Poor People Seem to Have a Lot of Misconceptions about the Rich. Find Out What Some of Them Are.
Hello Aluxers and welcome back to another fascinating Sunday Motivational article, especially since this one puts the two ends of the wealth spectrum head to head. The bottom 20% and even most of the middle class have this distorted idea about what wealth means, mostly because they never got to actually interact with real money.
All they know about wealth is based on what they see on the gram, movies or tv.
So we thought this is a great opportunity to address some of these misconceptions.
As usual, here is the video version of this article:
Here are 15 Things Poor People Think Rich People Do, that the rich actually don’t!
1
Poor People Think the Rich Drive Ferraris & Lamborghinis
You want the truth, although both brands make incredible looking cars, both are a pain in the rear to drive as your daily car. Interiors are super uncomfortable, little to no storage space and they draw too much attention.
Real wealth doesn’t want the attention!
It’s usually the new money that are the Attention-whores, an uneducated athlete or tv-personality who just scored their first big paycheck and decided to blow through it because in their mind money will keep on coming.
Don’t get us wrong, we love the experience of driving a lambo or a ferrari from now and then, but in our experience, rich people drive high-end cars, focused on comfort and security. You’re more likely seeing a multi-millionaire driving a tesla or a volvo than a McLaren.. Even if the doors go up that way.
2
Poor People Think Rich People Wear Gucci (or Other Flashy Brands)
The extension to the previous point is flashy-in-your-face fashion. Here’s the truth on this:
Luxury fashion brands are paying celebrities – you know… the folks poor people look up to- to wear their products with the single goal of getting poor people to associate their brands with success and struggle their way into buying overpriced goods.
Luxury brands used to be for older people, until the marketing folks understood they can sell to the young and the poor!
The rise in consumption – what used to be luxury brands – is actually driven by western teens, millennials and China & India’s middle class. 55% of Gucci’s sales were made to consumers younger than 35
That’s why Bernard Arnault, the owner of LVMH, is -as of writing this article- the richest man in the world. Yep, the Louis V guy overtook Jeff Bezos.
When you see celebrities on the gram flexing in Gucci or whatever… these folks are getting paid or receiving the clothes for free. They’re taking money from you by putting this idea in your head that a pair of sneakers will make you happy and others will respect you because of it.
Poor people stay poor by trying to look rich.
If you want to know other ways how the poor pretend to look rich, check out 15 Ways Poor People Try To Look Rich.
3
Poor People Think Rich People Know Celebrities
Speaking of celebrities, it’s interesting when you realise the only wealth poor people see is the one on tv, thus associating celebrities with wealth. By the simple rule of association, if you’re rich, you must know celebrities because you’re some kind of celebrity yourself.
Horrible.
Most rich people have friends that are doing cool things, but it’s more like the exception than the rule. Most of the wealth is made, kept and growing in very boring enterprises. The average rich individual owns a boring company: they install roofs, have a zipper factory in china or move things from one place to another for profit.
The more rich people you meet, the more you realise just how distorted your view about what it actually takes to make money. The owner of a logistics company makes more money per year than your favorite tv-series actor.
4
Poor People Think Rich People Have a Masterplan to Keep Everyone Else Poor
Believe it or not, the rich want the poor to have more money!
Why? Because the more money the poor have, the more they are willing to engage in commerce.
Instead of thinking in terms of poor, rich & the middle class, think of it as: BUILDERS & CONSUMERS
Some people make things that other people buy and use.
Almost everyone rich is a builder. If you’re unable to build or create value you’ll never be rich.
5
Poor People Think the Rich Pay More in Taxes Than They Do
This is a touchy subject, but we had to put it here, because there’s more than just the sub-title to the issue.Yes. Rich People pay substantially more in yearly taxes than the poor. This is a fact.
What the middle class needs to realise is that the rich actually pay less of a percentage than they do.
Here’s a super simple example:
If you work for a company, your taxes are withdrawn directly from your paycheck. Depending on your industry it’s usually between 30 to 50% that the state keeps from what you generate if you add it all together.
The rich and their companies actually get a different set of rules when it comes to taxation that allows them to be tax free as long as they keep hiring people like you. The state is happy to allow the rich to do this, because they’re then taking more money from you, the poor and the middle class.
Last Sunday we did a mind-blowing video where we exposed all the ways rich people use to pay close to 0% in taxes. We strongly recommend you check it out:
6
Poor People Think Rich People Are Good At Saving Money
This confusion came from a movement in the self-help community where the influencers of the time perpetuated this idea that Rich People become rich by not spending money on coffee and putting that $1 a day in the stock market.
Poor people are amazing at making the most out of the little money they have. The problem is, they don’t have enough to save.
Rich people are actually super bad at saving money. They’re ideologically, not interested in saving money, because money saved doesn’t grow.
Rich people focus on increasing income, poor people focus on cutting down expenses!
As long as you live, if you remember this one thing, you will be able to build wealth. It’s the one rule that made us rich.
We’re now able to save & invest up to 90% of our income.You can’t do that unless you blow up the amount of money coming in.
If you suddenly made 10 times more money than you do right now and were disciplined enough to not alter your lifestyle, you would be able to invest almost all the difference in income generating assets.
