10 reasony you/i arent rich.

[alocispepraluger102]

http://www.thestreet.com/_dm/newsanalysis/...n/10345796.html

TheStreet.com

10 Reasons You Aren't Rich

Thursday March 22, 11:30 am ET

ByJeffrey Strain, Special to TheStreet.com

The reason why you aren't a millionaire (or on your way to becoming one) is really quite simple. You probably assume it's because you aren't earning enough money, but the truth is that for most people, whether or not you become a millionaire has very little to do with the amount of money you make. It's the way that you treat money in your daily life.

Here are 10 possible reasons you aren't a millionaire:

1. You Care What Your Neighbors Think: If you're competing against them and their material possessions, you're wasting your hard-earned money on toys to impress them instead of building your wealth.

2. You Aren't Patient: Until the era of credit cards, it was difficult to spend more than you had. That is not the case today. If you have credit card debt because you couldn't wait until you had enough money to purchase something in cash, you are making others wealthy while keeping yourself in debt.

3. You Have Bad Habits: Whether it's smoking, drinking, gambling or some other bad habit, the habit is using up a lot of money that could go toward building wealth. Most people don't realize that the cost of their bad habits extends far beyond the immediate cost. Take smoking, for example: It costs a lot more than the pack of cigarettes purchased. It also negatively affects your wealth in the form of higher insurance rates and decreased value of your home.

4. You Have No Goals: It's difficult to build wealth if you haven't taken the time to know what you want. If you haven't set wealth goals, you aren't likely to attain them. You need to do more than state, "I want to be a millionaire." You need to take the time to set saving and investing goals on a yearly basis and come up with a plan for how to achieve those goals.

5. You Haven't Prepared: Bad things happen to the best of people from time to time, and if you haven't prepared for such a thing to happen to you through insurance, any wealth that you might have built can be gone in an instant.

6. You Try to Make a Quick Buck: For the vast majority of us, wealth doesn't come instantly. You may believe that people winning the lottery are a dime a dozen, but the truth is you're far more likely to get struck by lightning than win the lottery. This desire to get rich quickly likely extends into the way you invest, with similar results.

7. You Rely on Others to Take Care of Your Money: You believe that others have more knowledge about money matters, and you rely exclusively on their judgment when deciding where you should invest your money. Unfortunately, most people want to make money themselves, and this is their primary objective when they tell you how to invest your money. Listen to other people's advice to get new ideas, but in the end you should know enough to make your own investing decisions.

8. You Invest in Things You Don't Understand: Your hear that Bob has made a lot of money doing it, and you want to get in on the gravy train. If Bob really did make money, he did so because he understood how the investment worked. Throwing in your money because someone else has made money without fully understanding how the investment works will keep you from being wealthy.

9. You're Financially Afraid: You are so scared of risk that you keep all your money in a savings account that is actually losing money when inflation is put into the equation, yet you refuse to move it to a place where higher rates of return are possible because you're afraid that you will lose money.

10. You Ignore Your Finances: You take the attitude that if you make enough, the finances will take care of themselves. If you currently have debt, it will somehow resolve itself in the future. Unfortunately, it takes planning to become wealthy. It doesn't magically happen to the vast majority of people.

In reality, it is probably not just one of the above bad habits that has kept you from becoming a millionaire, but a combination of a few of them. Take a hard look at the list, and do some reflecting. If you want to be a millionaire, it's well within your power, but you'll have to face the issues that are currently keeping you from creating that wealth before you will have a chance to call yourself one.

Independent market research, commentary, analysis and news. Learn more.

Edited March 24, 2007 by alocispepraluger102

[Tom Storer]

Number Four fits me: I have no investment goals.

Wealth has never been an ambition for my wife and me, although we both earn middle-class incomes and are therefore better off than many. Now, however, we're starting to worry about retirement and are starting to become goal-oriented. Better late than never.

[ejp626]

Number 7 is curious. Of course other people know more about money than I do, particularly when it comes to tax treatment of income, etc. I can't believe he is calling for people to stop using investment professionals, which would include those running mutual funds if we took it to extremes. I guess the broader point of taking responsibility for your finances and knowing at least the basics is a good one.

[porcy62]

Point 3 does not apply to italian forum members. At least about smoking. Healt care is for free and house's prices depends on different factors then smoking, usually because we use to renow the house after purchasing it.

Generally speaking I agree: for being rich you have to really want to be rich, so you have to care about all the above point.

BTW I don't believe that everybody can get rich simply following the points. For example a mental weak guy, a poor guy without any instruction, and often even an honest guy like a policeman or a a civil servant, will never become rich without some kind of luck or dishonest tricks. Nobody has the same opportunity.

It seems to me the same old story of "American Dream", "Land of Opportunities", etc..

