What is A Poor Money Mindset?
20 Nov 2025 · 20 min
Podcast episode ("What is A Poor Money Mindset?") by Dr. Kelly Alhooie describing the "poor money mindset" — a pattern of believing it is acceptable to be poor, saving without investing, and keeping standards low. Dr. Alhooie contrasts this with a "rich money mindset" that prioritizes investing in oneself (coaching, business programs, retirement accounts) and choosing "good debt" when it leads to higher income. She shares childhood experiences of financial scarcity, quantifies student loan and salary examples, and gives concrete investment anecdotes (a $3,000 coach that returned $8,000; later 20–30k programs that yielded seven-figure returns). Episode closes with practical advice to model successful people and invest strategically.
Questions this episode answers
March 25, 2023.
$200,000.
$62,000.
21 years.
$3,000.
Welcome to Pelly biz podcast. I'm Dr. Kelly Alhui. I've grown my pelvic health practice, orthopelic physical therapy, and now I'm helping pelvic health professionals do the same. Each week I give you the knowledge.
You need to grow your practice.
Let's get into today's episode.
Today we're going to talk about poor money mindset. And you're probably thinking, what the heck is a poor money mindset? Poor money mindset is someone that believes it is okay to be poor because they don't deserve more. Let me say that again. It is someone that believes that it is okay to be poor because they don't believe that they deserve more. The more pain. Okay, let me state this. Their pain of being poor isn't deep enough to make them take action to change and do things differently. Maybe this is some of you that are listening to this and maybe it's, maybe it's not. So this is why I'm always big on what drives you. You've got to know that. Is there pain behind being poor? For me, I personally grew up with a single mom that worked four jobs in the pain behind watching my mom work herself to death to try to just put clothes on our back, to give us braces, to get us a car when we had to drive and when we were able to drive. The pain of seeing my mom work until 2:00 in the morning and then getting back up at 5:00 to cause she was a teacher, to help us kids be able to do all those sporting activities, take us around cars, around to all the different things was enormous. And I truly believe that has built me in to what I do today and is the push behind myself because I saw my mom grind and grind and grind just to make ends meet for. For us. And I saw what pain that brought. And I remember being nine years old saying, you know what? I just want a career. I just want to be able to do really well at a career. I said that from day one and that's true. And I think what drove me to that is just seeing my mom be such a super mom. What I did see in my mom was that any money that she was getting would be put back and spent on us kids. She was really never able to take care of herself and never able to have it. We never had any extra money. If anything, we were always trying to borrow from my grandmother or whoever else in my family to try to just make ends meet. And it was always tight. There was, you know, we didn't go on family vacations like people did. We just didn't. Didn't have that money. Family vacation was sitting at home, trying to figure out a way of how we were going to pay for our sports or whatever we were doing at that time. Like, that was it. I wasn't on any traveling teams. We couldn't afford any of that. Um, and mom was maxed out. She had four jobs. So personally, growing up, and this is something I want you guys to realize and look at your background. That's a little bit about my background is I want you to look at how you actually grew up. I grew up very pretty poor, to where everything was a struggle. I remember, literally my mom sitting us down, my brother, sister, and I, at a dining room table. She took out Monopoly money. I think I was probably 15 years old, and I really remember this moment. My sister does not, but I do. She took out the Monopoly money and said, okay, so how much does your cheerleading skirt cost? Okay? I said, like, 40 bucks. She puts 40 bucks in. How much does this cost? And then we put more money in, and we still had a list of what we were spending, and we had no more Monopoly money. And I remember her asking us, so how do you expect me guys, to pay for this? How do you expect me to pay for this? And that was a deep moment for me. That was a big, big moment of. I don't know how. At that moment, I was worried. I didn't know how we were gonna pay the water bill or didn't know how we're gonna pay the house bill. And that's when I went out and I got a job. I think I was, like, 15. Yeah, probably 15. 15 and a half. Maybe even 16. Cause you had to be like, you know, getting a job that you could get a job then. And I started being a hostess just to help my mom out with my gas and whatever else I could. But for me, it taught me that we were a family of, okay, let's just try to get the money. And then we just immediately spent it, because things that maybe, you know, we spent it on clothes. I mean, we needed the things, but we just didn't have. We just didn't have the investment mindset of, if I invest in things to help me out, be able to get me more money, then that's a good thing. But we just got the money in and we spent it, and that was it. We were just investing. We were investing, yes, a little bit in ourselves, but we weren't investing the right way in Ourselves. I think that's very important point to make. Okay? We were just investing to get by, and that mentality of just to get by kept us. I believe in a poor mindset because we were just always looking at, well, what do we need to just make it to the next month? And if you have that mentality of what do I need to just make it to the next month? That's a standard that you're going to just give yourself. You're just going to say, okay, well, I just need $4,000 make to the next month and I'm good until you start to set the standard of I need $10,000 this month so that I can be good to, you know, survive, but then also take that money and invest it in something else. Then that mentality is actually the rich people mentality, which I'll get into later. But that's the mentality in the mindset that we should adopt. Okay? Another point is, you know, we were