If you want to be a millionaire, you just have to be lazy, apparently.
A self-branded “millionaire,” who now makes almost $380,000 per year, claimed that the key to her success is laziness.
Pavinee Lertjitbanjong, 42, said that working smarter is more important than working harder, and believes she “wasted” most of her life working hard.
“I call myself a lazy millionaire because I’ve made all my money without having to learn any new skills,” Lertjitbanjong told Southwest News Service. “I work from home, I don’t spend money on the gym, I hate cooking and cleaning and I don’t waste time going to networking events.”
She added, “I embrace the lazy lifestyle — and it’s made me so much more efficient.”
Lertjitbanjong always felt like she had to work “10 times harder” than everyone else since she’s the child of first-generation immigrants from Bangkok, Thailand.
The data scientist from Chatham, New Jersey, shared that at work, she “always wanted to be a people-pleaser” and “wanted to make [her] co-workers happy” — leading her to say “yes” to every available opportunity, including working overtime and attending network events she wasn’t interested in.
“I always thought success came from working extremely hard, and losing yourself in the process,” she admitted. “I wanted that promotion to get more money, and I devoted too much of my time towards it.”
But Lertjitbanjong was forced to turn her life around after she and her ex-husband’s divorce was finalized in March 2020, and legal fees left her with over $100,000 in debt — and since she had no assets, Lertjitbanjong was left with “virtually nothing.”
“In the US, the default ruling is to split your assets 50/50 in divorce, but I didn’t want to fight a long battle with my ex. I didn’t want to take anything with me,” she shared.
“I just had this epiphany — I was thinking about how people float through life so easily, they don’t have to burn themselves out and they work smart, not hard,” Lertjitbanjong explained. “I knew I needed to shift my mindset — so I tried the laziness approach.”
She devised a plan to get her promotion an easier way, making a list of the important people in her company and how to get them on-side.
“I started to think ‘Who in the company do I need to please to make more money?’” she said.
Lertjitbanjong also decided to start investing in stocks — which now makes her about $127,000 per year. She stopped attending networking events and started being selective with whom she surrounded herself with, adding successful people into her inner circle, as well as no longer doing overtime and sticking in her current role rather than spending time searching for a new one.
“I also knew my job would pay enough to keep me afloat, but I wanted disposable income, too. So I started investing in stocks — I’d always been interested in it. I knew it’d be hard for me to start a new job, so I just didn’t bother,” she explained.
Her promotion came in January 2023, which, along with her investments, allowed her to pay off her debt, buy a $1.14 million three-bedroom house and travel to her family in Bangkok.
Lertjitbanjong prefers to save up for a “rainy day” — but she still wants to spend her newfound income on her 2024 bucket list, including trips to the Northern Lights, Hong Kong and Singapore.
“I’m lazy, but I’m smart about it,” she admitted.
Lertjitbanjong shared her top tips for becoming rich while being lazy:
- Be efficient with your laziness. For example, if you hate cooking, spend one day over the weekend meal prepping food for the week.
- Set up automatic payments for all bills so you don’t have to stay on top of them yourself.
- Don’t spend money on a gym membership. Instead, get your steps in while walking to get food.
- Avoid networking events, “unless you want to waste time making a bunch of acquaintances.”