In this post I’m going to be talking to you today about the 11 key differences between rich people and poor people. Rich vs poor mindset.
First off, it's not that I am super rich but I am more than satisfied with what I have achieved in my life and by God's grace I make more than decent money with my blog and many other ventures I am involved in my online business.
Anyway, Now, I’ve spent the last many years jotting down the key differences between rich people and poor people; Rich vs poor mindset.
Since, I am into entrepreneurship, I’ve also talked to a few other millionaire friends of mine who are into Facebook ads, Google ads and many online based services.
So, in order to make sure that I’ve narrowed everything down and got this list just right.
The result is that I’ve come up with 11 critical differences between rich people and poor people, and a lot of these will hopefully resonate with you, so you’re going to want to listen up.
1. Rich People Create Their Own Destinies.
The first critical difference that I see between rich people and poor people is that rich people believe that they create their own destinies, whereas poor people believe that life just happens to them.
The majority of people unfortunately are not actively doing everything they can to create for themselves their ideal life.
They just think that ‘life happens’ to them, and they don’t really see or even try to get ‘out of the square’ to a point where they’re living their dream life.
Rich people, though, are always chasing and visualizing their dreams. So that’s the first critical difference.
2. Rich People Invest Their Money.
The second critical difference is that rich people invest their money, and then they spend what’s left; whereas poor people spend their money, and then invest what’s left.
You might say to yourself at this stage, ‘Wait a minute.
I see rich people spending lots of money all the time.’ My answer to that is: yes, that’s true up to a point. You’ve got to remember that rich people have more money in the first place.
So because these people have more money available to them, of course they can spend more without cutting into their investment capital.
To you and I, it might look like conspicuous consumption; but they themselves know that (the spending that) everyone else can see is just a drop in the bucket.
When I look back to the people I knew when I finished high school, what I remember is a lot of people that spent all of their money on things like partying at the weekends, or maybe getting into a lot of debt - usually to buy consumables like a car, or other luxury items.
And this is in direct opposition to a very small number of other guys I knew back then who actually understood the value of money.
Now, I’m not saying these guys ‘didn’t ever spend any money’, because they still managed to have a social life and have fun on the weekends too; but it all comes down to priorities.
These guys understood the value of a dollar, and they understood the difference between spending money and investing money.
Some of these guys ended up buying their own house at a very young age (which is one type of investment.) Others wound up hiring financial analysts and putting money into the stock market and investing that way.
What I’m saying is that there’s a key difference between people who understand the value of a dollar, and people who don’t.
Rich people generally know how to invest their money, and then spend what’s left; poor people spend their money and invest what’s left over.
If your priorities are currently more in line with a ‘poor person’s’ priorities, know this:
a) it’s going to be very hard for you to save money, when you prioritize spending over investing;
b) it’s going to be next to impossible for you to ever invest money, unless you change your priorities.
How To Invest Money Like Rich People.
Here’s something important I know about investing money: when you choose to invest, you really start to ‘get’ how money works.
And that’s a key aspect of understanding how to make more of it! This is how it works: you invest money to make money.
That means that it takes money to make money, since you can’t invest when you’ve got no dollars in your bank account.
But, if your priorities are to spend instead of to invest – in other words, if you’re never investing money - then all you’re ever going to be left with is what’s left over once you’ve finished ‘spending’.
And quite often, that’s nothing at all. Now, ‘investing’ doesn’t have to involve making any agonizing changes to your current budget.
It can be something as simple as paying off your mortgage a little bit faster – making slightly higher repayments every week.
(On the subject of mortgages, I’ve seen people with my own two eyes who’ve paid off their mortgages inside of ten years. That’s a significant achievement.
But then I’ve seen other people who, in the same amount of time, haven’t even managed to knock ten percent off their mortgage.
That’s a scary thing, especially when you consider how much of those ten years has been spent working and earning money.) A house is just one type of investment, of course.
All you really need to know about whether something is an ‘investment’ or not is whether or not it goes up in value over time. Anything that increases in value is an investment; anything that decreases in value is not.
