Reasons You're Not Rich

10 (More) Reasons You're Not Rich

Many people assume they aren't rich because they don't earn enough money. If I only earned a little more, I could save and invest better, they say.

The problem with that theory is they were probably making exactly the same argument before their last several raises. Becoming a millionaire has less to do with how much you make, it's how you treat money in your daily life.

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The list of reasons you may not be rich doesn't end at 10.

Caring what your neighbors think, not being patient, having bad habits, not having goals, not being prepared, trying to make a quick buck, relying on others to handle your money, investing in things you don't understand, being financially afraid and ignoring your finances.

Here are 10 more possible reasons you aren't rich:

You care what your car looks like:

A car is a means of transportation to get from one place to another, but many people don't view it that way. Instead, they consider it a reflection of themselves and spend money every two years or so to impress others instead of driving the car for its entire useful life and investing the money saved.

You feel entitlement:

If you believe you deserve to live a certain lifestyle, have certain things and spend a certain amount before you have earned to live that way, you will have to borrow money. That large chunk of debt will keep you from building wealth.

You lack diversification:

There is a reason one of the oldest pieces of financial advice is to not keep all your eggs in a single basket. Having a diversified investment portfolio makes it much less likely that wealth will suddenly disappear.

You started too late: The magic of compound interest works best over long periods of time. If you find you're always saying there will be time to save and invest in a couple more years, you'll wake up one day to find retirement is just around the corner and there is still nothing in your retirement account.

You don't do what you enjoy:

While your job doesn't necessarily need to be your dream job, you need to enjoy it. If you choose a job you don't like just for the money, you'll likely spend all that extra cash trying to relieve the stress of doing work you hate.

You don't like to learn:

You may have assumed that once you graduated from college, there was no need to study or learn. That attitude might be enough to get you your first job or keep you employed, but it will never make you rich. A willingness to learn to improve your career and finances are essential if you want to eventually become wealthy.

You buy things you don't use:

Take a look around your house, in the closets, basement, attic and garage and see if there are a lot of things you haven't used in the past year. If there are, chances are that all those things you purchased were wasted money that could have been used to increase your net worth.

You don't understand value:

You buy things for any number of reasons besides the value that the purchase brings to you.

This is not limited to those who feel the need to buy the most expensive items, but can also apply to those who always purchase the cheapest goods. Rarely are either the best value, and it's only when you learn to purchase good value that you have money left over to invest for your future.

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Your house is too big:

When you buy a house that is bigger than you can afford or need, you end up spending extra money on longer debt payments, increased taxes, higher upkeep and more things to fill it. Some people will try to argue that the increased value of the house makes it a good investment, but the truth is that unless you are willing to downgrade your living standards, which most people are not, it will never be a liquid asset or money that you can ever use and enjoy.

You fail to take advantage of opportunities:

There has probably been more than one occasion where you heard about someone who has made it big and thought to yourself, "I could have thought of that." There are plenty of opportunities if you have the will and determination to keep your eyes open.

"Do You Have What It Takes To Be Elite?"

Have You Got What It Takes to Be Rich?

Get over the notion that the rich have special powers, and look for what really drives their success. Chances are, you've got it in you too.


(MONEY Magazine) – American business lore is filled with tales of dynamic visionaries taking insane risks in pursuit of a distant dream--and then striking it rich. But get past the Texas wildcatters, railroad barons and Steve Jobs, and the heroes of the American dream begin to look more life-size, like the regular (but wealthy) folks profiled in the preceding story, "Road Trip to Riches." They look more, in fact, like you.

Are the rich smart? Sure. Ambitious? Yep. Blessed with gifts bestowed upon only a chosen few? Nah. "The people who get rich really want success," says Stephen Goldbart, a psychologist in Kentfield, Calif. who works with wealthy clients. "But where does that drive come from? I don't have a single answer."

There's nothing predetermined about getting rich, or so we'll assume until scientists identify the rich gene. Even people who end up wealthy often find themselves at a loss to explain why. "People pay me a whole bunch of money to make speeches," says author and management consultant Patrick Lencioni, who charges $45,000 to stand at a podium and does so about 35 times a year. He has also sold approximately a million copies of his five management books. "This is all foreign to me," he says.

