Automate your finances.

If your financial plan isn't on auto-pilot, change that immediately, encourages self-made millionaire David Bach. Automating your finances — sending your money automatically to investment accounts, savings accounts, and creditors — allows you to build wealth effortlessly.

Come up with specific money goals.

To reach that level of clarity, he suggests writing down goals for your annual income and net worth. Like all goal-setting, be realistic, but don't be afraid to challenge yourself. After all, the wealthiest people aren't afraid to think big.

Tell yourself you deserve to be rich.

The wealthiest individuals believe that "success, fulfillment and happiness are the natural order of existence," self-made millionaire Steve Siebold writes in his book "How Rich People Think." "This single belief drives the great ones to behave in ways that virtually guarantee their success."

Spend 30 minutes a day reading.

Rich people tend to read. They continue to teach and invest in themselves long after formal education is over. "Walk into a wealthy person's home and one of the first things you'll see is an extensive library of books they've used to educate themselves on how to become more successful,"

Set your alarm clock earlier.

In addition to reading, wealthy people tend to wake up early. Self-made billionaires Richard Branson and Jack Dorsey start their days at 5:00 a.m., and they're far from the only successful people to get up before the sun.

In a five-year study of hundreds of self-made millionaires, author Thomas C. Corley found that nearly 50 percent of them woke up at least three hours before their work day actually began.

Track your spending.

You can't build wealth if more money is leaving your wallet than coming in. To ensure you're earning more than you're spending, track your daily expenses.

There are a handful of apps that will do this for you, such as Mint, Personal Capital, and Level Money. You can also use a spreadsheet on your computer or simply record your everyday purchases in a notebook or on your phone.

Prioritize high-interest debt.

It's important to understand that all debt is not created equal. An effective strategy is to rank all of your debt in order of interest rate, from highest to lowest. Then, prioritize the debt with the highest interest rate, while still paying the minimum on all of your debts, in order to pay less over the lifespan of your loans.

There is an alternate option, too: Rank your debt in order of size and start with the smallest. It's a strategy that personal finance expert Dave Ramsey calls the "snowball method." The idea is that each time you pay off one form of debt, you build momentum, which helps you tackle the next biggest, and so on.