always the coupon family, like, do we have a coupon for that? Do we get those coupon books? Like, do we have that? So the people that are the couponers and many of you guys, this may be many of you guys out there. And I'm not trying to offend anyone because I was, we were that way growing up, okay? But those people that were the coupon people and the savers, it's just, it's not the way to go. You can save all day, but until you learn to invest, then you will not have a rich mindset. Rich people know how to invest and gain. Good debt. Good debt. Let's talk about good debt. Good debt could be student loans. It could also be bad debt. The reason why I could say student loans could be good debt is because let's just say it cost me $200,000, which it did for a PT school. Okay? If I became an entrepreneur after PT school and it gave me seven figures, so if it gave me a million dollars, do you guys think that that is a good investment? I would say, hell yeah, it's a great investment. Okay? So that's called good debt. However, student loans could also be bad debt. Bad debt is where when I was working for someone else and I was only able to pay the minimum amount of my student loan payment and it was going to take me 21 years, literally, I'm not kidding, 21 years to pay off my student loans, that is bad debt. If I come out with $200,000 student loan debt and I started out personally making $62,000, $62,000. And even when I was making $85,000 a year, it was still going to take me 21 years to pay my student loans off. That is bad debt. That is a bad deal. So depending on the scenario that you put yourself in, you can make things be bad debt and you can make things be good debt. Here's another example. That debt could be a car. If you just want a fancy car to drive around, fancy car, to me, I consider that bad debt. What is that car going to give you? It may give you some happiness, so maybe that's great, but is it actually going to bring you a return on an investment into that car? That car typically is going to require tire changes. That's more money. Oil changes. That's more money. Maybe it has changed out the battery. If it's an electric car, that's massive, a lot of more money. Um, it has repairs. It's going to cost you more and more and more money. That is bad debt. Conversely, if you were to invest in yourself, let's say if you were to invest into like a personal trainer, okay, you invest in a personal trainer. And by doing that, that gave you so much more energy that you are now able to have energy to talk to more people. Well, that, that is good debt. Because you being able to talk to more people is actually going to bring you a return on your investment and then your company is only going to grow. So that's a good investment because you're investing in yourself. And that's the best investment, which I'll get into in a second. Of why, of what are good investments? Well, you know what, let me get into it now. Good investments. The best investment is yourself. When I was working for another company, I was getting paid $62,000 a year. When I started working for myself, I 700x that percentage and I started making a lot more than that per year because I now invested in myself to learn the skillset, to then be able to make my own company be able to accelerate, which then gets you a better return on your investment. Okay, if you invest in real estate, let's just say a personal property, okay, you're probably going to make anywhere between 5 to maybe like 3 to 5% on that return on investment. If you do commercial real estate, it could be a little bit higher. It's around, around 8 to 10% on commercial real estate that you can get a return on. A year, guys, by the way, A year. That's what I'm talking about a year. Okay. Yourself, you can get a 700x return in a year, in one year. It doesn't have to take long. It's independent of time. It does not have to take long. So you can go from $0 in a year to $300,000 within one year. Doesn't matter the time, it matters how much are you in willing to invest in yourself to then be able to use those tools to then be able to do amazing things. That's the point of this. But the poor money mindset is save, save, save. Because the more I save then the richer I become. But that saving and not allowing you to invest is actually holding you back. So poor money mindset people are stuck not getting the standards that they want to be high enough. They're stuck. You have to set the standards high enough. These poor money mindset people are the people that want to always shop at Walmart. They're always looking for the best deal. They're always waiting for things to be on sale. And that's the problem. They're waiting. Keyword is waiting for things to be on sale. Why wait? Just go out and get what you want. But you have to have an investment mindset to be able to go out and just buy what you want. Rich people invest in themselves. They invest in their 401ks because it's tax write offable. They invest in themselves because they believe in themselves. They believe that if I had better tools in my life that then I can make better choices to be able to, you know, do better things. Because now I have better tools so that I can use these tools to now be able to get me to where I want. So for me personally, let me tell you this. I invested in a coach, okay? I invested in a business coach. When I invested in that coach it was the scariest thing ever because I paid maybe it was about $3,000 to this coach and I didn't have $3,000. So what did I do? Because I was still in the poor money mindset, I put it on a credit card. So I put it on a credit card and I said all right, I gotta make $3,000 cause I don't have this money. So within one month I took the tools that he taught me which was marketing, sales, communication, unification, all the things. I took all those tools that I did not have my toolbox, cuz school did not teach me that. And I literally used that within one month I learned them quickly cuz I had to was we're able to replace my income. I then, so that's an investment in myself was then able to pay off my $3,000 credit card. Okay. So. And the push was the pain was bad enough because I didn't have that money. And it brought me back to my childhood of when my mom just. Every paycheck would just go to us, and then we didn't have any more money. And it brought me