For example, I don’t see a car as an investment, because cars almost always decrease in value over time (and usually, quite sharply.) Cars are more of a consumable than an investment.
Class yourself with naturally rich people.
You need to learn to class yourself with naturally rich people, you want to start spending more of your money on investments, such as:
- Putting more money – even a bit more – into paying off your mortgage debt faster.
- Putting money into ‘safe’ investments like mutual funds or CDs
- Even ‘risking it’ on some sort of business venture that you’ve got in mind
Ideally, you want to be thinking of apportioning your money towards investments like these FIRST, as a TOP PRIORITY; and then using whatever’s left over for living expenses, entertainment, and consumables.
I really cannot emphasize this enough: put money into your investments first, before anything else; and only allow yourself to ‘spend’ what’s left over, after your investments have been taken care of.
I’ll say it again: rich people invest their money and spend what’s left; poor people spend their money and invest what’s left – and quite often, there’s nothing left to invest.
3. Rich People Spend Their Spare Time in Three Distinct Ways.
The critical difference number three is that rich people spend their spare time in three distinct ways.
- Creating assets;
- Making money (for example, working on their own business venture, or even putting in overtime hours at work);
- Improving themselves.
Poor people spend their time being entertained, or consuming.
Let’s look at what rich people do first of all: they improve themselves.
And when I say ‘improving themselves’, I mean pretty much any pastime that’s designed to improve yourself as a human being.
That might be something like, going to the gym, or playing a game of basketball, or attending a yoga class, or learning to play the guitar.
It’s not necessarily about sitting down with a pile of self-help books, or ‘getting therapy’: self-improvement is anything that improves your personal value as a human being, whether that’s physical, psychological, mental, emotional, or what-have-you.
On the other hand, poor people quite often spend all their time watching TV, going to the movies, having a drink at the bar, or eating.
And there’s nothing wrong with doing these things up to a certain point; you need time to kick back and relax in order to have balance in your life.
But, you definitely don’t want to be spending too much time in these ways, because they just eat up resources like time and money without giving a heck of a lot back in terms of self-improvement or personal investment.
Usually, poor people do these things – being entertained, or consuming - to excess, while rich people spend a good percentage of their time creating assets, building a business, making improvements to the house, or even something as simple as planting some tomatoes in the back yard.
All of these things are creating assets for yourself, and it’s the mark of the inherently rich person.
4. Rich People Focus on Opportunities.
The fourth critical difference between rich people and poor people is that rich people think about and focus on opportunities, whereas poor people usually think about and focus on obstacles.
I strongly believe that, for most people, if they’re not rich - whether that’s financially, or in their relationships, or in their health - if someone hasn’t got at least one or two of those aspects of their life sorted, chances are that that person has a mindset that’s based on a lot of repetitive negative thoughts.
I don’t want to talk about this in too much depth, but I’ll mention that, for all of us, there are times throughout the day when the brain goes into ‘autopilot’.
And when you’re in autopilot, you might find yourself having a little conversation inside your head about, say, a bill that needs to be paid, or an argument you might have had with your spouse, or a bad situation with a debt-collection agency that you’re experiencing – you get the idea.
Something not so nice is going on, and you find yourself thinking about it over and over again in your head.
To me, someone who’s doing this is wasting a lot of time and energy that could be better spent in helping themselves and thinking positive thoughts.
It makes a huge difference to your life and your wealth to actually train your mind to think in right patterns instead of focusing on obstacles, problems and negative thoughts.
Obviously this isn’t about pretending that obstacles aren’t there; you’ve still got to deal with them as they come up. But you don’t want to focus on them.
Instead, you want to be focusing on the opportunities, and what can happen, as opposed to the obstacles.
5. Rich People Dare to Dream Big.
The fifth critical difference between rich people and poor people is that rich people dare to dream big. Poor people are afraid to dream big, or they feel silly for doing so; and hence, they dream small.
You may have heard this already; lots and lots of famous people have said it: ‘Aim here (points up high) and you’ll arrive here (points slightly lower.) Aim here (points low) and you’ll get here’ (aims at the ground.)
