I have always admired wealthy people. While I do not personally know many of them, I am always inspired when I learn about the ways that people that are wealthy acquire and keep their fortunes. Today, I learned some very interesting things about millionaires. While the constant media coverage of Hollywood divorces may cause us to associate being rich and famous with being doomed to marital failure, many wealthy people marry only once. It is uncertain exactly how much of an influence this has had on these couples’ ability to be wealthy, but it can’t hurt – divorce can be costly, and so can second (and third and fourth) weddings.
Also, many wealthy couples live off of one income. If the spouse works, the income that he or she brings home goes straight to savings. Imagine how quickly those savings accounts grow. What these wealthy people do for work also matters. Two thirds of America’s millionaires have one very important thing in common when it comes to what they do for work each day – they are self employed. Of course, I am a huge advocate for self-employment for many reasons and this statistic just adds to my list of the wonderful things about self employment.
Two other characteristics of wealthy people go hand in hand. Frugality and investing are two traits that keep the bank accounts of wealthy Americans full. Many millionaires do not live a flashy lifestyle and they make wise decisions about what they spend their money on. Since they are not spending all of their money, they are able to invest it so that it continues to make money. Of course, it is important to note that the frugality of people that are wealthy does indeed look different than the frugality that many of us try to implement in our everyday lives but many of the principles are the same such as paying cash and driving the same car or living in the same home for many years.
The information that I learned about wealthy Americans today was very inspiring because many of the things that they do are things that just about anyone can do. Even more inspiring is the fact that many of them worked very hard to acquire their wealth and while many of them are frugal, they are also generous with their resources when it comes to helping others. Information about how wealthy people really live can be a great motivator to take a closer look at our own personal finances to see where we can make improvements that may not make us a million dollars right away but will certainly improve our finances nonetheless.
Photo by Alvimann on morguefile.com.