No doubt he, and you, can get used to being rich. But before that, you have to start believing that you can make it big--and clear your cranium of all those myths about what you have to be like to do so. The rich may be different from you and me, to borrow from F. Scott Fitzgerald. But they didn't start out that way.

MYTH NO. 1 You've Got to Have Incredible Charisma

• Everyone believes a modern-day leader has to generate a few sparks. "You can't pull together resources and people if you don't have the capacity for making other people want to contribute," says Paul Reynolds, a management professor at Florida International University in Miami. Perhaps no business leader epitomized that notion more than Herb Kelleher, the chain-smoking, hard-drinking co-founder of no-frills Southwest Airlines, who revolutionized his industry, charmed the unions and inspired his thousands of employees by (among other things) impersonating Elvis and donning an Easter Bunny suit.

REALITY: It's not about charming people; it's about evaluating them. In Southwest's case, witness that the Dallas airline hasn't lost any altitude without the boss, who retired as CEO in 2001. It's on track to log profit growth of at least 15% this year. "Charisma was never the key to Herb Kelleher's success," says Bill Payne, entrepreneur-in-residence at Kansas City's Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which promotes entrepreneurship. "He surrounded himself with an exceptional team."

To do that yourself, you need to assess people's skills in a calculating way. Business leaders "may be social misfits themselves, but they know how to size people up," says Bill Heiden, a Lyme, Conn. financial adviser to business owners. "They have the ability to extract the value from other people."

In fact, management guru Jim Collins argues that charisma can be a liability. The force-of-nature leader appeals to employees who need a hero--so when the chief exits, no one can measure up. Even Reynolds, who thinks charisma does help snare talent, agrees that "to be effective, a person has to have something to offer beyond personality."

MYTH NO. 2 You Must Be Able to See into the Future

• What George H.W. Bush called "the vision thing" does indeed exist. Think about Gordon Moore, the Intel co-founder who predicted in 1965 that chip processing power would double every two years. Or Bill Gates. Or the Amazing Kreskin, who claims only to be a "mentalist" but could probably do more. Get the vision thing wrong, and you're dead. The only thing foretold by minicomputer magnate Ken Olsen's famous 1977 pronouncement, "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home," was the decline of his company, Digital Equipment.

REALITY: Plenty of visionaries were and are firmly rooted in the present. Did Henry Ford invent the car? (Hint: No.) Did Sam Walton invent discounting? (See earlier hint.) In each case, they took what existed, saw the potential in figuring out how to make it better, and then slaved away on the details.

Tom Kinnear, executive director of the Zell-Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan, refers to this pattern of action as "telescoping." Successful builders of businesses, whether they're on their own or in a corporate setting, can see the big picture well enough, but they succeed by mastering the little things. "They pay attention to the smallest details, so they can answer any questions," says Kinnear. "They want to be sure they're getting it right."

Amy Domini didn't invent the mutual fund, but 15 years ago she saw an opportunity to mass-market socially responsible funds that appealed to investors who felt they couldn't put money into businesses they found morally objectionable. Today, Domini Social Investments manages nearly $2 billion in assets.

Once she launched the business, Domini says, she quickly developed "an intense interest in minutiae." Sure she fretted over the details of structuring a product for big institutions. That seems sensible. But she also analyzed the thickness of the firm's brochure paper and looked at thousands of samples of exotic fabrics to find a combination that could muffle the sound in her company's New York City headquarters. "To build something, you have to fall in love with it," says Domini, 56. "Otherwise you might as well be a corporate cog."

MYTH NO. 3 You've Got to Stick to Your Guns, No Matter What

• "The concept is interesting and well formed, but in order to earn better than a C, the idea must be feasible," a college professor supposedly wrote in response to a student's term paper outlining the need for a reliable overnight delivery service. But Fred Smith ignored those discouraging words. "I thought this was a revolutionary idea.... I wasn't intimidated," said the fellow who founded FedEx in 1973. Kelleher, of Southwest Airlines, has been known to bray, "If it's conventional, it ain't wisdom, and if it's wisdom, it ain't conventional." After all, has anybody ever done anything innovative by consulting a focus group?