back to that. And I didn't want to be. I didn't want to be there because I knew how painful and how hard that was back then. I just knew that I didn't want to be that. I didn't want to have to grow up like that. I did grow up like that, but I just didn't want to have to continue to grow up like that. So I knew I had to do things differently and learn new skills to then be able to make money to where it doesn't have to be something that's so, like, where I'm always on the fence of like, oh, my God, am I going to make it this month? I'm going to make it this month because I. I grew up like that. I didn't want that again. So I had to change my mindset of what are programs that I can invest in that then going to give me a return. So I gave my coach $3,000. Okay. For that one month, and it gave me $8,000 in return. Do you guys think that's a good investment? That's a damn good investment. That's really good. Even more than a 50% return. So then I was like, well, I might as well do this again. So we had another program that came up. It was like 20 or 30k. Here you go. No problem. I will invest 20 to 30k in a program right off the bat. Because I know if I invest 20 to 30k, I should be getting back $200,000 plus. And I did. I got back seven figures from that. So is that a good investment? Hell, yeah. Yes, it is. So that I. I want you guys to think about it like this. The best investment you can make is yourself. And I'm not talking about in Con Ed. When you invest in a Con Ed course, it potentially can build your confidence. Sure, I get that. Because you feel that you have a new skill that you can bring back to the patient that you feel is going to be magical for the patient. The reality is that's not the case. All it is is feeding your ego and the fact that it's making you feel better about how you practice because you have another tool in your toolbox that you believe is going to be the magical pill for that person. But it's not. It's actually you just being able to communicate better to the patient and be able to listen to the patient is actually what's going to make that patient better because you're going to understand their needs. And coming out of school, we already have like 95% of what we actually need to treat patients. We really do. But we're trained that we need more knowledge. We need more knowledge. We need more knowledge to help more people. Like, but that's not the case. I see from being a coach to now, over 60 to 80 people. Okay, it's all comes down to communication. If you are able to communicate better and be able to read people better on what they truly want and need and get to their deeper why, which is how we actually communicate, then you'll start to adopt the I can help solve all your problems mindset. Instead of the poor money mindset of like, oh, I got to save, save, save, because. And I got to invest in these Con Ed courses. That's the poor money mindset. Doing another Con Ed course is the poor money mindset. You believe that the more courses that you take, like I said before, is what's actually going to push you over the edge to be wealthy. It's actually the opposite. The Con Ed course is just taking your money, but they're not showing you any skills on how to actually communicate better so that you can get paid more. They're not doing that. That's just the reality. Some of you guys are going to hate me for saying this, but that is the truth that I see time and time and time and again. So start thinking of who is the person that I want to be like? Who is the. Who is the vision that I want to be like for real? And if you don't know, go on Instagram and look at different Instagram accounts or TikTok, whatever account and like, be like, hey, you know what? It would seem cool to live this person's life. What is this person doing? Buy their shit. Like, buy, buy, invest in their programs if you want to be like them. Because whatever they're probably teaching is the exact same thing that got them probably to where they're at that now they're teaching you. So start investing in yourself. Like, real investments that are going to pay off. You should be asking anything that you buy, what is my return on this? When I buy clothes? The return is just to feel good. The return is not to, is not to. It's not going to make me more money by me buying certain clothes. Actually make me poor, Right? So is that really probably a good investment? Probably not, no. How can I take things and invest in people to then invest in myself? That's going to actually give me the outcome that I want. That's how I want you guys to think. And if you're in the poor money mindset, watch what the rich people do. Start acting like you have the money for real. When I didn't have money to go to California for a whole month, what did I do? I went out there for three days. I went out there for three days and I said, you know what? Be amazing to live here. I'm going to act like I'm a local here and not a tourist. So I did local things. Where does the locals hang out? I googled where's the locals hang out. I went to those spots the locals hung out with. I talked to those people that. That were all locals to see what they liked about the area, what they didn't like about the area. I sat outside people's homes acting like that was my house and I'm just here sitting by the ocean. That's what I did. Those things will start prepping your mind to get your mind to open up to allow you to say, wow, I really can truly have this. This is amazing because right now, most of you guys, because what school's taught us is you just have to work super hard, Work, work, work, work, work, and just do the job, do the thing, and you're still going to be living paycheck to paycheck because that's what they taught us. But that's not the truth. It's a lie. They never taught us the skills to communicate better, to actually get what we want. And shame on them for that because they are trying to keep us in the poor money mindset. And I'm trying to get you guys to see the rich money mindset. And the rich money mindset again is investing in yourself. And if you don't know how to do that, start looking at rich people, model what rich people are doing, and do the exact same thing, because that will get you over the hump. Hopefully you guys learned something today. Bye, guys.
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