Why Looking Poor Is Important in 2025

The rich have a secret. In my conversations with billionaires, top investors, and some of the best business owners I know, I've noticed something. You would never be able to tell they were rich just by looking at them. Do you want to grow your bank account or your ego? Well, here's eight reasons why looking poor can actually make you more money. Number one, the anti signal is the signal. What if, in fact, looking flashy and rich is actually making you lose money? Like, who do you trust more? This guy? No offense. Kind of. Or this guy? This is called the anti signal and it's backed by data. A survey published in the Journal of Consumer Research showed that people who conspicuously consumed luxury goods were perceived as less trustworthy compared to those who kept a low profile. So, like, keep your Rolex pictures yourself, boys. Take Warren Buffett, for example. He still lives in the same modest house he bought in 1958 and drives a Cadillac, not a Lambo. But he's got way more dollars. His wealth doesn't announce itself. It just is proven. And that's how you build trust. At contrarian thinking. We have a set of values called the Contrarian creed that we discuss every meeting. And one of my favorites is show me your results, not your intentions. No one who deserves your respect cares what labels you wear. They care about your results. Buffett owns a massive public firm. He has to show and discuss his results year in and year out, and everybody sees if he makes or loses money. Real wealth doesn't brag. It just shows results. Actually, I thought of something. A Casio watch challenge. Here's the idea. I've always wanted an excuse to wear one of those Casio calculator watches. Have you seen this bad boy producing the multicron 20 function calculator watch? I'm going to give away one in the comments to one of you who either tells me the funniest joke about money or tells me the coolest way to save money. I'll pick one of you. And then to show we are frugal, I'm going to wear one with you for the entire month of January. It'll just be you and me and our Casio calculators, baby. This is not that, by the way. This is not a good purchase. This is an expensive purchase right now. So we're not talking about that. Number two, act your stage. Some say act your age. Dave Ramsey says, act your freaking wage. I say act your stage. I break earnings into four categories. First, we've got emerging less than $100,000 in income. You're Just starting out. You need to be obsessed or you'll never win. This requires all of you. 2. Learning. Less than a million bucks in income. You are getting your first wins. It will require most of you plus an A plus team if you're happy here, so day. If not, next stage requires more. 3. Growing less than 10 million in income. You are now 0.4% who had eight figures. It will require a lot from you plus an A team that is also obsessed. 4. Empire less than $100 million in income. You are the.0001% at nine figures. It will require much thought and strategy from you plus a top tier team. But maybe not all of your time because you're going to have a team. So know your stage. Make peace with it. Oprah also has a great quote. She says, do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do. This is often what real wealth requires when you're starting from scratch. Do you think you're doing what it takes or are you doing what you want? Be honest with yourself. Truth plus sacrifices equals progress. So act your stage. Here's the thing about the rich. They get wealthy quietly. No flashy cars, no overpriced gadgets. Just calculated moves that grow their money over time. You know what's kind of ironic though? The best opportunities are often the least exciting. Real estate, for instance. Not glamorous. You don't get bragging rights for owning a portfolio of multifamily units or warehouses. But you can get more stable returns so you can build wealth that lasts generation. That's where this company called fundrise and its flagship fund comes in. It's the no fluff way to start building your real estate portfolio without needing millions. Usually, most people don't ever get access to private market real estate deals. So this is a great way to start with a few thousand and grab a seat at the table with the wealthy and just without the sky high buy in. Quiet wealth isn't about hype. It's about actions that speak louder than hype. That's where the Fundrise Flagship Fund comes in. Thanks to Fundrise Flagship Fund for sponsoring this video. Get off the hedonic hamster wheel. This is like a real thing. It's also called hedonic adaptation if you want to get fancy with it. But this idea is, is that no matter how fast you run or what happens to you, eventually you go from wanting something to trying to get it, to achieving it, to happiness, to adapting to that happiness, to eventually wanting something else and going back into the Hamster wheel again, like this. This vicious cycle is why so many of us continue to shift how much money we have to make until eventually we're on our deathbed thinking, what am I gonna do with all this paper mold? Should have spent it. A lot of people talk about it like a treadmill like this, because human emotion, it turns out you can't really stay at the peaks or the troughs even like people with psychological disorders, for instance, can't. And so this like extreme high, extreme low balances out over time. Kind of like a treadmill. You know, I love Albert Einstein's line on this. He said, a common, modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness. So chill and enjoy it. Data actually backs this up, which is interesting. Research has found that once you have covered the essentials in life, food, shelter, healthcare, Having more money does not do much to change your happiness. Especially after $500,000 a year. You have to realize that money will not solve everything. It'll solve a ton. When you're poor though, get off the treadmill. Deciding that you don't need to compete with those around you will bring you far more happiness than a new Lambo to post on your Instagram ever will. And believe me, I have to say the same thing to myself. Even once you've made your first million, 10 million, 100 million bucks, you just keep looking at the guy in front of you. Protect the house. Whenever I have more money, I try to rewire my mind from asking, how can I spend this? We do it subconsciously, even if we don't realize it. And instead I say, how can I invest this? The two almost mean the same thing, but the purpose is different. You spend for a turn, you invest for a return. Here's one of my definitions of rich. Having assets that can help you actively earn on your behalf. You don't have to work, your money's working for you. See if you can rewire your psychology. Instead of treating yourself with a purchase, can you treat yourself to an investment not just in finance, but in your education, in your relationships? Think about, can I put pennies in those bank accounts instead. You should always be asking yourself, if this dollar I spend it, will it bring back more friends with it, both personally and in business? That's a pretty