REALITY: Yes, actually. If you're intent on creating value--from either a giant company's command center or your guest bedroom at home--you carefully evaluate and absorb feedback. True, successful people don't change their minds easily, says the Kauffman Foundation's Payne. But they are strategically flexible when they have to be. In 1984, FedEx launched Zap-Mail, a high-speed fax service. But then cheap fax machines started popping up. "At that juncture," Smith once told an interviewer, "we knew we had to change."

When Sergio Zyman was chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola, he learned that sometimes things don't work out as planned. Remember New Coke? Years later, when he was on his own, Zyman raised $12 million to sell business-planning software. But he soon understood that the market was murmuring bad things about the product. "We had to kill it," he says. By the time he told his backers, he had concocted a plan for turning the Zyman Group into a consulting firm. Last year the Atlanta company raked in $65 million in sales. "You need to have enough conviction," says Zyman, "to know that you can find the right answer, even if you don't know it right away."

MYTH NO. 4 You Need to Take Big Risks

• When Viacom chief Sumner Redstone was trying to console investors after what looked like a career-crushing acquisition--the pickup of Blockbuster in 1994--he insisted, "Success isn't built on success; success is built on failure." He held on, and his big risk paid off. And Ray Kroc was down to his last two good customers as a milkshake-mixer salesman; once he saw the operations of those customers, who happened to be two brothers named McDonald, his career turned golden.

REALITY: The world offers plenty of options for those looking to live recklessly: Join a hedge fund, take up heli-skiing, make plans with somebody you've just met in a sudoku chat room. But if you're out to make a big score, you'll want to control risk any way you can. "If you know your skills, you can manage the parameters of the risk," says Kinnear.

"Invest in what you know" served as the mantra of former Fidelity fund manager Peter Lynch. And Warren Buffett has become the world's greatest investor by buying companies whose businesses he says he can understand. They have avoided the wealth-draining trap, says Reynolds, of thinking that their expertise in one area is easily transferable to another. Remember Trump Airlines? Probably not. "Successful people can forget how much they knew about a niche before they got rich in it," Reynolds notes. Redstone and Kroc, in fact, knew what they were getting into.

Now 28, Geoff Cook was 19 when he started EssayEdge, an online service that helped students with their college applications. "Editing seemed like a natural thing for me to do," he says. "I'm a good writer." The cost of starting up: a whopping $600 to cover computer servers and bank fees. Five years later he sold the business (which had grown to include ResumeEdge) to Thomson Corp. for a figure of around $10 million. In early 2005 he left his well-paid post at Thomson to follow his $250,000 investment in MyYearbook, a social-networking start-up targeted toward high schoolers. His brother and sister, both teenagers, had come up with the idea. Cook studied MySpace and Facebook, concluding that there was room for a niche player aimed squarely at teens. Having raised $1.1 million earlier this year, he's hoping to add another $6 million in funding before 2006 is out. "We've got what we need to compete, which is ideas for cool features," says Cook, who is based in New Hope, Pa. "This is either a $100 million idea or it's worthless. Either way, I know this isn't the only shot I'll have. It's just the shot I'm taking now."

MYTH NO. 5 You Need a Burning Desire to Get Rich

• "How much money is enough?" a reporter once asked John D. Rockefeller at a time when the oil tycoon was the richest man on earth. His quick reply? "Just a little bit more." To be sure, there are plenty of rich people whose sole motivation throughout their working lives was to be rich. And everyone who works hard in business wants to make money. "Certainly people who get rich want to be financially rewarded and expect to be," says psychologist Goldbart, who co-directs the Money, Meaning and Choices Institute.

REALITY: But, Goldbart adds, there's more to it than that. "Money isn't the only value they see in what they are doing," he says. "These are people who love to build." Adds Bill Dueease, co-founder of a life-coaching service in Fort Myers, Fla: "Rich people didn't get there by chasing money. They got there by chasing their passion."

So when Vu "Bill" Nguyen talks about how much he loves making it, he's not referring to all those greenbacks he's got. "I always want to make a wonderful product that people love," says the 35-year-old Nguyen, who has been part of seven tech-oriented start-ups, three of which he founded. He launched his latest venture, La La Media, last year.