About getting rich have a look at the book: Matthew Josephson "The Robber Barons" (1934), maybe a little dated (and too "roseveltian" for our rep friends), but it whorts a reading.

On the other hands the wealth of a country depends on too many factors to reduce rich people to greedy and bad men as Josephson often seems to do.

Edited March 24, 2007 by porcy62

[J Larsen]

Number 7 is curious. Of course other people know more about money than I do, particularly when it comes to tax treatment of income, etc. I can't believe he is calling for people to stop using investment professionals, which would include those running mutual funds if we took it to extremes. I guess the broader point of taking responsibility for your finances and knowing at least the basics is a good one.

Mutual funds are actually a pretty horrible investment in the long run.

[Jim Alfredson]

How about this one: As a musician, my average take-home pay for a gig is about $125. That's what my dad was making as a musician back in the 70s.

[alocispepraluger102]

this a list of impediments, and certainly no guarantee of success,

the broader interpretation of number seven would seem to be the correct one.

[sheldonm]

How about this one: As a musician, my average take-home pay for a gig is about $125. That's what my dad was making as a musician back in the 70s.

As many of these things are, I look at them as directional. Not written in stone but something to get the common man thinking about the topic. If you're never thinking about your finances(other than worring about not having enough money), that's not good.

....and Jim, that's just not right!

[alocispepraluger102]

How about this one: As a musician, my average take-home pay for a gig is about $125. That's what my dad was making as a musician back in the 70s.

does this mean that the only musicians that survive on music are those that are in the educational field or give a lot of private lessons, or the few that are plugged into the system?

[Eric]

To turn this around - the best way to become a millionaire - is to own part or all of a business. There are no guarantees - I am sure Chuck will attest to that. But working for the man - without a share of the business - will at best lead to a reasonable level of comfort.

[porcy62]

this a list of impediments, and certainly no guarantee of success,

the broader interpretation of number seven would seem to be the correct one.

Actually if you're already seriously rich, you could ignore a lot of the points, w/o make a dent in your heritage. I mean I doubt that Donald Trump or Bill Gates check out their bank account at the end of the month. They have a general stuff for it.

On huge less dimension when I owned a small film production company with some trustes/friends (well, ex-friends ), we had experts that take care of all the aspects we aren't accustomed, they were well payed for it. Consider the ending titles of a movie, all that huge list of credits, no way to knowing all the issues involved in a movie production. The executive producer is a tough job, not easy to find a good one, and not cheap. Same for the distribution and promotion.

Chuck, in his field, probably know well of what I am talking about.

[J Larsen]

To turn this around - the best way to become a millionaire - is to own part or all of a business. There are no guarantees - I am sure Chuck will attest to that. But working for the man - without a share of the business - will at best lead to a reasonable level of comfort.

Depends on the field. Plenty of people from my grad program went on to wall street and became millionaries very quickly.

[porcy62]

To turn this around - the best way to become a millionaire - is to own part or all of a business. There are no guarantees - I am sure Chuck will attest to that. But working for the man - without a share of the business - will at best lead to a reasonable level of comfort.

Partially agree, often you get richer working for the man...and following the points, at least in my case

Edited March 24, 2007 by porcy62

[porcy62]

To turn this around - the best way to become a millionaire - is to own part or all of a business. There are no guarantees - I am sure Chuck will attest to that. But working for the man - without a share of the business - will at best lead to a reasonable level of comfort.

Depends on the field. Plenty of people from my grad program went on to wall street and became millionaries very quickly.

Exactly

[J Larsen]

I grew up extremely poor, about as poor as it is possible to grow up in a major American city. Not homeless, but right on the edge of being there at every moment. There's no way I'd be where I am today without having "sold out to the man". The man has done pretty well by me.

[zen archer]

I have owned a business for 18 years. The simple fact is that America does not care too

much for small business. With self employment tax at 25 % , the constant battle with landlords, verizon,

alarm companies ...you name it, the costs just keep rising !

And my day rate has not changed in at least 12 years!!!!

[J Larsen]

I have owned a business for 18 years. The simple fact is that America does not care too

much for small business. With self employment tax at 25 % , the constant battle with landlords, verizon,

alarm companies ...you name it, the costs just keep rising !

And my day rate has not changed in at least 12 years!!!!

Is that a flat tax rate of 25% for self-employed individuals?

[alocispepraluger102]

How about this one: As a musician, my average take-home pay for a gig is about $125. That's what my dad was making as a musician back in the 70s.

Peer returned to Bristol, Tennessee on July 23, 1927, with a car loaded down with the latest recording equipment and set up a makeshift studio at 410 State Street. On July 25, 1927, Peer planned to begin recording music from the various groups and musicians in the area, but to his dismay, next to no one showed up. The only musicians that appeared were Ernest Stoneman and some of his friends. Stoneman was already well known to Peer and Victor, as he was one of the musicians who had travelled to New York to record music.