And what I want to know is, why is it that so many people friggin’ aim all the way down here (points low)?!
It’s crazy to me, absolutely crazy. You might say to me, ‘Manish, you’re already making good money, it’s easy for you to dream big.’ And you know what?
I would disagree with that. I was very poor when I first started out, I would even say extremely poor. At one point I was living with my family in a very very small single room apartment in a not so good neighborhood.
I’ve come a long way. When I was in high school I had to go and get a part-time job; and was getting paid very less. So yeah, I’ve come a long way. But even in those days, I dreamed big.
Other people I know, they’ll say something like, ‘I’d love to go to Europe.’ But they don’t really dream it.
Of course, they say, ‘Yes I would love to go’, but actually chasing their dreams – that to me is what makes a proper dream, actually doing something about it.
Even if that’s just saying to yourself, ‘I really want to go to Europe someday; I’m going to put aside ten dollars a week towards that dream.
And perhaps when I get to halfway, I’ll increase that to thirty dollars a week.’ Now, maybe that’s an extreme example, because maybe it would take a long time to get there at that rate; but at least you’re doing something about it to chase your dreams!
Rich people dare to dream big, and they’ll chase their dreams. Poor people think small, and will aim for much smaller goals, and they’ll do less to try and achieve them.
6. Rich People Are Committed to Their Dreams.
Critical difference number six: rich people are committed to their dreams. Poor people are just dreaming about their dreams.
I’ve delved into this a little bit in point five, so I’ll just quickly go over it now; but the thing is that there are some poor people who dream big - but they don’t do anything to commit themselves to actually making that dream a reality. Whereas, rich people are doing everything they can to ensure that their dreams become a reality.
In other words, they’re not ‘just’ dreaming; they dream, but they also do.
7. Rich People Associate With Other Rich People.
Critical difference number seven: rich people associate with other rich and successful people, whereas poor people only associate with poor people.
Note that I’m not saying that anyone who’s poor should just go ditch all their friends! That’s not what I’m saying here.
To me, though, I do believe that it’s very important that you allow yourself to be influenced by people who are where you want to be.
I’m not saying that you need to right away go make a bunch of millionaire friends; that might be difficult, especially if you’re not already doing something to move forwards toward your goal.
But, neither am I saying it’s not doable, though!
Rich people associate with rich and successful people; and that doesn’t necessarily mean in person, it can simply mean that you associate with people by buying their audio CD and listening to it, and letting them impact you with their motivational talking.
Later on, trust me, if you start chasing your dreams and taking active steps towards them, other rich and successful people will want to get to know you.
It’s just infectious. For example, if I meet people who are actively chasing their dreams, and who have taken more than just, say, a few weeks towards achieving them – people who’ve really done a lot of work towards achieving (those dreams) – I really want to get to know these people.
(Those kind of people) are really quite rare, unfortunately, in this world.
Poor people, on the other hand, associate with poor people and tend to take on a very similar belief system to those poor people.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with associating with poor people and having friends like that; most of my friends aren’t rich.
They’re great people, and I love going out and having a good time with my friends and my family; but in saying that, they don’t influence my mindset in a negative way. And that’s really, really important.
In fact, I try my best to inspire them, if I can.
8. Rich People Are Good Learners.
The eighth key difference between rich people and poor people is that rich people are good learners, while poor people think that they’ve learned everything in the world.
It’s amazing that a lot of people out there in society think that they’re great - which is fine - but they don’t want to improve themselves. They think that they’ve already learned everything.
A lot of people are like that: they want to be entertained, but they don’t want to learn any more, they feel like they don’t need to grow and everyone needs to accept them just as they are.
Yes, people need to accept you just as you are; but more people will accept you just as you are if, every day, you’re getting better and better and you’re always being your best self. That’s really important.
9. Rich People Have Undying Self-Belief.
The ninth key difference between rich people and poor people is that rich people have an undying self-belief that allows them to overcome obstacles as they arise; whereas poor people try to protect themselves by not getting their hopes up in the first place (but in the process, they lack the self-belief that’s required to succeed.)
