The thing is, the way we lead our lives can greatly determine whether we’ll be poor or rich in the future.
In this blog post, I am only going through four big habits that will keep you poor but there are a multitude of other factors at play!
It all depends on every single individual as to how they engage in these habits on a day-to-day basis.
It’s definitely not a one-shoe-fits-all determinant! I am personally talking generally from what I’ve seen and witnessed in my life as to what I’ve done and what I’ve gone through in my own journey.
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1. Wasting Time
Now, we all heard of that saying that, “Time is money.” And this is true. Time is actually money. Think about it, most of us (including myself) exchange our time [hours of labour] for money. But the saying goes deeper than that…
What I mean is that if you don’t start seeing time as a currency, you might greatly miss out on your life. And as a result, you may also lose a lot of money as you lose and waste a lot of your time.
It’s largely do in part that time is the only thing that we CANNOT BUY!
Everyone has 24 hours in a day and as soon as the 24 hours are gone, we cannot get them back!
SOCIAL MEDIA
Nowadays, in the society that we live in (yes this is a bit of critique but I am a fully participant in these actions too), we spend hours on hours on our phone and on social media.
Therefore, ‘wasting’ a lot of our time online.
Just think about it for a second, you go and you browse instagram, YouTube, TikTok… and then 30 minutes becomes an hour becomes a few hours and there you go again down the rabbit hole.
And the worst part is… you can’t get that time back.
Now, I am not saying that we shouldn’t use social media platforms or that we shouldn’t go online to browse and seek entertainment. What I am saying instead is that you need to be conscious.
The problem is that we have an imbalance in our life: Too much time wasted and on overconsumption rather than time spent doing and focusing on ourselves.
I’ll be honest, I also love watching Netflix series but it comes to the point where I am spending more time consuming entertainment rather than working on my life and educating myself, I feel more and more icky.
VALUING YOUR TIME
Similarly, that time we spend scrolling; we could have focused on our health, on our side hustles, on our hobbies, our family and friends, etc. Anything that fulfills our lives and helps us generate more money.
We really need to value our time. We are all valuable.
And the same goes for the people we spend our time with. Are we actually spending time with people that have similar goals to us? That value the same things as us?
Or are we just spending time with people that genuinely just want spend time and spend money and that don’t even care if you’re there with them as long as there’s someone there with them doing it.
You really need to ask yourself these questions. Because it’s really easy to get caught in other things and other people, therefor, further wasting your time and making you poorer in the future. That’s all time that could serve in the long run when you reinvest in yourself in your health, your education, your happiness.
It’s great to have temporary distractions and it’s great to go out. But overdoing it can be detrimental when it’s daily and not in moderation.
TIME LIMITS
So, how do I value my time first every single day?
When I wake up every single day, I make sure I have no notifications available on my phone. When you have these alerts on, you might be tempted to reply right away. And then, you are instantly engaged with something that’s taking you out of your focused time to your life.
Instead, I set half an hour a day to respond to all the emails I want to respond to and to browse all of the apps that I want to scroll and catch up with.
The people that are the closest to me know to call me if there’s an emergency and if need my direct attention if not, the second to do is to text me directly, off these consuming third-party apps (e.g., Instagram, Snapchat, etc.).
Another thing I do, I look at the screen time on my phone to see exactly where my time is sneakily spent on the daily. Trust me I was shocked when I saw that I swapped my social media time for email time… What? How’s that even possible…
Doing this, will allow you to see what you need to put restrictions on or which areas you should be mindful of when you spend your time on them.
I have a time limit for TikTok that is 15 minutes long and I am shocked when it goes off because I swore I was on there for only 3 minutes…
So truly, ask yourself, what the hell am I doing 10 hours on my phone when I only have 16 hours in a day for myself to do work, to cook, to workout, and be a functioning human being with all of my little quirks and flaws?!
2. Being Mindless about Money
When you are mindless about money and how you spend it, how you invest it, and how you save it… Then, you might never be rich, even less so will you be wealthy. (Don’t attack me! I am in the same boat as you and it’s hard pill to swallow!)
It is the reality…
YOU ARE YOUR OWN FAILED BUSINESS
Think of it as a business that’s just starting up and they have no projections, no records of how much they are spending, making, manufacturing, etc. At the end, the business will never know why it failed… It was mindless. It had no records.
Now, this is the same tactic you need to bring into your own life. You need to track what you are doing with finances, the same way you would be conscious about eating healthier or even calorie/macro counting!
KEEP RECORDS
To truly succeed, you need to keep track of what you are doing and how you are doing it. In order to reassess, in order to change things, in order to make money and to save more time in the long run. Remember more time = more money.
Here are some of the ways that people (including myself) are mindless with their money:
- Spending more more than they earn
- Not budgeting
- Not keeping track of their money
- Not getting financially literate (which would help solve a lot of money problems)
- Not saving money for retirement
- Not investing
- Collecting debt
- Impulse purchases
If you can be mindful around money, start leaning about money (e.g., budgeting, investing, etc.), and start tracking your money, I will guarantee to you… you will be richer within the week (Based on a true story)!
3. Not Having Concrete Goals
I’m not saying that you should know exactly every little step you should take in life…
But knowing the vague outline as to how you are going to achieve those goals is the right to go about things.
