10 Habits Of The "Fake Rich" You Need To Avoid

Hey there, real quick, before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience Live it is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. What do the people who look rich, you know, the ones that drive the luxury cars, that wear the designer clothes flexing on Instagram, actually have in common? Well, for a lot of them, it's not financial freedom, it's financial pressure. If you've ever felt like you needed to spend money to look successful, or if you found yourself wondering how people with all the shiny stuff are still stressed and broke, well, this episode's for you. I'm going to break down 10 habits of the fake rich that might look impressive on the outside, but suddenly it's destroying their financial future. And more importantly, I'll show you how to avoid these. And that way, you can build the wealth that actually truly lasts.

It. We've all seen it. The people that are parading, the Lambos, the boats, the Lavis, vacations, all the stuff. But what we don't see is the truth behind it. And so what I want to do is break down kind of the habits that I see that the fake rich are parading around that maybe make us feel like we're behind or we're not enough or maybe I should do more. I should buy more, have more. Okay, well, first things first. You do what is you, and you don't need to compare yourself to them. But let's just break it down. The first habit is this spending to impress, not to progress is this habit this is about. If you're buying stuff that not because you need it, but because you hope someone will notice it, well, you're not investing for the future. You're investing in other people's opinions. So in a recent Bank Bankrate study, Bankrate.com survey, they found 61% of Americans have bought luxury items, luxury goods, just because they want to appear successful. That's like putting a fresh coat of paint on a house with termites. All right? Wealth doesn't need an audience. Flexing for strangers is a broke hobby. It's not a wealth hobby. All right, I just want you to start to look at it and say, I'm not saying not to spend. I'm just simply saying, is this something that brings you joy that you truly, truly value or that you truly, truly need? And if not, then why? All right. It's one of the reasons that I think that we all should be operating from dynamic, detailed financial plan, because then it allows us, it informs us to make decisions from the plan with permission, without guilt, without shame, and without, you know, having comparison or peer pressure drive some of the purchasing decisions. All right? Habit number two is financing the flex. Listen, Americans owe over $1.1 trillion in credit card debt. And a lot of it. It's not emergencies. It's the Gucci belts, it's the fancy dinners, it's the vacations. That should have really come with a disclaimer that said, warning, interest rates apply until retirement. Okay? Because here's the thing. If you need four easy payments to go to Cabo, then maybe it's time for a staycation. It's not time to take the vacation. The idea is this, is that if we are financing lifestyle consumerism, then it's something we can't afford. We're borrowing from our future to create something today.

That we can't afford. And now there's a lot of people that are doing that. So it looks nice, but sooner or later, that equation isn't going to math out anymore. Debt isn't the enemy, though. It's using it to live a lifestyle that you can't afford, that's the enemy. It's financial quicksand. All right? Habit three, lifestyle creep. Oh, man. You get a raise and suddenly your car gets shinier or your rent gets bigger and your dinner bills, they start needing financing, but somehow you're still stressed about money. More than 60% of folks that make over $100,000 a year are still living paycheck to paycheck. That's a travesty. More income without discipline is just a more expensive version of stress. If every raise disappears because you increase your lifestyle, then it's a problem. Because what's happening is that you're just taking that raise and replacing it with new bills. You didn't level up. You just rebranded what your broke looks like. Okay? And I see this over and over again. That's again what why we work with a plan. That's why we work with a vision. That's why we spend the time to understand what's important to you, what's important to your spouse or the people around you, so you can live true to your ideals. All right, habit number four, Chasing trends, like their financial advice. Here's what I mean by that. And this was me, I gotta admit. The new iPhone, the latest sneaker drop, the crypto coin of the week. It all screams, look at me, look at me. But none of it says, I have a plan. Okay? I used to grab the new iPhone. I used to wait up until midnight and go, oh, I can order that iPhone. I wanted to be one of the first. Now it doesn't matter to me. But here's. Here's what we. When you start to look at the data, Americans spend over fifteen hundred dollars a year just trying to keep up with the trends on social media. And don't get me wrong, I love a good gadget. I have plenty of gadgets. Look behind me. All right? But if your retirement plan depends on your sneakers going up in value, then we got bigger problems. So what we need to look at is, first off, am I investing? Am I walking through the wealth priority ladder? Am I doing the right things with my money to build the money machine to give me the freedom, a life of choice?