On a personal note, I would say that, sometimes, I have too much self-belief. I believe in myself beyond what is possibly even true.
And by having this undying belief that I can do anything that I truly set my mind to, I’ve managed to achieve things that nobody would ever have believed that I was capable of achieving – and that even I wouldn’t have believed I was capable of achieving until I cultivated my mindset to believe it!
The problem is if you don’t have one of those kinds of mindsets, one where you’re chasing your dreams, then it’s just really difficult to ever get (to that level.)
10. Rich People Understand The Power of Their Mind.
The tenth key difference is that rich people understand the power of their mind, and they focus on developing a strong self-belief and an abundance mindset; whereas poor people often are obstructed by negative self-talk, whereby they focus on what’s going wrong in their lives and what they can’t do, and quite often have a scarcity mindset.
Here’s an example of a scarcity mindset: quite often, for instance, to a poor person, if they’re doing well at something then someone else must be doing badly.
Or if they’re making money, someone else must be losing money. This is completely opposite to an abundance mindset, which says that, in most situations, quite often there is a way of having both parties win. That’s true in a lot of situations.
For example, in a relationship, you could be having an argument, but you don’t have to win that argument and have that person lose; quite often – I’m not saying always, but quite often – there is a way that you can both come out of the situation where you’ve both won, you’ve both grown, you’ve both learned something about each other and now your relationship’s even stronger than it was before.
That’s what having an abundance mindset is all about: the concept that there’s enough for everybody, there’s enough to go around.
Obviously, the same mindset applies to money, too. Quite often you’ll get an obstacle come up, like if you’re starting your own business and you can’t get funding, or something happens and you get a big bill that you can’t afford to pay.
A lot of poor people (in this situation) would just give up, and say, ‘I feel more comfortable working for someone else’ – not that there’s anything wrong with working for other people, don’t get me wrong, but if you’ve committed yourself to starting that business, and you stop at the first obstacle, that’s a real shame.
Rich people, though, understand the power of their mind, they focus on developing a strong self-belief and they make sure they don’t focus on the obstacle.
They take care of (what’s going wrong), but they make sure they’re focusing on where they’re going to be. They’ll find solutions to problems, they develop a really strong self-belief, and they work on their mindset.
You can see a lot of mindset training inside this particular product, Amazing Self, and it’s really important that you go through that because it’ll help you get to where you want to be in life.
11. Rich People Don’t Feel Guilty.
Critical difference number eleven: rich people don’t feel guilty about making money. Poor people see too much money as evil. Quite often this stems back to religious beliefs – or perhaps you’ve got a parent who doesn’t like rich people.
It’s true, there are a lot of people out there who (don’t like rich people.) But you know what?
I’ve met some of them and one thing that I’ve noticed is that over eighty percent of these people are just fantastic people! You’d love them.
They’re down to earth, funny, they care about other people, they do stuff for charity, they’ve got great kids, good moral there’s nothing wrong with them at all.
And to think that rich people are all evil is a terrible generalization. Maybe there are, say, ten percent, or even twenty percent of people who do get rich by ripping others off.
Yes, there are some people who are like that, but to think that every rich person is like that is terrible.
And not only that, but if you feel guilty about making money, well, then you’re never going to make any! You’re never going to be making good money if you feel guilty about making it. All rich people are not evil.
In fact, most people who make good money are actually incredibly fun and rewarding to spend time with.
Most rich people have got to where they are today because they’re positive people who chase their dreams and work really hard to get where they are. They deserve to be where they are.
So that’s point number eleven: rich people don’t feel guilty about making money; poor people quite often see ‘too much money’ as evil, and they let that stop them from even trying (to get rich.)
Those are the eleven critical differences that I see between rich people and poor people.
I hope that you’ve enjoyed it, and I hope that some of these points might be things that you can change about yourself, and hence get yourself on that path towards being exactly where you want to be - financially, and in every other aspect of your life as well.
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