My goal is to look homeless and have a lot of money. And it turns out that's actually a good strategy to have a lot of money. I mean, you don't have to look homeless, but you shouldn't try to look rich. Because most likely, if you do try to look rich, you'll have way more stress, way less money. I think just be...
more unhappy. First reason why it's important to look poor is because it's easier to catch up if you don't keep up. You always have the newest phone, the nicest clothes, the brand new car every year just because you like the smell of new leather and you deserve it. It's gonna be like wicked hard to actually become wealthy. And it's not even the cost of those things that are like cripplingly expensive.
It's the reoccurring costs of those things It's because you get in this mindset of when the new thing comes out that you want and you deserve and you go treat yourself It's a cycle of spending decent chunks of money on the newest thing or even small chunks of money like a recent example Still baffles me as these like expensive water bottles that come out or like 50 60 bucks They're like the rage everybody goes get some they're the same water bottles a $10 one and then a couple years later It's a different one and people fall for the exact same thing over and over again. Doesn't make a lot of sense. In fact, if something's popular, it's generally a sign that I don't want to get that thing because everything popular is wrong.
Like according to a survey, 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Whatever they are doing, I do not want to do. Almost everything popular is wrong.
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Practice contentment. This was one of the biggest factors that allowed me to. to actually build up a little bit of wealth was this idea of just being okay with the things that I had.
It's also what led me into minimalism. I realized I was falling into this trap of just constantly wanting to buy stuff just so I could feel good for a few minutes, get that little dopamine high. Or when I got into minimalism, I ended up decluttering it and getting rid of it, donating it, selling it.
If you look around your house, you probably have everything you need to be happy, to thrive. And a lot of times we aren't grateful and content for the things that we do have. So a great practice is just to really appreciate everything that you do have.
You have a house over your head. You have shoes on your feet. Slippers. I'm sorry, I just realized how unflexible I am. As long as you're not starving and you have kind of the baseline that even the poorest in America have, you're richer than like most of people throughout all of history.
And being content with that will save you hundreds of thousands of dollars over your life or at least tens of thousands. You don't need a lot. You don't need more stuff to be happier.
Another reason that it's important to try to look poor is because then you don't have to try to impress others. I think a lot of us wanna look rich to feel important, to feel like we made it to. kind of justify our existence in the world as like look I'm not a failure I have this brand new car would a failure have that brand new car no see I did it maybe that's subconscious maybe it's not I know for me it took me years to be okay with driving a crappy older Honda CRV for years and years while I was starting my wealth building journey I wanted to look a certain way so that people would be impressed even though nobody cares but instead I was able to shift my mindset from wanting to have the stuff to show that I was successful to wanting to have fine financial freedom and that be the gauge of my own like mentally whether I've made it or not and then whatever anybody else cares I Don't think too much because I know I have financial freedom.
I know I'll never have to miss a soccer game I won't have to go to a job that I don't like ever again in my life I won't have to stress about bills and that for me is success Even if everybody else doesn't know it like I've got friends who maybe are 30 years old and you get a $5,000 bonus If you're living to impress others, then you put that towards a new car You buy a nice vacation and Instagram the whole thing But that same five grand if you invested it into the sp500 made an average of 10% until you reach retirement age would have been $140,000. So when you shift things that way, that the price of that vacation or that slightly newer car or that just going out and treat yourself is life changing money. Was that really the best use?
I think that's something a lot of people get wrong when they talk about frugal living. And this idea of looking poor is that you're not supposed to invest into yourself when I really think even despite that whole stock market analogy that investing in yourself is by far the best ROI you can ever make. If you learn one skill. that can help you get a better paying job like that's crazy roi like recently i've been really diving into productivity and just trying to find different tools and little tips to make things a little bit better i've been taking the class by thomas frank and just like actually you know processing of how to set my calendar and all this different stuff and it's actually made a difference and i've been taking a bunch of other classes like that for years actually with the partner of this video skillshare in fact i even made a class over there on minimalism if you don't know what skillshare is it is the largest learning community for creatives it's got so many different topics and categories you can go down from graphic design marketing photography of course for me productivity even finance and other topics so if you're a creative looking to up your skills in like any way.
Skillshare has a lot of like really in-depth classes that are kind of like do as you go. So it's not just like watching something and then hopefully you do it. You can like submit stuff and all of these classes are really really well made.
The first 500 people who use my link down below can get a free one month trial of Skillshare. So you can like dive into a topic, see if the platform's for you. I think you're really gonna love it.
So check it out. Another reason to look for is because you can find joy in simplicity. I have found that the simpler I make my life, it almost exactly correlates to happiness. The more I have going on, the more stuff that happens, the less happier I am because I'm just like stressed all the time. You can probably relate.
