Rich People Already Know How Broke You Are “ The Neighborhood Finance Guy

We Already Know You Don’t Have Money

First of all, I need to start this conversation with a bit of blunt truth. Rich people know how poor you are. It’s kind of easy to spot. It stems from what you say, what you don’t say and what you should have said.

Sorry if this comes as a shock but you aren’t fooling anyone. Your frantic statements about where to invest ASAP. The strange pause and break when I ask you about your Net Worth. The way your eyes twitch and even the way your hand shakes, it’s easy to tell. For some reason, people forget that I was taught the art of interrogation in the Marines.

Besides that, the rest of the data points are all online. The photo shoots, the hair and the makeup are temporary filters which eventually come off. The clothes and the shoes are all attempts not to look poor but actually cost you more wealth with every swipe.

To make matter worse, poverty can last more than your lifetime. It can be negatively inherited by your kids or even your grand kids.

Just some up front advice, Father Time is neither generous nor fair so we definitely need to be mindful. Don’t waste your time trying desperately to impress others who aren’t so easily impressed with even themselves.

Try Not to Get Emotional

Emmie Martin wrote70% of Americans consider themselves middle class-but only 50% ar, in which she looked at the 2017 Northwestern Mutual survey and a report from Pew Research Center. To make it plain, most people thought they were Middle class whereas they never made a middle class income. Additionally, for some strange reason married people naturally perceive themselves as middle class in comparison to single people.

To quote Republican Uncle Dave, “Money is emotional”, however Wealth Management is logical AF.

This is likely why Dave Ramsey is so rich and opulent. He is merely selling the easiest form of manipulation back to people, their own fear. It’s not necessarily the fear of debt but the fear of being found out.

Nothing scares people more than others knowing how much they make, how much debt they have, and how much they are living paycheck to paycheck in between lavish trips to nowhere.

How do you fix your wealth equation?

By taking more than just baby steps and growing up.

Having Savings Will Give You More Confidence than Spending

Savings, more specifically investing is one of the only ways out of the rat race. If you aren’t investing today, you can be making a million dollar mistake for tomorrow. And you really can’t afford being poor in retirement.

The table below shows how you can invest monthly at the historical average of 8% so you can withdraw using the 4% rule.

Being Knowledgeable Has the Side Effect of Less Anxiety

For example, investing in the market.

At this rate, you can’t afford not to invest in the market. When the market is down 20–30% that’s the time to buy. Why? Because the market generally recovers. We saw it in March 2020 and watch it go up through December 2020.

Most don’t know why to, where to or even how to invest. Here’s some quick facts with the full excel version available in the resources section for download.

Since 2011–2020, the major US indices that business news cover daily have been up over 16%. That means you could have invest in known US brands and made way more than the 2% that even high interest savings offered back in 2019. It’s just that simple. Budget and manage your money to get in the game.

With most savings down to less than 0.70% and local banks kicking out 0.01%, you would be a fool not to take the free money instead. If you don’t know where to invest, I’m a massive fan of dividend investing, through what I dubbed the Zodiac Portfolio. Read the link below:

Of course, the market will rise and fall but you should be in there for the long run.

You are Way Too Emotional, Fix it!

Most people are terrified because they don’t understand the terms being thrown around by the nerds. To make matters worse, some people act like they know in fear that someone will figure out that they don’t know.

Remember that knowledgeable investors and real rich people, already know how broke you are. This makes it easier so that you don’t have to spend your hard earned money on pretending.

Find your true version of happiness and invest in that.

Save to cover your future expenses and Invest the difference because rich people aren’t pretending.

That’s how you truly beat poverty in your lifetime. It’s also how you defeat the fear of people finding out that you really don’t know yourself. Turns out the money is merely a tool.

Originally published at https://theneighborhoodfinanceguy.com on March 10, 2021.