Transcription
In today's day and age, everybody wants to be rich. They want tons of money. They want the rich lifestyle that they see on TV. They want to be able to spend; they want to be able to eat out, drive fancy cars, have, you know, crazy houses, and they just want to be rich, right? This key term, “rich,” is something that we see all over social media, and I—I hate to break it to you—the goal shouldn't be to be rich; it should be to be wealthy.
And that might sound like a stupid, “Oh, these things mean the same thing.” They absolutely do not. Being rich and being wealthy are not only descriptors of quantity, but they’re—they’re both, you know, qualitative, meaning numerical differences, but there’s also qualitative differences in how we perceive somebody that’s rich and how we perceive somebody that’s wealthy. And if you translate those into actually like quality characteristics, they’re really important, right? You don’t want to have the quality characteristics of somebody that’s rich; you would rather have—and well, being rich isn’t a bad thing, right, especially if you’re—you know, if you have no money, right, but you really want to achieve wealth. And that can be—like, when you think about somebody that’s truly wealthy, you know, typically you associate somebody that’s accumulated that amount of income with somebody that’s earned that income and done something and impacted society to earn that income, and usually that also comes with, you know, wisdom and all these other aspects. So the goal should be to be wealthy and not to be rich.
And in this video, I’m going to talk about some of the differences, and I think that there’s a huge amount of information, a wealth of knowledge, let’s say, on why these two terms are—should be diff—should be different, and—and I promise you guys, you know, if you’ve come across this video, watch until the end; you will learn something. But you might reset your frame in what you’re trying to achieve in your life, because not only is wealth and richness, or how rich you are—whatever the adjective is—different for every single person, but the way you can achieve it and how you need to achieve it is different, and there are some mindsets and some goals, and I’m not trying to coach you or be any like, do anything like that; we’re just going to look at the data here, and we’re going to look at the characteristics—what both really mean.
Before you guys click away from the video, please consider subscribing. There’s a wealth of information on this channel—we’re going to keep using that word—about entrepreneurship, personal finance, retiring early—everything you need to know, you will learn something. Please hit the Subscribe button; it’s absolutely free to do, and it helps me grow the channel. I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you. But let’s jump right into it. Being rich is cool, right? It means that you have a lot of money, but it’s typically also noted that being rich is something that you can, let’s say, achieve in a lifetime, we’re going to call it, right, where wealth is maybe something that you achieve outside of a lifetime, or whatever it really means. Basically, rich is kind of that middle step between having nothing and wealth, right? You become rich, and then you become wealthy, right? But—but what being rich really means in today’s social media lens is driving fancy sports cars and spending lots of money, which are all good things, but they are really just aspects of Lifestyle inflation.
When you see somebody that’s truly wealthy, or maybe they’re just rich in their accumulation of money, but they don’t have this massive lifestyle inflation—a great example is looking at what people earn and how much they spend and how they feel. Something that most people don’t realize is that people that make like $1 to $250,000 in the US, you know, one out of every two of them are generally living paycheck to paycheck, and that might shock you, but their life costs so much that that rich label doesn’t really mean anything. A great other example is: I live in Boston, Massachusetts. What money is worth here is very different than everywhere else in the country, even other high cost of living areas. Like, to compare Boston to, let’s say, Los Angeles, they’re not even comparable anymore; Boston costs so much more to live in than something like Los Angeles. And then when you compare it to a low cost of living area, it gets ridiculous. But what I guess—what I’m saying is: when you tell me a million dollars, for me living in Boston, doesn’t mean that much; I can’t do anything with a million dollars; I can’t retire; I can’t even get 50% to retirement. You cannot retire on $2 million in Boston, right? And for everyone that says, “Oh, people do it,” no, they leave Boston and they do it, and the people that do retire in Boston have much, much more than $2 million. But that term is relative. So I guess what I’m saying is: being rich is living in relativity, right? So somebody could have $10 million and be rich.
What wealth is is having maybe—let’s say—maybe it could be more abundant, or it could be $10 million, but be living in a low-cost living area. What I—what I see wealth as, and I think what people that are achieving success see wealth as, is the abundance mindset when it comes to income and money—money and what you have, but also this level of comfort in what you’re doing and basically, you know, a true vision on what it means to have that money, right? So somebody that’s, let’s say, has $5 million but doesn’t have a million-dollar car is going to—is going to live very differently than somebody that has $5 million and, you know, 20% of their assets are tied up to this depreciating asset—this million-dollar car—and maybe it costs them an extra $100,000 a year to maintain that car, right? The person’s life is going to be radically different, and if you look at person’s life and how that their money grows, let’s say, in the market with average returns, it’s going to be radically different. That person with a car might, you know, after 10 years only have, you know, $8 million, and that person that doesn’t have that really expensive car might have $20 million; you just don’t know, but there is a radical difference in just the math.