Then we can start to splurge on some of these things. And if we can't do it in cash, we probably ought not to do it at all. So chasing trends is like sprinting in place. You're burning a whole lot of energy, but you're not building any kind of money momentum down the road, right? Habit number five, investing in your image instead of actual assets. Now, I'm not against looking, looking good. But if, say, your skin care budget outruns your investing contributions, it's time for a financial facial list. The US beauty industry is a huge industry. It's over $100 billion. And a lot of that ends up being fueled by buy now, panic later, or pay later types of plans. And so rather than do that, the first thing I would do is make sure that you're taking care of your financial future. Because here's something I do know. All the stuff you're putting on yourself to take away the wrinkles, to take care of all of that stuff is not going to counteract the financial stress of not having your money stuff in order. So let's get it dialed in in that regard. So that leads me to habit number six. Avoiding budgets like they're bad Tinder date. Okay. Some people treat budgeting like it's financial jail. And, and I get it. They say, well, this is like, it's like, it's deprivation. It's like dieting. I don't like it. And they Say, oh, budgets are for broke people. And I say that no, now, I don't believe budgets in the construct of the way people see them. But budgets aren't for broke people. Budgets, when done right, become plans. A plan is a forward looking permission slip to go spend. It's the thing that allows you to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be. You can call it a budget, you can call it a plan, it doesn't matter. But the fact of the matter is that if you're not tracking your spending, then in all likelihood you're not saving and investing at the level that you could and should. Listen, even Warren Buffett uses a budget. And if a man with billions watching his billions.

Is using budgets or plans to make that happen, maybe it deserves a second look. And I'm not saying to tie your hands. What I am saying is to make sure that when you spend money, it is on the things that matter to you.

What the budget or the plan will do is it'll keep you from making temptation spending or emotional spending because you've already allocated the dollars and you know where it's going. It'll also do this when you go spend the $250. I know I just talked about skincare, but $250 on your hair and it's already in the plan. You can do it without guilt, without shame, without worry, because you know what, it was already in the plan. You're good. All right. Habit seven, Dodging financial conversations. Listen, fake rich folks, they don't talk about money, not with their spouse, not with their friends, not even with themselves. They don't face the reality. They are playing credit card, you know, juggling by transferring balances. 62% of Americans, they say, feel uncomfortable talking about money even in their own household, with their own spouse. That's not a strength. That's silence with a side of stress. That's really what's going to happen. Now, we have, obviously in our household, we have lots of conversations around money, not about the money itself. Our conversations are about the life we want to create and then how the money fuels that life. Because money is nothing more than people will say, it's a tool. I say it's a paintbrush. It's a paintbrush to paint the masterpiece called your life. And so when we talk about the paintbrush, the money, we want to have those conversations in the construct and the context of life, the life that we want. And if ignoring finances, ignoring those conversations because it makes you anxious, because.

Maybe it's challenging, that's like ignoring the chest pain because you're too busy to go to the doctor. And I know you wouldn't do that. So you don't get financially free. You don't build financial freedom. You don't build a money machine by avoiding the topic. You get there by facing it head on, educating yourself, skilling yourself up and doing the things that make a difference. But the fake rich, they don't do it that way. They just keep parading. All right, habit number eight, Job hopping to fund a lifestyle, not build a life. Now let's be clear here. Changing jobs to grow can be smart, but job hopping just to afford a new car lease or a sushi habit that stress dressed up for success, okay, there's no reason to do it. Okay? It's the wrong reason to make the move. If it's a strategic move to increase your earnings, to increase your opportunity, to increase your growth, great, let's do it. But if it's simply to pay more in bills, we might want to rethink it. You know, people that change jobs, Harvard had shown this. The people that change jobs frequently tend to have actually lower long term savings and less retirement readiness, primarily because they're chasing the payment of the bill rather than the growth of the skill. Okay, so if your new job gives you a raise but your expenses rise even faster and you think that you have to jump ship, that truly isn't progress. That's lifestyle hopscotch. And sooner or later you're going to trip and fall. Okay, habit number nine, no emergency fund, they say. Ah, but I got plenty of assets in the closet. All right, this is hard because I think 57%. It's been said they can't even handle an emergency or an unplanned expense of $1,000 without having to go into debt without having to borrow. Yet they just bought $300 pairs of shoes or a $2,000 handbag that's sitting in the closet. Okay? Your credit card is not your emergency plan. Not at 28%, 29% interest rate. Your wealth isn't built.

