Business philosopher Jim Rohn was a big believer in the American dream and the uniqueness of our country for providing an opportunity to everyone. He used to say, tongue-in-cheek, that we were the country the world aspired to come to and that no one ever said, “If I could only get to Poland then everything would be OK.”

Say what you will about her, America is still the place where anyone can become anything, and anyone can make a million dollars. Wait, did you just say anyone could make a million dollars in America? Most certainly, and the earlier they get started, the better. I have thought about this for a long time and have come up with four steps for amassing a million dollars in your lifetime.

Step No. 1: Spend less than you earn

This is one of those things that’s easier said than done. It’s kind of like losing weight—the solution lies in simply consuming fewer calories than you burn. Easy enough, right? Yeah riiiight.

Spending less than you earn flies in the face of two American dynamics. The first is what I call competitive consumerism. We unconsciously consume the maximum in goods in services for our income level lets we fall behind in our attempt to keep up with the Joneses. The second dynamic saving money requires is forgoing benefits today for the benefits of tomorrow. By spending less than we earn, we have money to invest in our own future. But our future is down the road and competes with our innate desire to have things right now.

Step No. 2: Invest the difference to take advantage of compounded interest and gains

If you get started early, you’ll be surprised how little you have to save to create a million dollars for yourself. How little? I took that problem to a financial calculator to find out.

Here are the assumptions I plugged in. First, I had a person save the same amount every week from the time they were 25 until 65. That comes out to 2,080 weeks. That money was assumed to earn the long-term average return of the stock market or 10% per year. I used $1,000,000 as the future value. Then I asked the calculator to tell me how much I had to invest every week. The answer was $36 a week or about $5 a day. (That’s less than one Starbucks…no, I won’t go there.)

That’s pretty amazing when you think about it. Over that person’s lifetime, they need to just put away $74,880 ($36 x 2080) for that to grow to $1 million. This is due to the power of compounded gains — every time that $36 was put in a savings account, it started growing that week.

Here’s the other interesting thing. I said earlier that the sooner you start investing, the better. If instead of starting when they’re 25 years old, the investor started at 45, the monthly amount they need to set aside is not double the $36, it’s $301 — almost a tenfold increase. Save early, save often.

Step No. 3: Diversify

I have used an assumed return of 10% per year and we could argue until the cows come home as to whether that’s an attainable return for the next forty years. But we have to start with some number for the return and so why not use the long-term average for stocks? While you can’t control what the markets will do over the 40-year stretch, you can guarantee that you capture that return by owning a diversified index fund or Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) that emulates the broad market. Doing so ensures you don’t experience the total loss that can sometimes befall individual stocks, and the cost of these funds today is so small as to be almost incalculable.

Step No. 4: Don’t muck

That means don’t tinker with your investments and don’t fall prey to the pitfalls of greed and fear. Greed causes you to endlessly chase last year’s winners and fear causes you to make major mistakes during sell-offs like selling stock earlier this year. Don’t muck with your investments — leave them alone and they will do the heavy lifting.

I hope that at a minimum I’ve given you something to pass along to a young person you know, but it’s never too late for anyone to get started investing, regardless of their age. If you can’t make a million here, you’re not going to do it in Poland.