The Palo Alto company operates a website where users can swap music CDs for $1. His heftiest payday to date came in 2000, when a company he'd co-founded called Onebox, a service for consolidating voice and electronic messages, was acquired for roughly $850 million. Nguyen earned more than $10 million on that deal.

He's used that windfall to underwrite a collection of 10 cars; he's also splurged on hiring brand-name bands, such as Fountains of Wayne, for his private functions. The rest? It goes into "bland muni bonds," he says. "I don't want any heartache from it." Leaving his investments in bonds lets him concentrate on his next endeavor. "I am maniacal about the product. I almost completely don't think about the other stuff."

That includes other people, he admits, and that character flaw has gotten him fired in the past. But he takes solace in the following: "I'm the living example of what your high school guidance counselor told you. Figure out what you love, and do that. It's an approach that has made me ridiculously lucky." And rich too.

Can You Handle Being Rich?

Once you've made it, how will you adjust to residing on Easy Street? Not easily, warns Thayer Willis. "People can get really obnoxious," says Willis, a wealth counselor and an heiress whose father co-founded Georgia-Pacific. Here's her prescription for a rich life.

Stay humble.

You made it. They didn't. You must be better than them, right? Feel that way and you'll end up alone with your riches. The best way to avoid arrogance is to have a strong value system--often it's grounded in religious or spiritual practice.

You Can Be Rich & Happy: Now

I often hear people say things like:

"Oh, you can't be rich and happy", or "I'm happy but I'm not rich", or "if I had money I'd be happy". Some of the people who claim to be happy obviously forget to tell their face that they are happy because they certainly don't give the impression of being happy.

So what's the secret?

Is it really possible to be rich and happy or is that state truly unattainable?

I think it's a very important issue because the world is going through a period of increasing tension and conflict. Poverty and starvation are on the increase while at the same time some people's wealth is increasing dramatically. Individuals are finding it harder and harder to get ahead while the profits of major corporations are increasing from year to year.

So many ordinary people are anxious, worried and depressed in their daily lives and many are heavily in debt with very little prospect of getting off that treadmill. For an increasing number of people winning lotto is their only strategy for achieving financial independence.

Some decide it's all too hard and go for the social security safety net while others drop out altogether and live on the streets. Drugs, prostitution and crime continue to rise while our politicians tell us that we are living in a state of economic bliss and that things have never been better.

The fundamental cause of many of our challenges seems to be a lack of self-esteem and an absence of a sense of purpose. Throughout my books I speak about these issues and seek to provide strategies for improvement in these areas.

Let's deal firstly with finding a purpose for our lives.This is probably one of the most challenging issues we have to deal with and it is also something that we have to find out for ourselves. No one else can do it for us.If that isn't enough, another challenge is that our purpose may change as we go through life and as we come into contact with other people and new information.

Purpose is different from goals.
Purpose is much bigger than any goal.
Purpose is ongoing and is not like a goalpost or destination that you seek to reach.
Purpose has nothing to with accumulating a fortune or building an empire.
Purpose is a guiding light for your life. It's your beacon through fine weather and through the storms.
Purpose is a direction.
It is an ongoing reason for you to do what you do with your life. It is what adds passion to your life.
Purpose is what makes you get out of bed in the morning and want to have another wonderful day. It's the juice that powers the direction of your life.
Purpose keeps you on track in the face of adversity and challenges.

Some people uncover their purpose in life through meditation, while others do it through exercises. Some people know what they are truly passionate about and follow that passion to give them purpose. Some know their purpose early in life while others take longer to find it. Far too many people struggle through life on a treadmill without having really lived their life with passion and die with most of their dreams unfulfilled. These to me are the saddest people.Here's what I wrote in Financial

Freedom . . . starting now! –

An Action Guide:"I believe that we all have a purpose, even though sometimes we may not be aware of it. Sometimes our purpose is buried under a pile of doubts, fears, a history of failures and rejections and we need to do a little work to uncover it. When you realise what your purpose is and live it, you will experience happiness that is more powerful than the temporary buzz that you get with the achievement of a goal.Purpose does not have to be spiritual, or specific.

My individual purpose is very specific, to live and teach the principles of true wealth. Some people prefer a broader purpose such as helping others or the environment. We don't all have to be Mother Theresa.