Now, beyond the math of what this really means, being wealthy, you know, comes with the connotation of impact, right? When somebody achieves wealth, they’ve done it; they’ve made it for themselves. Sure, there’s familial wealth and pass on and stuff like that, but generally, most millionaires are made, right? We know that most millionaires—the vast, vast majority of millionaires in the United States today are self-made millionaires. Usually that’s through real estate, but a lot of what comes with that is wisdom; it’s practice; it’s mindset; it’s all these things that mean enjoying and taking advantage of the money that you’ve accumulated. And I think the difference in what you’re trying to achieve and what it really means is: when people are trying to become rich, right, they’re looking to spend. The idea and the term “becoming rich” is typically, you know, a term used for somebody that wants something right now. When you become wealthy, you want something, but typically what you want is time. When you will become rich, right—when you’re achieving to become—when you’re looking to become rich, you want to buy something that isn’t time, right? And I’m not saying you need to change your things, right? I want wealth, but I also love cars, and I fully intend on owning some pretty expensive cars in my lifetime—you knock on wood, making sure nothing goes wrong—but a lot of the other aspects of my life don’t hold importance; I don’t have materialistic—now I’m not saying you have to change, but you have to understand that if you are—if you want every nice thing in life, which is totally okay if you want to work for it and buy it, you’re achieving one goal, right? But you have to understand that you’re forfeiting this other goal of wealthiness, and you’re—you know, the idea of wealth and the idea of comfort and safety and all of those things which can’t necessarily be achieved on the other two. And I understand I’m making these polar different things, and they’re both good things; if you can achieve either of them, you’re in a good place generally, but I just want to—I just want people to understand that generally the demographic that watches this channel doesn’t understand that there’s a difference, and there’s a lot of resources and people that say different things, and there’s a lot of people on YouTube itself that say, “You know, I’m becoming wealthy; I’m looking to achieve wealth,” and they don’t live that lifestyle, right? They’re renting a place for $40,000 a month so that they can make YouTube videos in some crazy country with some crazy view, and they drive a Ferrari or Lamborghini, and that person’s like 20—in the best return years of their life on the market. I don’t care how much money they have; if they were actually smart, they wouldn’t be doing those things. It would be very hard to convince any logical person that they have enough money at that time to be able to make those sacrifices. Don’t get me wrong; it is true: if you’re 20 years old and you’ve got $50 million, go spend that money. But these people have—you know, even if they’re really successful, let’s say—let’s say they run a course and they sell it to you—maybe you guys—maybe you guys don’t get any value out of it, but they make a ton of money, and let’s say of $2 million, right, at the age of 20. It is stupid to spend that money; if you just invested it for even just a couple years, at the age of 20, pull out your gains or pull out like a portion of your gains, go buy the things that you wanted to buy; delay your gratification a little bit; you’re going to have real wealth. But what’s happening is they’re not—they’re achieving this rich social media lifestyle, and it’s really, really, really hurting them.
So the intent of this video is to: one, make you aware that these two things are different; also make you aware that the people that are finding success that you’re watching—there are the people that understand one path, and there’s the people that don’t understand that there’s two paths. And if they don’t understand the difference between being rich and wealth and the actual practice of what they’re preaching to you, you need to be careful, right? I mean, as a consumer, right, if you’re going to take advice from somebody that’s telling you how to make all this money, but then you see them making all these money mistakes, how trustworthy are they actually? And maybe it’s not trustworthy in that they’re going to scam you, but how knowledgeable are they actually? And that’s the big question. And I know that social media perceives like this shine and glamour and all that stuff as, you know, things that should be like sexy and things that you should achieve, but you know, the flexes are on the—you know, on the books, I guess, for a lot of us, right? You know, I haven’t achieved a lot of money, but I own a house in Boston, right? And it’s a really crappy house; you know, it’s nothing super nice, but I will say that, you know, somebody else might live in the South, and I might have a Lamborghini, right? The only difference is their Lamborghini is losing their money, and my crappy little house that I live in is getting me money, but it’s a house in a high cost of living area and arguably the most expensive place to live, not just in the United States, but in the world. You know, sure, like I don’t mean to like flex that, but I’m just saying that there’s a difference, right? And you know, when you put your money together and you put it where your mouth is in action, there is a difference, and I think that, you know, looking at this, hopefully you’ll understand the two views. I’m not going to give you like a road map of what you need to do, but I just want you to understand that there is a radical difference, and that, you know, what’s the best way to say this—that a lot of what you guys are going to consume are going to tell you, “Become rich,” right? And those people you need to now look critically at what they’re doing and what they’re saying, because those aren’t the ones that are success. When—who do you think of when you think about wealth? You’re thinking about Elon Musk, who—you know, for better or for worse—people can hate or love him, but he’s wealthy. Bill Gates, right? And these are people that—like, for better or for worse—what they’re doing right now, they have changed the world, right? Who would you rather model yourself as: somebody that’s made a couple million dollars selling you courses that could be questionable in whether or not they’re taking advantage of you and spending all their money and in maybe 10 years they’re going to be like back to the drawing board, “I lived this awesome 10 years of my life, but I don’t have that money anymore,” or you looking—looking at somebody it has achieved a level of success where they get to choose what they want to do with their time, right? Maybe they can go out and spend the money, but they’ve delayed their gratification to the point where they have the option to spend their money, but they’ve also bought their time back.
And I also think the one last thing that I’ll leave you guys with: that no matter where you are, you won’t understand what time is worth until you’ve worked hard, and it’s not an age thing, right? It’s a—it’s an effort thing, right? And if you guys don’t understand that time is worth more than money, right now—I’m telling you right now, and at this point very few of you guys are watching at this point in the video—but if you don’t understand that time is worth more than money, you haven’t worked hard, and I want that to hurt, right? Cuz I’m not wrong, right? And the only way for me to prove you—for you to prove me wrong, I guess, is to work hard, get to the point where you basically agree with me. So if you think that money is worth more than time, you’ve never worked hard; go out, work hard, and your mindset will change. But in working hard and that mindset changing, you will accumulate money, and it’s like—that’s the most beautiful thing about effort and what you want out of life and achieving it. I’m going to leave you guys with that; I’ll see you guys in the next video.