Realizing that his sessions were in serious trouble, Peer rushed to the newspaper office and convinced them (part of the legend is that he offered the newspaper editor $100 in cash for this, although this is not verifiable fact) to run a front-page story on the sessions in the next day's newspaper. A reporter came down to the sessions with him and took a picture of Ralph Stoneman singing into a large microphone. The next morning, the article covered the front page of the Bristol Gazette.

The article itself was mostly produced from Peer's description of the goal of the sessions:

In no other section of the south have the pre-war melodies and old mountaineer songs been better preserved than in the mountains of East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia...and it is primarily for this reason that the Victrola Company chose Bristol as its operating base

But the part that really grabbed people was the section about Stoneman and his musicians that finished off the article. It was mentioned that in the previous year, Ernest Stoneman had received $3,600 in royalties from the records which he had made, and that his session musicians would earn as much as $100 a day for their work.

By noon that day, Peer had more musicians on the doorstep of his studio than he could have possibly dreamed of. And they would keep coming for the next week.

[zen archer]

I have owned a business for 18 years. The simple fact is that America does not care too

much for small business. With self employment tax at 25 % , the constant battle with landlords, verizon,

alarm companies ...you name it, the costs just keep rising !

And my day rate has not changed in at least 12 years!!!!

Is that a flat tax rate of 25% for self-employed individuals?

15 % of that is FICA ....most people who are employed pay 7.5 % and their employers pay the other 7.5 %

self employed pay the full 15 % and then your taxes on top of that , which can vary of course because of

deductions.

[J Larsen]

I have owned a business for 18 years. The simple fact is that America does not care too

much for small business. With self employment tax at 25 % , the constant battle with landlords, verizon,

alarm companies ...you name it, the costs just keep rising !

And my day rate has not changed in at least 12 years!!!!

Is that a flat tax rate of 25% for self-employed individuals?

15 % of that is FICA ....most people who are employed pay 7.5 % and their employers pay the other 7.5 %

self employed pay the full 15 % and then your taxes on top of that , which can vary of course because of

deductions.

But if you are not self employed, you only pay FICA on the first $x of your income, where x increases annually. Is that not the case for the self-employed? Are the marginal income tax rates the same? Sorry for all the questions, just a little curious.

[zen archer]

All i know is after i did my taxes this year my accountant said ..." Don't forget you need to pay 15 %

for FICA " ......aaarrrgghhh......i 'am pretty sure that even if i showed $5,000 grand . I would have to

give 15% for FICA.

Are you saying that an employee doesn't start paying Fica until after a certain amount of income ?

[Rooster_Ties]

I'm sure our deciding NOT to have kids will have had a HUGE impact on our financial situation, over the long run. We're not rich, by any stretch, but I know we have WAY more financial options than we otherwise would if we were trying to save for a college fund, to say nothing of the other expenses associated with children.

I also currently have a job in the not-for-profit sector, at less than half the take-home pay of my former IT job (more like 1/3rd, actually) -- which has fortunately had little impact on our quality of life -- since we're such cheapskates to begin with, and were always living below our means -- even when we had more means.

[J Larsen]

All i know is after i did my taxes this year my accountant said ..." Don't forget you need to pay 15 %

for FICA " ......aaarrrgghhh......i 'am pretty sure that even if i showed $5,000 grand . I would have to

give 15% for FICA.

Are you saying that an employee doesn't start paying Fica until after a certain amount of income ?

Sorry to keep bugging you about this - I just find equity in the tax system to be an interesting topic.

It's actually the opposite - you pay FICA on the first $x of income, not on income above $x. Last year I think it was $90K, so that after you had earned $90K you no longer paid FICA. This year I believe it is some random amount, like $92,748 (just made that up). I think the rationale behind this is to make sure everyone puts something into the system, but to not force people who have the means to invest on their own to tie up their money in a low-return compulsory vehicle. I'm not saying I agree with the rationale (I actually strongly disagree), but nonetheless I believe that is the rationale.

[zen archer]

Also , to be rich you have to BUST your ASS. MY good friend has been running his own business since

he was 16 ..He is now 45 and sold his company for 2 million !!.

But he sacrificed a lot in life .......mainly cause of his personality .Very driven , money is his hobby

in fact it's his life . When i go on vacation he doesn't ask me how it was ? he want's to know how much it cost me !

While i was out having fun and going to concert's and traveling , he was working around the clock .

But he is very comfortable ....BUT doesn't have many friend's .

[Uncle Skid]

This year it's $97,500..

It's really 12.4% for self-employed -- the extra 2.6% comes from Medicare, which has no maximum.