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Have you ever wondered how some people get so rich? What is it that allows a person to earn five, ten, fifty thousand pounds a day? The lazy answer is that they exploited a load of people and trod on their own mother’s neck to get to where are. But that isn’t a helpful answer to the question. More often than not it’s because they have certain money habits that help them make it to the top.
So what are they?
Successful people have an innate ability to manage their money effectively. If they do take out payday loans, they use them as a tool to make more money in the future. Granted, there are some people, like Kanye West, who earn a lot of money and blow it all. But these are few and far between.
The reason for this is that the character traits that net you a lot of money are very similar to those that help you manage your money. Things like the deferral of gratification are critical if you want to be successful in life. Putting off the things you want further into the future helps you build your wealth today. Plus, having a financial cushion, should your business go under, makes taking risks easier.
People who don’t make a lot of money often don’t have long term goals. They might have short term goals, like going out for the weekend or making it to the end of the working day. But they lack any overarching goals or narrative in their life.
According to Entrepreneur, 95 percent of high achievers set their own life goals. But they don’t just think about them. They make them real by writing the down and visiting them on a regular basis. You can follow in their footsteps. Write down what you want to achieve for the next day, week, month or year in the morning or in the evening. Do this, and you’ll feel more prepared for the challenges that await you in your work and your life.
Watching TV is fun, but it is rarely informative. Often what we see on TV is a watered down, official version of the “truth”, rather than what’s happening in the real world. In fact, TV can make us less informed about our world and what’s going on around us. Just look at the fiasco in the recent presidential election. As with Brexit, all of the mainstream media polls predicted the opposite result to what we got. That’s twice now that the public has been led astray.
Rich people don’t bother with TV. According to Thomas Corley, author of books on success, 67 percent of wealthy people watch TV for an hour or less every day. Only 6 percent of the wealthy ever watch reality TV shows, compared to more than three-quarters of the poor. Corley also found that 86 percent of people with money love to read, and almost all of them actively work on self-improvement every day.
Warren Buffett is one of the richest people in the world and probably the wealthiest investor on the planet. He says that rich people have an uncanny ability to say “no” to other people. In fact, if they are asked to do something, their answer is almost always “no.”
Why is this? Well, one of the reasons for it is that saying yes to everything quickly robs people of their time. If rich people were to accept every job that comes their way, they’d never end up with any time to pursue their goals. Rich people understand that increasing their productivity and getting to where they want to go takes time. They understand that of all their resources, time is the most precious. And as a result, they refuse to allow their time to be pillaged by the requests of other people. Saying “no” is sometimes difficult. But fundamentally, it is just another tool in the toolbox of rich people that helps them to achieve their goals.
Some people are so brilliant that they don’t have to work solidly all day, every day to make their visions become a reality. But most wealthy people aren’t highly gifted savants; they’re regular people who just happened to work hard. Top entrepreneurs tend to put in an enormous amount of time into their businesses. Elon Musk reportedly works anywhere between 80 and 100 hours a week. Other hardworking individuals, like LBJ, are reported to have put in more than sixty hours a week. According to Musk, a solid work ethic is essential for those who want to have major success.
Rich people tend to have great networks and contacts. But why exactly is networking so important? Most people would say that networking is a great way to land a new job or get preferential treatment. But that’s not the whole story. Research has also indicated that networking makes rich people more innovative. When you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. The more contacts you have, the more ideas, you’ll be exposed to. And the more ideas you’re exposed to, the more imaginative you’ll be. Rich people don’t criticize or complain about other people. Instead, they listen to what they say in an empathetic and curious way. Programs like Dragon’s Den give a distorted impression of what wealthy people are like in the real world.
How did president-elect Trump manage to earn so much money? He puts it down partly to getting up early. But he’s not the only successful person who gets up early. Barack Obama, Larry Schultz and Tim Cook are also early risers.
Getting up early comes with a tonne of benefits. It means that you can have personal time, catch up with the news and exercise more. It means that you get a big head start on the day, making you happier and more productive.