6 Key Differences In The Habits Of The Poor And The Rich

Throughout today I have been pondering on this one thing: Why are some people rich and others, poor? After all, everyone was born naked and empty handed and to an extent ‘empty brained’. 

What happened along the way? Where did the poor miss it? Where they just unlucky and unfortunate? Didn’t they have the same number of hours a day? Didn’t they come across the same opportunities as the rich? Weren’t they equally talented as the rich? What happened? All these questions have bothered me a lot and I guess you too may be asking the same questions.

Not many people who are poor, take their time to ask these questions to themselves. They are too caught up in the web of their misfortune that they can hardly sit down to ask important questions to themselves. Most poor people are preoccupied with trying to secure the next meal and hardly do they have time to sit down and ask, “What am I not doing right, which is making me to remain poor?”

In this piece, I share with you my thoughts on why the rich are rich and the poor are poor. Here I will be talking more about the differences in the lifestyles of the poor and the rich while in my piece titled, “Six Key Differences in the Philosophies of The Poor and The Rich” I share more about the differences in their approach to life.
 
It is my desire that as you go through this post, you will adopt the right lifestyle that will set you up for the kind of wealth you desire. I employ you to take time and think deeply about each of these differences. They are:
 

1.    Poor People Have Strong Hands And Soft Brains; 

       Rich People Have Strong Brains And Soft Hands.

A group of people work hard with their hands in order to acquire wealth. They are always in jobs that require much physical work. They are the ones who till and toil the earth. When you shake their hands, your hands hurt. Those are the poor.  The strength of the poor lies in their hands. Unfortunately they pride in their physical strength.
 
Another group of people work hard with their heads to acquire wealth. They subject their brains to hard labor. They never allow their brains to ponder on menial things. They feed their minds with knowledge and wisdom and build rich mentalities. When you meet them, you are always challenged by what they are able to see which others can’t see. 

When others see problems, they see opportunities. While others see needs, they see gaps to be filled. Merely looking at them, you are challenged. By the look on their faces, you can tell that they rule the world. Those are the wealthy. Those are the rich.
 
If you engage your hands with serious work for 12 hours each day, you could remain poor, but if you engage your brain with serious work for only 1 hour each day, you can hardly be poor. This is wisdom.
 
Think about it. To what extent are you putting your brain to use? What do you think about? Your mind is the wealth center of your body. You can convert what goes through it to real cash. God was very just, that is why He gave everyone a brain which is capable of thinking. If you allow yours to go to sleep and you become poor, it is your making.
 

2.    Poor People Sell Their Time Very Cheaply; 

       Rich People Sell Their Time Very Expensively

“Every day is a bank account, and time is our currency. No one is rich, no one is poor, and we’ve got 24 hours each.” Christopher Rice
 
Time is one resource shared equally to every man. In a few days the world’s richest man, Bill Gates will be 58. When he was 20 years old, he started Microsoft. On his 30th birthday, Microsoft went public and at 31, he became the youngest self-made billionaire in history, owning 45% of his stock. At 39 he became the richest American and at 40, he became the world’s richest individual.
 
If you live for 31 years and you are poor, you have lived for more than sixteen million, three hundred and five thousand, one hundred and twenty minutes and equal to the number of minutes Bill Gates had lived when he became the youngest billionaire. The difference between you two is in how you traded your 16, 305, 120 minutes.
 
Poor people sell their time cheaply to unnecessary socialization and unproductive activities while rich people are very careful about trading their time. They don’t spend their time on things that don’t add value to their lives. They are very conscious that the very passing minutes of each day are the raw materials of wealth. They therefore go ahead to intentionally convert their time to wealth. Even when the rich do something fun, they do it intentionally, and have very good reasons for it. Some of them create wealth out of fun.
 
How do you trade your time - cheaply or expensively? Do you have a plan for your every day? Whatever takes most of your time today will determine what you will be in some years to come.
 

3.    Poor People Go For Money; 

       Rich People Go For Knowledge

“Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs” Zig Ziglar
 
Many people make the mistake to think that the rich go after money. I use to think so too. Now I know better. Rich people have discovered something more treasurable than money. They have discovered that knowledge is the greatest treasure that exists. They spend money to buy knowledge and eventually the knowledge they have bought brings to them the riches they spent, many times over. This is one big secret of the rich.
 
Knowledge to the rich is not all about going to school to sit in a classroom and learn mathematics. To the rich, knowledge is found in books, hard copy or soft copy. So they search for it and pay any price to have it. 

They don’t go after any knowledge that is not particularly useful to them. That is waste of time; remember that they don’t trade their time cheaply. There are so many educated but poor people. People who spent so many years of school learning what cannot be converted to wealth.
 
Think about the things you are devoting precious time to learn about. How useful are they to you. Pay any price to acquire relevant priceless knowledge and you will never be poor.
 

4.    Poor People Consume; 

       Rich People Produce

In every society, there are producers and consumers. Producers are always looking for things that are missing in the society and when they discover them, they go on to make them available. Consumers are there to enjoy the things that have been produced. Unfortunately the world has a huge population of consumers and just few produces.
 
Check the profiles of the world’s richest people and see that they are always notorious for producing something. The rich naturally hate just being consumers. They want to author something; they want to introduce a new thing. Then money cannot help but follow them.
 
When all you do is consume what others produce, you can hardly amount to much in life because you kill the creativity in you. What attracts wealth is what you have in you which you make use of. If you want to be rich, start looking out for needs and problems and decide to work at solving them.
 

5.    Poor People Eat Their Seed; 

       Rich People Plant Their Seed

“If what you have in your hand is not enough to be a harvest, make it a seed” Anonymous.
 
It baffles me when I see people make a few millions and get so excited that they spend all they have made on things that don’t matter. They spend on luxuries.
 
The rich have financial intelligence. They don’t just know how make wealth but also know how to multiply their wealth. They are very focused and hardly moved by the little money they make. I can assure you that there is no day Bill Gates or Warren Buffet wakes up and feels he has made enough to stop making more money. He wants to make one more dollar every time he is able to do so. This is the drive that makes him keep planting in order to harvest more.
 
Rich people believe in investing their money. When they do so, they are planting it and if they plant it in the right soil, the result is always a great harvest.
 
 If you eat your opportunities, you will never be rich. If you make use of them, you will become so wealthy. It is as simple as that.
 

6.    Poor People Spend More Money To Live; 

       Rich People Spend Less Money To Live

I usually spend time thinking about the spending life of poor and rich people. One interesting thing that strikes me is the way poor people spend money to survive. Poor people prefer to buy things in bits because they want to secure cash for the next day’s uncertainties. They go to the market daily to purchase the same thing. So they end up spending much money to survive.
 
Rich people go to the market fewer times, and buy what they will use for a long time. So they buy in bulk quantities and so buy at a cheaper rate. At the end of the day they spend less than the poor, who earn less than them.
 
Did you know that if there were no poor people, there will be no rich people? The rich exist because of the poor. It is the poor who make the rich richer; by the way they live. Check your lifestyle to see if you are contributing to the wealth of the rich. I also encourage you to read my post titled; "Six Key Differences In The Philosophies Of The Rich And The Poor"
 
I hope some of the points above have been eye-opener to you. If so, make your contribution by commenting below.
 

By Kadzem Claude

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