In this blog post, I’m going to give you 8 things that i believe keep a lot of people poor right now. Our habits have a ripple effect in our lives, and poor habits with money lead to poor outcomes with money.
So, if we want to get our money right, we’ve got to first get our habits right. We’ve got to form new habits. So let’s jump right into it, guys, the 8 money habits that are keeping you poor.
What is 1 habit that you think keeps a lot of people poor? Do me a favor and drop that in the comment section below, and I always read my comments, so I appreciate you guys leaving those comments for me.
Not investing / Investing too little
No.1 is not investing or investing too little in appreciating assets that are going up in value. If you don’t get anything else from this blog post, get this: pay yourself first.
Now, listen, I know it sounds like a cliche because everybody says it, but guess what, guys? It’s super important.
Pay yourself first, right up there at the top of the list.
Every time you get paid, you have food, you have rent, and you need to have investing and paying yourself.
Why? Because the old you needs the young you today to pay for the food and the rent that you’re going to have 15, 20 years from today.
So, in order to take care of the old you, you have to prioritize paying yourself first and paying yourself enough. It’s not just enough to invest 3% of your salary or 5%.
You have to stretch yourself so that you have enough money to pay for the old you right now, along with your rent, your food, your giving, whatever else you put at the top of that list for your budget.
Put in investing and invest as much as possible.
People are just too comfortable with their current skill
Now, the 2nd thing that keeps a lot of 2nd money habit that keeps Americans poor people poor nowadays is that a lot of people are just too comfortable with their current skill set. Just too comfortable where they are.
If you don’t have skills or a plan to get more skills or higher-paying skills, then you can pretty much count on that you’re going to be right where you are right now with your money in 5 or 10 years.
You have to figure out a way how to go out and increase your income, and the greatest way to increase your income is to increase your skill set so you have higher-paying skills.
A lot of people today, they don’t want to go the extra mile. They don’t want to get more. They don’t want to take that extra class or get that extra certification.
Now, not everybody is like that, but a lot of people, they just get too comfortable where they are, and that keeps people poor, which leads to the next one.
Fear
No.3 is fear, believe it or not, guys, a 3rd habit that locks many of us into poverty.
A lot of people stay in poverty because of fear. Fear keeps people frozen.
Fear keeps people not getting that extra skill that I talked about in No.2. You have to be in the habit of punching your fear right in the face and doing what you got to do anyway.
You have to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable when it comes to your money and growing your money.
You can’t be scared of the stock market.
You can’t be scared of taking cash and investing it in something that’s going up in value.
You can’t be scared to take a chance. You cannot be scared.
You have to get out of your comfort zone to grow, and that means you’ve got to get out of your comfort zone to grow your money right. You have to give it a shot. You have to go out on a limb. You have to take some risk if you want to succeed and grow your money.
If you do exactly what you’ve always done, you’re going to get the results that you’ve always gotten. And so, with money, you have to be willing to fail a little bit more, learn a little bit more, do some things different a little bit more in order to grow your money. But you’ve got to get out of your comfort zone, and that requires letting go of the fear. And maybe that fear is simply getting a higher skill, learning some new things, investing more money in the stock market.
Whatever that fear may be, you’ve got to get over it, punch fear in the face, and do whatever you’ve been scared to do anyway.
You can have fear. It’s a natural emotion, but you can do things while you have the fear.
Step outside your comfort zone, guys. If you get value from this blog post, please don’t forget to share this blog post with your friends and your family.
Tell Yourself No
No.4, you’ve got to tell yourself no. 30-day rule: don’t buy it for 30 days. If you come back 30 days and you still want it, get it.
You have to be able to have some discipline with your money, and discipline means telling yourself no. Not right now. No, I don’t need that. No, let’s wait. No, I’m not going to go on that vacation right now. No, I’m not going to buy those shoes, that purse, that watch right now.
Telling yourself no is about discipline. It’s about the ability to hold yourself accountable with your money, and that means taking a look at your expense side of the budget, evaluating what’s a need and what’s a want when it comes to your money, and making tough decisions. But you’ve got to get out of that habit that if you see it, you’ve got to have it. Or if you see it on Amazon, you’ve got to order it on Amazon.
Amazon should not be stopping at your front door dropping off packages 5 times a week, right? It’s hard to say no, I get it, especially in a world where everybody is clawing at you, trying to get you to spend your money with advertisements everywhere. But you’ve got to be able to say no, back up from the table, and say enough is enough.
No organized money
Now, No.5 is no organization with your money.
Nothing is written down.
You just kind of pay all your bills and pray the rest of the month. Listen, you can’t do that when it comes to money.
If you want to be poor for the rest of your life, be or stay unorganized with money. You’ve got to tell the money what to do, where to go, who to pay, when to pay, how much to pay, etc.
You’ve got to be in control of your money.
Most people are not doing a unique written budget or on a spreadsheet every single month.
