There is something that all rich people do but most others do not do. It is a distinction in their personalities which leads them to accumulate more money than other people do. This article will tell you what it is. And best of all, it is so easy to do that anyone can do it!
Secret of the rich
Many people have a tendency to call rich people greedy, or frugal. The first of these, greedy is a negative word and I wouldn’t call many people greedy. When I think of greedy, I think of people who will go to any length for as little as a dollar. Including hurting other people in the process. Greediness evolves around making money, in a bad way.
Being frugal is a much more positive word to me. Frugality means that one considers very carefully what to spend. That is a big difference with being greegy. Frugality is about spending money, in a good way.
The secret of rich people is that they are frugal. They are not greedy. Most rich people give more to charity than you would ever give. Even if you would make as much money as they would. They do so because they believe in that cause. They don’t go around and spend money on things they cannot afford. While most people do just that.
How people buy
Just like the rich, you can also learn to be more frugal. It isn’t that hard and it takes about 1 minute. What you need to understand first is how you buy things. You might think that you are being rational, but most people are very emotional buyers.
Our society is completely geared to consumerism. Everywhere you look there are things that are trying to speak to your subconscious and getting you to want it. You’ll want something because you neighbour has it, because it is beautiful or because it is in fashion. Hardly ever do people buy something purely because of its function.
A good example is the laptop I am using to write this article. I felt I needed a new laptop because my old one was falling behind (it was over 5 years old). But when I looked around for a new laptop I also wanted one that looked nice. While that is just for show. It is my emotional side that wants a beautiful laptop.
Take just 1 minute…
To overcome the emotions that go into buying something, all you have to do is take 1 minute. Don’t pick up the object you want to buy just yet. Take 1 minute to think about the following:
- The price – is it not too expensive, i.e. can you really afford it?
- Your need – how much do you really need it, i.e. could you cope without it?
- Your use – will you use it often and will you use it for important things?
- Quality – is the item you are buying top quality, i.e. aren’t you buying somehting that will break again easily?
If these are all positively answered, you can buy the item. If not, you can either look for a cheaper brand (works well in the supermarket for example), or delay your purchase until you either have the money or the price goes down (laptops, cars, other things that might not need immediate replacement).
Conclusion
That one minute is what I call the Millionaire Minute. I think I picked that up from a book somewhere, but it has helped me enormously. Today for example, we were almost buying something that we didn’t really need, for our kitchen. My girlfriend said ‘Well, do we really need it? It might even look a bit off in our kitchen’. So in the end we put it back.
That cost us 1 minute of our time and we saved EUR 27,-. Good deal. And let me add to that, as a final free tip, that you can also influence your emotions like my girlfriend did. She said ‘it might look off in our kitchen’, giving the purchase a little bit of a bad taste. We also commented on it that it was pretty expensive. This way we turned our emotions around and could decide not to buy it.
If you are serious about this, grab a notepad and a pen. Draw 2 columns. Name the left one ‘bought’ and the right one ’saved’. Then, for one week, try to be frugal with every purchase you make. If you decide to buy somehing, add the name and price to the ‘bought’ column.
If you bought something but it was a cheaper brand, you write down what you bought in the ‘bought’ column and the difference between the expensive item and the cheaper item in the ’saved’ column. When you do not purchase something because you came back on your decision, you write the full amount down in the ’saved’ column.
You’ll be amazed how much you can save in just a week.
Sat, Jan 23, 2010
Becoming Successful, Self Improvement