By borrowing. It's built by investing. And so getting that this designer stuff or buying stuff, I'm fine with again, but we do it in a responsible way. It's why I have the wealth priority ladder. Those first elements to have that emergency fund in place, it's not about the emergency fund isn't going to make you wealthy, but it's going to give you peace of mind and it's going to keep you wealthy. It's there to protect your wealth, so you don't go in the ditch, you don't have to dig a hole, you don't have to go into debt. And yet a lot of people say, well, I don't want that cash over there. So they don't even invest it. They spend it because they got to have that stuff on their arm or driving or something like that, and it's all in debt. So spending the time not building an emergency fund but having stuff instead isn't your path to financial freedom. It's not your path to peace of mind, and it's certainly not your path to a rich life. That leads me to the last one. Habit 10. High income still broke. Oh, God. I can't tell you how many times I see this. This is the biggest illusion, I think, out there, that they make a lot of money, yet they're still stressed about money. They make a lot of money, but at some point they end up broke. Think about people like.

Nicholas Cage, Michael Tyson, you know, gosh, Burt Reynolds, a lot of these people that. That made hundreds of millions of dollars. They made by. By any estimate, huge money, but they ended up still broke. Why? Because it isn't how much you make, it's what you do with what you make. And in fact, it's, you know, people will say, oh, it's how much you keep. It's not even how much you keep that matters. What matters is how much you get to work for you. Okay, so, yes, high income, that makes it easier and faster to get yourself to financial freedom. But just the high income alone doesn't get you there. And so when you look at it, remember I said that there's a high percentage of people living check to check, and they're making over $100,000 a year. Your income is not your wealth. It's the fuel, it's the potential. But you have to learn, one, how to keep it, two, how to invest it, and three, how to get it to work harder for you than you did for it. The subtitle of my book, There's a Reason for It. If you're making six figures, but you're still sweating at the grocery store checkout, we got some things to check in, and we got to look at things that need to change. All right? So here's the truth. The reality is that real wealth, it's peaceful, it's quiet, it's steady. It doesn't need validation. It's not out there. Now, do I drive a nice car? Yes. But I drive it. I pay cash for it, but I also drive it because I want to drive it, and I. And I can afford it. I'm not going into debt and scrapping myself and putting ourselves in jeopardy so other people can see me. In fact, I don't drive that much. I mean, the cars, you know is two years old and has got less than 5,000 miles on it. So it's not that I'm trying to get out there. Fake wealth is loud. It's insecure. They want validation. They want the applause. And it usually comes with a financing plan. Okay, so the question really is.

Where are you? What do you want to do? Which one of these habits maybe hit you the hardest or reminded you of someone you know or someone you used to know? Let me know. Drop it in the comments, okay? And if you're ready to ditch the fake rich and the stress that comes along with it, then stay with me on this journey. Because on the other side of that is freedom. On the other side of that is peace of mind. On the other side of that is choice in your life. All right. All right. I hope that you found this of value, and I hope that you're on your path to being silently rich. All right. Until I get a chance to see you on your path to financial freedom, as I always say, always, always strive to live a life that outlives you.

Thank you for listening to the affluent Entrepreneurship with me, your host, Mel Abrahamic. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to melabraham.com group and I'll see you there.

And that's it for this episode of Building your money Machine, where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people, because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright, and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.