It’s because by not having any concrete or measurable goals, you will be stuck wasting your time, your money, your energy, and your life.
If you go too aimless through life, you won’t be able to accomplish many things. (I know there are some special cases but are you really going to bet your life to see if you are that one in 10 million?)
I WANT A MILLION DOLLARS OUT OF THIN AIR
That’s the same with not having goals with your money. It’s one thing to say, “I want to be rich,” “I want to have a million dollars,” “I want to have a house.” But not knowing what to do or not doing anything… You’re just thinking: ‘Oh I’ll eventually get there, however I get there…’
It’s not going to work like that.
With life, if you don’t actually sit down and make a plan and set actionable steps which you follow through… then you will never get to where you want to go.
AREN’T YOU LUCKY, HUH?
There is very little luck and there is very little chances in life.
People that succeed take those chances and they build their luck by consistently working towards the goals that they have.
That’s the one true rule about life that nothing is for free. If you want something, you have to work hard for it.
I know a lot of people set goals at the beginning of the year, but they never truly reflect on those goals throughout the year until another year passes by. Then, they’re again stuck in a state of limbo because they didn’t accomplish their goals. (I used to be the same way and sometimes I still slip back into that mindset…)
WISHFUL THINKING
It’s almost like you’re saying ‘I want to lose 20kg in a month.’ But that’s not going to happen. And if does happen, you don’t build the right habits and routines to actually sustain that kind of goal.
Whereas, you accomplish that weight in 6 months in small actionable goals, and you actually end up changing your bad habits and implementing good ones in the long run… not only will you lose weight, you will also keep healthy.
It’s the same thing with setting goals… and sticking with them through time… that’s the only way you will accomplish your money goals or otherwise.
4. A Poor Diet
Nutrition is one of the main factors in life that we spend most of our time and money on. And if you don’t establish a good diet such as a diet that’s healthy and nutritious and doesn’t require to spend a lot of money on takeout, then you will actually be poor and poorer yet still.
Here are some poor diet decisions:
- Wasting food
- Unnecessarily bulk buying like Costco
- Eating out often
- Buying coffee and snacks on the go
- Buying all the new flavoured snacks
- I hate to break it to you… but you don’t need to try all the new flavours of Coca Cola, of Kit Kat, of Cheetos, etc.
- These are all a marketing scheme
- The original flavour and packaging was good enough for our society but obviously companies want to make more and more money
- They want to mass produce items and they want you to spend more money to try all of these new little things
- It’s fine if you have a special product that you are absolutely obsessed with and you want to try but if you’re doing this with every new product out there… you are falling for marketing
- Marketing and our capitalistic lifestyle has gotten a hold on you and is making you try all of these new things, making you spend your money, and making you addicted to all of these new ingredients
- I hate to break it to you… but you don’t need to try all the new flavours of Coca Cola, of Kit Kat, of Cheetos, etc.
- Similarly, buying name brands instead of store brands
- Name brands are not always better. Sometimes it’s quite the opposite or the same. You should look at the ingredients and nutritional factors to make your decision.
UMM… BUT IT COSTS MORE TO EAT HEALTHY, RIGHT?
The truth is… people that generally eat unhealthy tend to eat more times in a day because their bodies are not satisfied with the junk food that they eat.
They have these insulin spikes and therefore it makes them more hungry, and they keep on eating and they keep eating (once again, I’d like to remind you I’ve been there for years).
And then, it becomes a feedback loop that never stops.
Therefore, costing them a lot of money. And in the future this will cost them a lot of health problems: surgeries, medications, hospital visits, peculiar expensive restrictive diets, etc.
Plus, junk food gives your brain ‘brain fog.’ You won’t have the full focus and productivity when you’re going about your day-to-day life and your day-to-day actions.
Not only is it detrimental to your money and your health, but it is also detrimental to your time because you can’t focus most of the time.
AND
Its actually cheaper to eat healthier!
Here’s why:
If you go to a fast food store and try to buy a salad then it’s actually more expensive. HOWEVER, if you go to a grocery store and buy unprocessed items, real whole foods (such as broccoli, carrots, apples, lean proteins, etc.), and put them together yourself (reducing the famous labour/action cost you would find buying a tiny salad at McDonald’s.)
Buying real food by themselves and making your own meals at home is the cheapest, healthiest, and most fulfilling way to eat on a daily basis.
The person that truly spends a lot money on food is the one that buys not only groceries but also junk and processed food, and on top of that buys out and eats out when they have food at home. They have a food surplus that either results in them eating their money away or trashing their money away as the food at home goes bad…
It’s a sad reality. But it is a reality nonetheless.
Being mindful and intentional will always be the way to go. Do not starve yourself or waste your money in the next new diet fad. Instead, buy whole foods, buy what you need, and truly nourish yourself. You deserve it. We all do.
I truly hope you found this post insightful. This is not an attack on anyone. The main point of this post is to focus inward and truly evaluate what we focus our time and energy on to see if our day to day habits is making us poorer or richer more than just its financial aspects.
As I’ve mentioned a few times in this post. I am guilty of all of these and have suffered from all of these mentalities until I started to become more mindful and intentional. And it has helped me a lot: stress wise, money wise, and health wise.
And I hope to help inspire you as well!
Please feel free to share your thoughts and do let me know what poor habits have you changed in order to gradually improve your life? ✨
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