Please **note**: This does not replace conventional retirement planning. The money I'm talking about here is in **addition** to money saved in retirement plans or the traditional three months of expenses that one should keep on hand for emergencies. The idea here is to take to heart the old adage of investing **only** money that you are willing to lose and going aggro with it. Amass money that you are willing to lose quickly, while you are young, and take the big risks early.

1) Save $1,000.

Much of building wealth comes down to investing, but you have to have something to invest in the first place. Even if you do happen to win a bit at the lottery or get cash gifts at Christmas, investing money saved from your own income will immediately tie your investment goals to risk analysis and time horizon, two very important concepts.

How do you save $1,000? Well, it depends on your budget. The trick here, of course, is to make a budget. Just take a month where you write down every purchase. (Or, what’s easier for me, make every purchase with your debit card, so your online bank statement can aggregate your spending information for you.) Look at your purchases and income side by side. Once you have this, it’s just a matter of locating opportunities. Do you splurge on expensive dinners every weekend? Do impulse shopping? Spend more than necessary on transportation (taxis, etc.)?

Chronicle the opportunities in your budget and, then, act on them. Maybe it's as simple as taking one Christmas off — replacing expensive gifts with handmade items. If that's not enough, spend a year doing the same thing for birthdays.

2) Grow $10,000.

Here the key question is how long did it take you to save up that first $1,000? If the answer is one year or more, waiting for the same thing to happen 10 times would probably test your patience. Instead, let's focus on taking that same amount of time you spent on getting to $1,000 and figuring out how to squeeze $10,000 out of that same, short time frame.

Let's presume it took you a year-and-a-half to get to $1,000. The trick now is to sketch out a strategy that can dramatically get you to $10,000 within a year-and-a-half.

Here, it's a matter of considering which you have more leverage over, your income or your expenses.

Say you have a degree or skills that could get you a higher income. Even if it's less interesting work, consider taking it on for a year or so.

On the flip side, are there major expenses you could cut back on? Rent (or mortgage) is usually the biggest expense a working person faces every month. Could you possibly take on a roommate for a year or so?

These are obviously significant trade-offs.

3) Make $100,000

By this time you've already got $10,000 in your name. To get to $10,000 from $100,000 will take some risks. Here's where you make the switch from thinking as a saver to thinking as an investor.

In the process of getting to $10,000, maybe you started investing already. Great. If not, no worries. Many investment opportunities (such as mutual funds) have fairly significant minimum requirements ($1,000 or $2,000 or more). There are some funds out there that accept investments as small as a few hundred dollars, but they are the exception. Trying to put together an investment strategy with less than $2,000 can be frustrating. $10,000 is a great number to start implementing your own investment agenda.

It's totally irresponsible of me to imply that it's even possible to grow your money at a factor of 10. To put this in context, though, if you happened upon an investment strategy that could get you a 20% annual return (This is a huge number — a typical investment in the stock market would get close to 5% annual return, over the long run.), it would take you less than 13 years to get from $10,000 to $100,000. Give yourself five years to get there and see what happens.

Yes, crazy, I know. But the point of this strategy is to take the big risks early. I blew $10,000 at the age of 24 on a stupidly leased VW Jetta that I crashed on the way to Santa Cruz. (Oh, I've made some really dumb financial mistakes. I'll write a whole post just on those one day.) I paid it off with a year of a boring job and an extra roommate. If I could have put that cash toward futures on the euro and the rupee (two currencies I had already started to track in 2003), I would have already gotten to $100,000 and beyond by now. But after almost two years of a boring job and a year of roommates in Bushwick, I've got a chunk of change to play with and another chunk to grow responsibly.

4) Manage to $1 Million

To be continued, ladies.