But the more stuff that I get out of my house, generally the more I enjoy my house. Cluttered room is like a stressful room. Having so many clothes that I can't find the ones that I actually enjoy is... not great. I just want to have a few things that serve their purpose really well, really not much else, to leave space for the things that are actually important to me.
Like I'm totally okay with and almost proud of the fact that, you know, I never bought new furniture until I was 28 years old. It was the first time I've ever bought a new piece of furniture. Everything else has been used or free, or there's a few select things that I will pay money for when I know that the cost per use is going to be really low because of, let's say, if I get a new shirt that I'm going to wear every single day for years, but I only have X amount.
That's gonna be much cheaper than just constantly cycling through new stuff to try to be better The same thing with phones where I never upgrade until the phone is literally dead as opposed to other people I know who upgrade every single year and they never have money They're part of that 78% the goal of your stuff isn't to impress anybody It's to do the job that it's supposed to do for some reason a lot of people don't see their stuff that way It's actually cheaper, which obviously it's cheaper to look for I don't think people realize some of the big decisions that will cost them hundreds of thousands dollars that are huge swings in their life that can be decided on if you're living for other people or for yourself like most people want to have a bigger house in a bigger apartment no matter what size they get they want the bigger one they want the pool they want the pickety fence they want something above whatever they have but if you know that the more stuff you have the more you're going to have to work in order to pay for that stuff so the less you'll be able to enjoy it the more taxes you're going to have to pay on it the more upkeep there's going to be all of these things will determine that maybe instead of getting a bigger house you actually would enjoy a smaller house more because you'll have more freedom in your life. There'll be less to clean. You'll have less stuff inside of it.
And you might actually be able to live and enjoy your life more by looking poor and choosing to have, you know. a house that's multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars cheaper, and maybe you can work one less month a year because of that decision, or you can get to financial freedom way sooner. When you look at the difference, especially spread out over time of buying a new car every year, buying a bigger house, it's literally life-changing money, and you have to decide, will that life-changing money actually change your life, or is it just something that you feel like you should do or you want to do to make yourself feel you're worth it? Now, another reason that you should try to look for is because of billionaires.
When you look at billionaires and multi-millionaires, they're not just billionaires. They don't have to try to look wealthy. There are a few of them that do because they have ego problems, but a lot of them just wear cheap clothes. They have an older car, they have an older house because they don't need to impress anybody because they know what is important to them. They know that they have made it so they don't need to prove it to anybody else.
And I think that's a great mindset to strive for that you know that you're on your journey to paying off debt. you know that you're building up an emergency fund right now you know that you are investing for your future so you don't need to prove to anybody else you're successful right now that you've made it that you're doing whatever you know what is important to you that is a great mindset so when you look at the ultra successful they don't have to prove it they know it that's why it's important to be budgeting to have a financial plan i actually just started really diving into setting up my own financial plan recently with an app called wisefi not a sponsor is an affiliate link But like this has given me great perspective on I know that i'm on the right path So I don't need to prove anything to anybody because I know that I am nearing, you know Financial freedom and that to me is what is important the ego check turns out that most people who try to look wealthy Tend to have some ego issues when you're okay with looking poor then you also have to be Okay with with yourself, right? You're not trying to hide behind anything.
You're just out there You're open you're raw and that can be rough to deal with but it can also make you happier. When I used to do commercial office cleaning there was this guy that worked with me that worked every night of the week, five nights a week, about three hours a night in order to pay for his new truck. He had a day job and then he had this night job and this night job paid for his like $60,000 truck. He literally chose to look flashy on the nights and weekends and have this truck that he did not need and he was willing to trade five nights a week of his life for that truck. He's literally trading his life away for a stupid truck.
That's what most of us do. If you lowered your expenses a lot and you didn't care what anybody else thought of you, you're okay with looking poor and actively trying to do it, you could probably work one day less a week. You could probably take one more week off a year.
You could literally trade this crap that we have all around us for your life. Who wouldn't want to make that trade? And it just comes down to not having an ego. This doesn't mean that you have to like actively look poor and be grungy and dirty.
It's just really finding your priorities and this balance of things that's going to work for you and really just living the life by design. and not by default, not by what the advertisers want you to do, not by what you think will help you fit in, not by what the trends are, but for what is important to you and your life will end up saving you tons of money, buying back your time, making you happier. You know, something that actually makes me happier is when people watch this video right here, which YouTube knows that you're gonna like.
So if you think you should click it, then, you know, I can, I gotta really plan out these outros.