good question to ask. Sam Walton famously said, every time Walmart spends, $1 foolishly comes right out of our customers pockets. Every time we save them a dollar, that puts us one more step ahead of the competition, which is where we always plan to be. That's one of the largest corporations on earth that thinks that way With a multi multi multi time billionaire. If they can think that GR intentionally about how they're spending a dollar, so can every one of us. I like to gamify just about everything I do, so I use the Streaks app to actually follow through on what I'm doing. Typically I use it for working out, but I also added here, save 10 bucks and make it at home each day. Is there something that I made at home each day? Is there something that I saved some cash on? I'm just like getting that little baby muscle going also I'm sore but like that's the idea so that when it comes to saving money I get this like dopamine reward too of pressing that same ex exact thing. Just like I would the dopamine reward for on Instagram pulls up the ad and I want to buy it. By the way, if you haven't subscribed yet, I think you should. It'll be fun. Strive for what I call stealth wealth. First you need to know what you're actually going after. Let's set something straight. Wealth is about becoming so sovereign you can say no to anything, anyone, anytime, anywhere. So see this chart? Pretty simple stuff. Essentially there's supply and demand of telling people to beat it. The more wealth you build, the more f offs you're basically allowed. You see, for many, rich has become something dirty, flashy, loud. Most people will spend 90,000 hours of their life on making money. It may not sound great to say your goal is to get rich, but hey, you can't deny that. You might as well try to build a whole lot of wealth while working all that time. So instead of saying get rich, here's what you want. You want to grow, maintain and accumulate real durable wealth. Not money to gain attention, but money to be sovereign. I like the this quote. The goal isn't more money. The goal is living life on your terms. By a guy by the name of Chris Brogan. My thought here is an FU fund is basically enough money where you can say F you to anybody at any time. Everybody has a different number. For me personally, I think you probably can find another job within a three year window if you are a hard worker no matter what. So your real FU fund is probably what your expenses are over any three year period of time. If you got that money saved up, F you to anybody, you don't want to work with the lie detector test. You don't have to be Einstein to formulate the best way to keep more Money is to save more than you spend. That is the number one rule. Really. The number two rule is put those savings to work right now. Unless you're in a tight spot, you are almost definitely spending more than you absolutely need to. In fact, that's what most Americans do today with their spending limit. So here's a test to run down. Write down everything you're spending money on, but don't do anything with it. Yeah. Declare out loud, yes out loud, that you need every single item on the list and then actually go through and examine each item. If there's something you don't really need, you fail the lie detector test. And you should ask yourself if you can cut it. This extra is called bloat. Happens naturally. You know, like your stomach after you eat. In fact, a Bankrate survey found that 84% of Americans underestimate how much they spend on non essential items like dining out and streaming services. 84%. So odds are you're one of them. Just look at this. As of August in 2024, compared to January 2018, low income households, real average spending was up almost 8%. Middle income households up 13%. High income households up 16%. It's kind of like a, like a treatable disease that will weigh you down and wear you down over time unless it's dealt with. I stop that by trying to go on a diet every year and I do a 20% fat blast. Here's how it works. Come up with a number. I said 20%, but I ended up actually hitting 16% this year. So let's say my monthly expenses were 6K. So that's $960 less we spend monthly. Now if I'm cutting 20%, which equals 11,500 a year in savings, that adds up. Now it might sound like a lot to cut that much, but think about it this way. The average American subscriber pays nearly $1,000 77 bucks a streaming subscriptions. 31% of Americans use third party delivery apps, DoorDash, GrubHub at least once a week. I was doing a lot more than that. 79% of Americans confess to purchasing items they never end up using and they don't return them. And 25% report buying unused items, at least monthly. The tip? Start with subscriptions. I call these the silent killers. Set it and forget it is a great business model unless you're paying for it and doing the setting and forgetting. A great way to stay poor is by being so afraid of losing money that you always bunt and never take swings by the way baseball references Here we are. If you want to achieve real wealth and not just savings, you got to create, you'll need to build or invest. Not just save. You got to put money to work. Here's the harsh truth. Saving money won't make you rich. It keeps you afloat. But wealth grows through compounding and value creation. Kind of got to have all the average Savings account earns 0.5% interest annually, which is wild. Compare that to The S&P 500's about 10% a year. Over time the difference is staggering, especially when inflation is like anywhere from 3 to even 8%. You can spend all the time you want brewing your own coffee from home and nobody's made millions doing that. Widen your wealth aperture the most powerful tool for building wealth is your mindset. Sounds cheesy, except it's true. Treat it like a camera lens, widen your aperture to see opportunities and then you focus down once you understand a little bit more and are ready to execute. Like what's a way to do this? It's not so touchy feely. Find five people who make more than you and try to meet with them regularly. I'm not saying billionaires, they don't even have to be millionaires. I'm not saying these mentors will be with you for the rest of your life. But people who make significantly more than you, who can help widen your aperture just by you trying to meet with them once a month. Another way to think about it. How do you cook a brisket? Low and slow? Same thing with wealth. It's not coupon clipping and savings accounts that will make you a millionaire. It's learning the language of money from those in the arena. And you're going to get that just by surface area expansion. And by the way, we have a killer newsletter coming out about a bunch of billionaires who all started from stealth wealth and my favorite secrets I learned from them. You should click here. The truth of the matter is most people go broke trying to look wealthy instead of living cash poor. To become wealthy, most people play status games to get things other people have that you're not even sure you really want. You're not going to be that because you know that just cuz you look poor doesn't mean you don't got a big fat bank account.