Poor people think rich people are good at saving money, when actually the rich are good at investing money!
7
Poor People Think the Rich Have All the Answers
Everyone assumes that just because you were good at figuring out the money part, you would be good at everything else. This is false.
Sure, there are transferable traits, but it takes more than being good with numbers to solve the many problems life presents.
What is the fascination people have with the opinion of celebrities in terms of international politics, social causes or airborne diseases?!
Life is all about context and expertise. There is not magic key that opens every door.
8
Poor People Think Rich People Are Less Stressed Than Them
Something most people don’t realise is just how many more things you have to deal with every single day as your wealth increases.
Every single investment you make comes with a price: It will make you money and in exchange it will take up a piece of your mind.
The more things you’re juggling the more stressed out you become.
All of it, the empire everyone is looking to build, will rest indirectly on your shoulders. People’s livelihoods will depend on your ability to make decisions and you better make the right ones, or everyone else will suffer because of your inability.
This is why people in the business environment age up faster. It’s also why they’re into supplements and life-prolonging practices.
9
Poor People Think Rich People Spend Their Day Drinking Cocktails on the Beach
If you ask the average person, what they would do if they were super-rich, they would all tell you about traveling the world and sipping cocktails on the beach. This is an idea sold to you by the investment funds in the 70s & 80s who had their marketing teams redefine retirement as a continuous collection of beaches and margaritas.
Rich people find out the hard way that it’s all bullshit.
The average executive spends 23 hours per week in meetings. (according to Leslie A. Perlow, Harvard Business Review)
This is fueled by the fact that on instagram and other social networks you only see the pics from the 7 day holiday, so we associate a person with the only pieces of information we have.
10
Poor People Think the Rich Never Worry about Money
Wanna know a secret? Every rich person out there is scared out of their mind that they will somehow screw up and lose it all. That’s why the rich are usually a tad more paranoid than everyone else.
In all honesty, it’s understandable. You’ve worked most of your life to build something of value and now you’re working hard to preserve it.
Money is always on your mind, because most of your life has been ruled by the pursuit of money. When you spend so much time focused on one thing, it becomes part of your identity.
Also, when you have money, there’s a lot more at stake.
Money is a multiplier for anxiety! Because now you have something to lose.
You know what doesn’t increase anxiety? Knowing that you have subscribed to our channel. It allows us to keep doing what we do.
11
Poor People Think Rich People Have No Real Skills
How often do you see regular people look down on the rich when it comes to “get your hands dirty” type of activities?!
This misconception comes from the fact that you never see anyone rich changing their own oil on their car or washing clothes and cleaning the house.
The truth is, these are very basic skills that anyone can do or learn quite quickly. This is why these skills have a fairly low economic value: if anyone can do it, it’s easy to find someone who will.
Once you acquire a high-value skill, you are more inclined to monetize that one and outsource everything else to people who are charging less than you make per hour.
If you want to learn what skills millionaires master, check out:
12
The Poor Think That the Rich Want to Be on Forbes List
This is one of those hilarious things that we’ve learned as our wealth increased.
When you’re just starting out, you have people you need to prove wrong. Being in the Forbes list or on the cover of a profile magazine is something that blows your horn and proves wrong the 7th grade teacher who called you an idiot that one time.
As you mature from a financial perspective, you start to question if the positive PR you’re getting is worth all the messages and people coming after your money.
The truth is:
There are some people who pay to be on the cover of Forbes and there are some people who pay not to be mentioned!
13
Poor People Think Rich People Don’t Help the Poor
This is because you expect rich people you don’t know to just give you shit you haven’t earned or don’t deserve.
Almost everything of value in society is the brainchild of someone who is now rich because they helped you solve a problem.
That’s what the average person who tweets #eattherich on twitter on their iphone doesn’t understand… you’re making apple and twitter money as you’re complaining about their wealth.
Remember when you had to memorize everything? How you can google things. Thank you Sergey & Larry.. You added so much value to society that we’re ok with you having a nice house.
Every time you create a company you need to hire people. This creates jobs and jobs allow people to keep their lights on.
What the poor are expecting of the rich is to give them money directly with no questions asked.
14
Poor People Think the Rich Are Pretentious
How many times do you hear poor people complain that the rich are Bougie?
Here’s the metaphor for this entire way of thinking: once you learn what’s in the chicken nuggets… you no longer want chicken nuggets.
And if you do, you better get the real-chicken ones.
The rich care about quality and care about time. If we’re gonna eat, might as well eat well.
If we’re gonna talk, might as well have an interesting conversation.
This sounds pretentious only to people who settle in mediocrity.
15
Poor People Think Rich People Have Everything
When every problem you have in your life is a money problem, those who have money seem like they have it all.
The moment you fix the money problem you’re left with everything else.
Rich people are surrounded by other rich people, so money is not a differentiator. They deal with the same type of societal pressures. Kids get bullied, the investors want you to work harder, there’s not enough time to reconnect with your spouse and so on.
Jim Carrey said put it wonderfully when he said:
I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.
Question:
And that’s a perfect moment to begin a conversation on this: What is one thing you really thought would change your life until you were finally able to afford it and the magic went away?
We’re really interested in the way you guys have experienced this and we’ll make sure to give hearts to the 5 comments with the most valuable answers!
