5 Traits of the Rich Vs Poor

By Charles Kelly, Property Problem Solver, Author of Yes, Money Can Buy You Happiness and creator of Money Tips Podcast

I spent years researching my book, Yes, Money Can Buy You Happiness, because I wanted to find out why some people are rich and others are poor.

What I discovered is that having wealth has little to do with how hard people work, since millions of poor people work hard in jobs putting in long hours of sometimes backbreaking work all of their lives with little to show for it.

It is not all about academic qualifications. Education helps, as academic qualifications will increase your earning power over your lifetime. However, just have a university degree is not the key.

Where you live can make a difference, as people born in a first world country, like the UK, obviously have a huge advantage over millions of others born in developing countries even if they do not always appreciate their good fortune and often waste the many opportunities right in front of their noses! Yet even in poor countries, I have seen both poor and rich people, and observed similar rich traits and habits. If you go to any town in the UK, Europe or America, you will find the poor part of town and the bigger houses on the hill in the wealthier part of town. You will find people who are doing well and people who are struggling.

Is it down to luck? Luck or good fortune can play a part, but we all have those lucky breaks and times when opportunities seem to just fall in our lap. Unfortunately, we don’t always take advantage of those lucky breaks.

Can we make our own luck?

The great golfer, Gary Player, was once told by a spectator during a match, “Gary, that was a lucky shot”. He replied, “do you know, the more I practice, the luckier I get!”.

You could also say that “luck” happens when opportunity or good fortune meets preparation.

No, my research into the rich and successful has shown that it is not just about luck, hard work, education or, within reason, where you were born. Many successful wealthy people I know never went to university and were even thought of a stupid at school, like Richard Branson and Jamie Oliver who were later diagnosed as dyslexic. Billionaires, such as, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs dropped out of college.

Some people might blame external factors like the economy or the government. However, the government in the country like the UK or America makes it easy to set up a business and give tax breaks to entrepreneurs. The UK is a leading world economy and one of the easiest countries in the world to set up a business or a limited company or corporation. It has a good tax regime which encourages people to set up businesses. The economy will always fluctuate a little in boom and bust cycles, but some people seem to do well in good times and bad.

There are also thousands of free and very inexpensive courses, training programs and seminars to help people improve their knowledge and skills.

There are a number of traits of successful people - and by success I am using money as a means of measuring success for this example - whilst recognising that you can be successful in many endeavours that do not involve money.

Here are five common traits that separate the rich from the poor. And by poor, I mean the average person in a first world country living from pay cheque to pay cheque, living in first world poverty. They are not starving, they have the essentials and a roof over their heads, but they are struggling to keep their heads above water.

1. Mindset

One of the main traits of the wealthy is mindset. How they think about money, their attitude towards money and people with money, and how they think about and value themselves.

The rich think completely differently from the poor.

By changing your thoughts, you can change your life. This has been proved over and over again over hundreds of years, from Napoleon Hill, author of think and grow rich, to Oprah Winfrey who changed her thinking and life after being raped by a relative.

1. The rich make their money work for them, the Poor Work hard for their money

The poor work hard for the money, rich make their money work hard for them. Hard work alone will never make you rich, especially if you spend every penny you earn and never put anything aside for your future.

1. Leverage not Just Your Own Efforts

The poor trade their time for money, the rich use leverage. If you’re not leverage in your time you are probably somebody else’s leverage.

When I was young, I was told to get an education and get a good job, buy a house and save for a pension. Later I found out that the letters J.O.B stood for “just over broke’. No matter how hard I worked and how much I tried to save, I could never quite get ahead. It was only when I use the strategies practised by the rich for centuries but I changed my life.

1. The Rich Shop for Assets, The Poor Shop for Stuff

The poor spend their time shopping for consumer goods such as clothes and gadgets. The rich spend their time shopping for assets, such as properties, businesses and shares, and use other people’s money to acquire these assets.

Assets are not only physical things like a property. Assets can be intangible assets, such as a website, an app, a mailing list, a blog, an idea, a book, a podcast or a song. People are creating assets out of “nothing” or thin air every day. The great singer songwriter Lionel Richie said that “songs are in the air”.

The bestselling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, wrote that assets are things that put money in your pocket, liabilities are things that take money out of your pocket.

1. Other People’s Money (OPM) not Just Your Own Money

People without money often say things like, “you need money to make money” or “money goes to money”, both of which are limiting beliefs.

The rich have been using the concept of other people’s money for centuries to build huge fortunes, multi-national corporations, institutions and religious organisations.

Free yourself from the limiting beliefs that you need your own money to make money. There are many ways of starting a business and acquiring assets, such as property, even if you have no money of your own.

Although I have known this for years, I recently attended a course on buying property with “no money down”, which blew my mind because I never realised how many tools and strategies that I had been missing.

The speaker explained how five years earlier he’d been living in a room in a HMO, completely broke and over £100,000 in debt. He had to use no money down strategies because he literally had zero money for deposits on properties. A few short years later, he owns or controls a multi-million pound property portfolio, an estate agency and lives with the woman of his dreams in their dream house.

Even if you have your own money, you should learn how to use other people’s money to acquire assets, because that’s what rich people do. Ironically, the richer they are the less of their own money they have to use in business ventures. You say this time and time again with entrepreneurs like Richard Branson he just has to put his Virgin brand to business ventures that are not even his own idea to make another fortune.

The trainer on the course said, follow success and success will follow.

Most people think that the only way to buy a property is to scrimp for years and save up a large deposit. Buy to let investors generally think the same way, but soon run out of money for deposits. Again, these are limiting beliefs.

If you would like to learn how to acquire property assets with no money down, I urge you to take the course to learn how to do it from someone who went from someone who went from broke to multimillionaire in five years.

Earlier I said that the rich acquire assets, the rich use leverage and the rich make their money work hard for them instead of just trading their time for money.

You can learn how to acquire assets using the leverage of other people’s money so that you can quit the rat race and start stop trading your time and life for money. This is not a ‘get rich quick scheme’ and you will not become a millionaire overnight. The first aim is to enable you to replace the income you get from your job within six months, if you follow these the strategies taught on the course. Once you have done this, you can work on your business full time, instead of someone else’s, and from there the sky’s the limit.

If you’d like more information on how to acquire wealth building assets using none of your money, email me at Charles@CharlesKelly.net or send me a message through Facebook or my Money Tips Daily community.

Would you like an opportunity to attend a free No Money Down Discovery Day on 10th October?

There are more examples and practical steps to getting rich and being happy in my book, Yes, money can buy happiness, I cover the 3 R’s of Money Management, the Money B.E.L.I.E.F System and much more. Check it out on Amazon http://bit.ly/2MoneyBook.

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Word of the Day

Tenant Buyer – Right to Own

A tenant buyer is a private tenant who is renting a property with a right to buy it on or before an agreed date in the future.

If you are currently a tenant and would like to buy your own home in the future, but unable to do so right now, drop me a line at Charles@CharlesKelly.net.