There is no doubt that money allows you to take many shortcuts in life. You can hire all kinds of people to give you expert opinions. You can even hire them to do many complicated tasks. Money makes your environment as lush and customized as you want, and you can get people to set you up with the latest technology.

You can choose to never stand in line or wait for many things. You can even buy an electrical stimulation device that will increase your muscles while you sit and sip a latte.

Then there is day trading.

In some ways, you are better off learning day trading when you don't have much money. Why is that so? Because day trading is a special journey where you will need or encounter five things along the way. Here's what you can expect.

1. You will need knowledge

Day traders have one their language to describe what they are looking at while viewing multiple charts and reports at the same time. Fortunately, you can start your journey with surprisingly little knowledge.

Once you have some basic concepts and your trading station is properly set up, you will first look for some very specific situations. Money can't help you much here – you have to absorb one situation or pattern at a time until you know it instantly.

Related: How I turned $583 into $10 million in day trading

2. You have to practice

This is another area where more money doesn't help: you have to practice to become good at spotting an opportunity, confirming that it meets your criteria, and taking the trade. Then, you need to know when to buy more, hold, reduce or exit. You are fluent in a very complex system and this work happens between your ears.

I should mention one thing that is not so much a shortcut as a pain reliever, and that is trading in a simulator. These tools allow you to trade the exact stocks that are moving today, but you are doing so with virtual money. Simulators aren't perfect, but they'll save you all kinds of money and grief. You will really feel different when you trade with real money later, but in the beginning it is not important. What matters is being proficient in your practice and skills.

3. You will need patience

You have to run the trading process thousands of times, and having real losses and earnings do not increase your ability. On the contrary, if you don't have cash to burn, it will be easy to conclude that this whole day trading thing is for the birds. If not risking money means you hang on to it longer, then that's a clear benefit.

Related: Is your opinion about Day Trading correct? Take this quiz

4. You must develop discipline

This is where money can slow down your progress. As you make one trade after another, you will have periods of several losing trades in a row. Guaranteed. If you are loaded with dough, you can lose a large amount of money, shrug it off and replace it by writing a check to top up your account.

This is the wrong teaching. Money becomes a cushion against landing hard on your back and realizing you can't afford to do it again. In my case, in a Vermont winter I was ready to chop wood for heat so I didn't have to pay $500 to refill the furnace oil tank.

Your trading discipline comes from setting boundaries and sticking to them, regardless of your emotions.

Need to make ends meet to become a successful trader? No, but in a sense, it's the shortest path to being hard on yourself about following your trading parameters.

If you trade long enough and pay attention, you will discover many things about yourself. You will learn the warning signs that you were emotionally swept away and are “revenge traders” to counteract that last bad trade. You will become sensitive when you run out of gas in your brain tank and cannot make proper judgments about another trade. This may sound easy, but the urge is strong to take another look and make just one more trade. At first, before my discipline muscle was strong enough, I had to close the laptop, unplug it, and lock it in the car so I wouldn't look at it.

By the way, the pursuit of discipline in day trading never ends. To this day, I catch myself experiencing FOMO or another emotion, and I have to remind myself of my max loss per trade and loss per day criteria. I will even instruct my brokerage account to temporarily take those decisions out of my hands and enforce them if my discipline needs support. And if things get out of control in a hurry, I'll check myself into what I call “trading rehabilitation”: it's a very limited and systematic process of rebuilding my confidence after one or more big losses.

Related: Do you know how to lose? 4 Principles for Cutting Your Losses

5. You must cultivate educated intuition

That's my term for what you'll get if you stick with this ride long enough. It's where you'll have acquired that knowledge, experience and practice so that you can mostly make the right decisions in the heat of the moment.

Even this condition is not permanent. If elite athletes take some time off, it takes some time to get back into top form, and this is also true with the mental athleticism of day trading.

The market doesn't care

This is a beautiful thing about day trading. There are relatively low barriers to entry in this profession. No one cares about your skin color, gender, education or upbringing. Every day, the slate is wiped. Wealthy people can regularly enjoy paying for experiences like concerts and travel. However, experiences are not the same as experience, which must be gained step by step in day trading.