Millionaire status doesn’t impress Grant Cardone — especially if it’s your first. In an interview on “VladTV” earlier this month, the real estate investor told DJ Vlad that the worst financial advice often comes from people who just hit the seven-figure mark.
“I’d rather take advice from a homeless person about money than take advice from a guy with his first million dollars,” Cardone said. “Most people just want to hold on to the million. They interrupt the cycle that actually got them the million.”
He argued that both saving and spending can wreck your momentum. “Savings is impossible. Spending’s stupid,” he said. “The only way you actually get from million to 10 million, 10 to 100, 100 to a billion is by taking all that money and investing.”
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Cardone broke down the numbers for anyone thinking $1 million equals long-term security. “You’re 45 years old and you’re a millionaire. If you have no more income…you have 20 grand a year,” he said. “You’re not rich. You gotta live on $1,800 a month. So you could call yourself a millionaire, but what does it mean? It means nothing.”
He added that most of that “millionaire” net worth is often tied up in stuff you can’t easily cash out. “It’s a net worth — most of which is probably tied up in some house you can’t sell today or cars or whatever,” he said.
Cardone also made one thing clear: your house shouldn’t count. “That should not be on your net worth statement. Your house should not be on your net worth,” he told Vlad.
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When Vlad eventually shared the value of his stock portfolio — off-camera and bleeped for the audience — Cardone didn’t let it slide. “You’re smart. You’re intelligent. You should have another zero there,” he said. “And the fact that you don’t take offense to it means I know that you’re thinking with it.”
Vlad responded with specifics: a 43% drop in 2022, followed by a 74% gain in 2023. Then 38% gains in both 2024 and 2025. He said he’d never really touched the portfolio, had borrowed against some of it, and invested only in companies he was familiar with like Tesla, Google, and Amazon.
