Here's a simple tip to begin your wealth-building journey today

Nobody said building wealth was easy. It takes commitment to start the journey and stay on the path each day.

If you can do that over the years, savings and investing compound, according to personal finance expert and author Anthony O'Neal.

"62% of people are living paycheck to paycheck, and I do not think it's because of income. It's just because of the lack of strategy and information that unfortunately they didn't get when they were younger," O'Neal said on the Power Players With Brian Sozzi podcast (see video above).

O'Neal is the bestselling author of "Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck." Some practical advice he offers is to create a margin to begin building wealth.

"I believe your greatest wealth-building tool is margin," he said. "It's not your income. It is margin. And margin is simply, what if I have $5,000 coming in? If my expenses are at $4,000, that means I have $1,000 in margin. But if I got $5,000 coming in and I got $6,000 going out, that means I'm negative $1,000. Now I can't do anything but borrow money, put it on a credit card, or borrow from friends."

Households living paycheck to paycheck remain a pressing problem in America.

According to the latest US Census Bureau data, approximately 34.5 million Americans (about 10.2% of the population) live below the official poverty threshold. That threshold sits at roughly $33,000 for a family of four.

Federal Reserve consumer finance data indicates that nearly 37% of American adults cannot cover a sudden $400 emergency expense without borrowing, selling an asset, or turning to credit cards.

O'Neal speaks about the issue from his own life experience — at one point early on in his career, he was living out of his car in a Walmart parking lot.

But through steady discipline in saving and investing (and a lot of hustle), he dramatically changed his financial circumstances.

"People are not getting ahead," O'Neal said. "And they can't get ahead because no one is really giving them the strategy. A lot of us are getting our information from TikTok, from Instagram, from people who are not accredited in this field and do not understand the true essence of money. And that is one of the things that I wanted to make sure that I wasn't in that category."

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