: The Power of Living Below Your Means

Cruze’s second principle emerges naturally from the first: spending less than you earn must become your operating system. This isn’t deprivation—it’s intentionality.

The mechanism here is budgeting, which Cruze describes not as restriction but as liberation. “A budget tells you where your money goes instead of wondering where it went,” she explains. “It prevents overspending and creates room for emergency funds, sinking funds for future goals, and investment contributions.”

Living below your means doesn’t mean wearing the same clothes for a decade. It means making conscious trade-offs: choosing the reliable sedan over the luxury model, renting when it makes financial sense despite social pressure to own, or dining out strategically rather than impulsively. The specific numbers matter less than the principle—spending should always be less than income, with the difference directed toward wealth creation.

The Comparison Trap: Protecting Your Financial Identity

Perhaps the most underestimated obstacle to wealth isn’t poor math skills or bad luck—it’s the endless comparison with others. Cruze emphasizes that “comparison is the thief of joy” and equally the thief of wealth.

Social media, neighborhood dynamics, and family conversations constantly broadcast others’ financial choices. Someone always appears wealthier, more successful, or more sophisticated in their purchases. Cruze’s antidote is radical individualism: your money journey belongs to you alone.

Your cousin’s budget, your sister’s investment portfolio, your friend’s home purchase—none of these should dictate your decisions. When you make financial choices based on what others are doing rather than what aligns with your goals and circumstances, you derail your wealth-building timeline before it even gains momentum.

Investing: Making Your Capital Reproduce

While many people save by stuffing money under mattresses (metaphorically), Cruze points to a critical distinction: wealth accumulation requires putting money to work through investments. Nearly every high-net-worth individual reached that status not through savings alone but through strategic capital deployment.

The barrier to entry isn’t as high as many assume. Cruze highlights that simply maximizing contributions to a Roth IRA annually—a straightforward retirement account accessible to most workers—creates a powerful wealth foundation. The magic isn’t in the size of the initial investment; it’s in the compound effect over decades.

This habit bridges to her final principle: time. Investment returns accelerate exponentially when given sufficient runway, which is why starting in your twenties yields vastly different results than starting in your forties.

The Long Game: Why Patience Transforms Wealth Outcomes

Cruze’s fifth and final habit addresses a cultural epidemic: the hunger for immediate gratification. Building millionaire status requires releasing the impulse to indulge in feel-good purchases, convenience spending, and “just this once” exceptions.

The mathematics are unforgiving: constant small indulgences—the premium coffee, the impulse purchase, the unnecessary upgrade—accumulate into six figures over a lifetime. Those dollars, redirected into investments over 20, 30, or 40 years, become the difference between struggling in retirement and enjoying financial freedom.

This habit isn’t about joylessness. Rather, Cruze advocates for strategic delayed gratification: few, intentional indulgences you can genuinely afford, rather than perpetual small compromises that accumulate into financial constraint.

How These Habits Interconnect

The brilliance of Rachel Cruze’s framework lies in how each habit reinforces the others. Debt elimination creates psychological space for budgeting. Living below your means generates capital for investing. Resisting comparison maintains focus on your personal investment timeline. And a long-term mindset transforms those five habits from occasional practices into lifestyle architecture.

The path to millionaire status remains unconventional only because so few are willing to implement these fundamentals consistently. Cruze’s methodology proves that seven-figure wealth isn’t reserved for the exceptionally lucky—it’s available to anyone willing to make different choices today for dramatically different circumstances tomorrow.