Each of us can do good in our everyday lives.It is worth taking the time to get to know your purpose because following this purpose is your source of true happiness. Often, you will come across your purpose simply by being the person that you want to be. The personality traits that most typify you, the things that you love to do, the gifts that you have, even the material possessions that you desire are very closely linked to your purpose."In my book I provide a number of exercises to help in uncovering one's purpose.

One idea is to ask yourself what you would do with your life if you knew you were going to die in exactly two years time. Then ask yourself why you aren't doing that now. At first you may come up with all sorts of excuses, however I suggest you keep digging deeper by considering the possibilities in search of a way. Rather than saying to yourself: "I can't do that" ask yourself "How can I do that?" The process may take some time and that's OK. Please don't beat yourself up over it. Just give it time and keep asking how you can do what it is you want.

A higher force will reveal it to you.Here's what the Indian philosopher, Patanjali wrote about purpose.Purpose"When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all of your thoughts break their bonds: your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world.

Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person than you ever dreamed yourself to be."Now let's look at the issue of self-esteem.

How To Be Rich & Happy On Your Income:

"We find true happiness when we follow our purpose. You cannot live your purpose without healthy self-esteem. Self-esteem is just another way of saying that you value yourself. In my opinion, lack of self-esteem is at the core of all society's problems. If everyone valued themselves highly enough and knew they could have what they wanted, they would not have to sell their bodies or resort to gambling, drugs or crime.

Poverty is a mental disease that stems from low self-esteem. Like many diseases, it is curable for those who believe it can be. As with any illness, it takes effort, initiative and courage to beat it - and if you give up, you're in trouble!"The good news is that nearly all happy and prosperous people have conquered this debilitating mental disease at some time in their lives. Most people have had cash shortages in their lives and some have been broke. Even if you have lost everything, you still have the knowledge and beliefs that helped you to achieve what you had before you lost it.

That does not mean that you are poor. Being poor is a state of mind which has nothing to do with how much money you have. Some of the richest people are very unhappy and are very poor in their beliefs, their attitudes and their behaviours.

On the other hand some people with very little money are some of the richest people in the world. It really just depends on your attitude.If you want to be richer and happier, you may want to know more about these two books which will unlock for you the keys to achieving true wealth.

You see, anyone in my opinion, regardless of their occupation or upbringing can accumulate more money than they would ever need. All you need is the desire, the right attitude and a plan to achieve your goals. Once you have these essential elements you need to take action to achieve your plan.

These two books will show you how!These books are written in a non-technical fashion and are easy to understand. They are not textbooks on high finance or complex economics but rather easily readable, down to earth collections of ideas, experiences and exercises designed to inspire and motivate you to take control of your finances and to examine your attitudes to life and money.

They are easy to read for teenagers too and contain many important ideas for them as they generate an income. Sadly, our young people are not taught money skills at school and usually start their working life from a position of indebtedness because they are taught to buy on credit rather than how to earn and manage their money before they go into debt.Worries over money affect the health and beliefs of many people.

These books can help them to change their beliefs and attitudes around money.The principles discussed in these books apply throughout the world and this is the reason they have become best-selling books and have been bought by people in more than 22 countries.How To Be Rich &

Happy On Your Income is packed with wealth tips – both practical and esoteric. What sets this book apart is its clear, concise and concentrated money management strategies including:

How to get beyond survival mode

How to manage and save your money

How to develop a spending plan without depriving yourself

How to use your credit cards wisely

How to minimise taxation

How to increase your wealth through leverage, stockmarket investment and by investing in real estate You will easily and quickly learn how to develop a wealthy mindset, instill prosperous attitudes and find practical know how on creating wealth.

You will discover how to save money and how to turn those savings into wealth, consistently and without high risks.

Peppered throughout the book’s margins are nitty gritty how-to tips and inspirational homilies from sources as diverse as Donald Trump, Kerry Packer, Rene Rivkin, Albert Einstein and Albert Camus (who said: "It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.")

Teaching children about money

A chapter on teaching and modeling good money management skills to children highlights the importance of fostering in them a spirit of independence and respect for money, and more importantly the need to teach them to value themselves, to dream and to develop an abundance mentality.