You cannot grow something that you don’t have a handle on. You cannot grow something that’s not organized. You cannot grow something that’s haphazard and all over the place.
You track your income and you track your expenses.
To get better with money, you’ve got to get organized with money. And that means setting up a plan to pay off some debt, that means
setting up some goals right and some action steps underneath each goal, that means setting up a budget that you follow and you revisit every single month, right?
You have to have a plan to prosper.
You have to have a plan to get better.
You have to have a plan to grow your money, a plan to control your money, a plan to organize your money.
You’ve got to get serious about your money, and that means getting organized. Now, that takes me to No.6.
Look at your debt seriously
The 6th habit that a lot of people have that keeps them poor is the way they look at debt, the way they look at depreciating things that go down in value.
You cannot be lackadaisical when it comes to debt.
Guys, you’ve got to take debt seriously if you want to climb yourself out of poverty or stop being poor.
You have to be in the habit of understanding one of the main purposes of money.
Now, this is not the only purpose of money, but one of the main purposes of money is to make more money. Not just to use it to go buy things, things that go down in value.
Things that today you buy for $100 is going to be worth $30 next year. That’s the wrong use of money. The better use of money is to say,
“How can I take this money and make more money from it?”
The best way to take money and make more money from it is to take the money and invest it in things that typically go up in value over the long term, such as stocks, real estate, having, growing a business, right?
Those are things that go up in value. That’s what you want to be in the habit of using money for, not to go get in debt on things that are going down in value, right? Don’t take money to go buy a depreciating asset.
And so, you have to look seriously at your liability side out of your net worth equation. Look seriously and take seriously the debts that you have.
Don’t just believe that you’re going to die with debt. You don’t have to die with a bunch of debt. Instead of dying with debt, you can live debt-free. But you’ve got to take debt more seriously, and you have to avoid any future debt. In other words, guys, tell yourself,
“I’m not going to go into debt for anything else that’s going down in value.”
If you make that declaration and you commit to that over the next 10, 15 years, you’ve greatly enhanced your possibilities of not being poor. Pay off debt on things that are going down in value, things that are not adding to your net worth.
If you do a net worth statement for yourself, you put assets on one side and liabilities on the other side, then guess what? Your goal to escape poverty in the next 10 years is to make sure the liability side of that equation, the debt, reduces and goes down to hopefully zero, but as low as possible on things, things that are going down in value.
All the while, you’re spending that money on things going up in value. So you’re changing the dynamic of your net worth situation when you look at debt in a different way.
Lack of focus on money
Now, the No.7 habit that keeps a lot of people poor is just a simple lack of focus on money.
Money is not evil. Money is not horrible. Money is neutral, right?
You can do good with it, you can do bad with it. But if you want to get better with money, if you want to have more money and grow your wealth, you’ve got to get focused on money because whatever you focus on tends to grow.
People spend more time on sports and the latest sporting activity, on their TV shows, on their vacations, their clothes, their cars, etc.
People spend time planning and getting and looking at and watching those things more than they take the time to focus on their own money.
People that remain poor, they tend to focus more on things that take from their wealth than they focus on wealth-building activities or wealth-building things. I’m not saying don’t enjoy your money.
I’m saying take time out to zero in on how you’re growing your money, how you’re managing your money, how you’re maximizing the money that you have.
A lot of us are distracted and not paying attention to the money. I get it, it happens, but if you want to remain in poverty, keep your focus off your money.
Chasing fast money / Chasing quick rich schemes
Now, the 8th thing that keeps a lot of people poor is chasing fast money, chasing the get-rich schemes, not being able to discern the difference between a scam and not a scam.
A lot of people in America, guys, frankly, we weren’t taught about money. They didn’t have money classes in middle school and high school, right? We didn’t learn how to handle money. A lot of us, I totally get it. But guess what, guys? If you chase fast money, the chances of you getting out of poverty are low.
Building wealth takes time. It’s a process, guys, and you’ve got to allow that process to take place through all of your good habits that you need to develop to pull yourself out of being poor. You have to change your habits. Change these 8 habits I’m giving to you and stop trying to get rich quick.
Now, I’m not telling you that you have to get rich super slow like in 30 years, but I am telling you that it’s a process. It takes time. If you’re jumping at every get-rich scheme that comes along, you’ll never get rich. In fact, you may go broke trying to get rich.
So, stop chasing the money and start doing the process, doing the change in your behaviors that’s going to ultimately lead to more money. They call it building wealth because you’ve got to build it brick by brick.
For some of you, it might take you a year to build some wealth, for others it might take 15 years to build wealth, but it’s a process that you’ve got to go through, and in that process, you’re going to learn, you’re going to grow, you’re going to mature, you’re going to become something different.
So, hey, guys, those are the 8 habits that keep a lot of people poor. What would you add to this list that you think keeps a lot of people in poverty or poor?
Drop that in the comment below, and please share this blog post with someone that you know who could use this valuable information.