12 Most Common Regrets of Rich People

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. If you've ever wondered whether money is the real answer to happiness or if there's something missing even when you achieve success, this episode is for you. I'm about to reveal the biggest regrets that haunt the rich and more importantly, how you can avoid these pitfalls on your journey to wealth. This is building your money machine, where we help you master your money, remove financial stress, and live a life by choice. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and over the last 30 years, as a financial expert and advisor, I've seen firsthand how wealth doesn't always guarantee fulfillment. In this episode, I'll show you the 12 biggest regrets of rich people and how you can build wealth without the same mistakes so you can enjoy both success and a life of meaning. Let's do this.

On my journeys as an advisor, as someone over the last three decades and more, working with people to help build wealth, to build their businesses, and to live a rich life, I've had a chance to see some folks, see some folks that did it right, see some folks that did it wrong. I mean, I'm thinking of one in particular who, from the outside, you would assume that everything is perfect. They have a private plane.

They sold a company for well over a billion dollars. They're living their best life with homes and things all around. They've got some kids. And I mean, just from the outside, you look at them and go, this is phenomenal. All right. I mean, mean, I'm betting that you could look in your life and say that there's some people out there like that, but when you see the inside of their life, they're miserable. They're miserable. And. And this got me thinking about this whole idea of what are the biggest regrets around the journey to wealth, the journey to being rich, the journey to accumulating that wealth that millionaires and billionaires have and asking those questions and spending the time to see so we can learn when we're on that journey so we don't make the same Mistakes. Because there's that saying, and it is so true. Money can't buy happiness. Now, you, mind you, you might be able to suffer in comfort, but you're still suffering. I want you to suffer. So in this episode, let's break down 12 of the most common regrets that I have gotten from my conversations with people that are millionaires and billionaires. All right, let's jump in. I'm going to jump to the iPad. We'll list these things out. The first one is really interesting. It was one of the highest ones on the list. And that is what I kind of termed as late to believe, late to succeed. Okay. Late to believe and late to succeed. Okay. That's number one. What I'm doing. What I'm talking about here and what they were talking about is they didn't believe in themselves sooner. I don't know if you're going through that. Maybe in situations that you're dealing with. When we don't believe in ourselves, we tend to not take the actions that we should be taking. And when we don't take the actions that we should be taking, we delay the successes, we delay the potential. We delay all of those things on the journey. We actually stall our journey out. And that hesitation costs you time, it costs you opportunities, and it costs you the growth of your abilities. And what ends up happening is that you have stalled out not only your growth, not only your achievement, but your fulfillment on the journey. Because there's an angst. I mean, if you've ever felt that there's an angst about not believing in yourself, this. This little thing that's eroding and picking at you going, I don't believe in myself. I don't believe myself. But the fact is, is this. Here's. Here's what I've realized. There's very few times and very few things that we can do in our lives that are going to be terminal. You can make a mistake if you do it right. This is why when I. I talk about building wealth, I want safety first, growth second. I want an unshakable financial foundation for you. So even if you do something right, you won't be happy. It might leave a mark, but it won't leave a scar. All right? And so that's the. The first is believe yourself. Okay? When they don't believe, that's their first regret, is that had they believed sooner, they would have achieved sooner, they would have felt fulfillment sooner, they would have been on the path sooner. So where in your life are you maybe not giving yourself the Credit or the belief that, that you need to move through. All right, leads me to number two. Number two. And this is something that hits dear to home family on the back burner. In other words, I'll get to it, I'll get to it with the family. In other words, you're not making your family a priority. How many times have I seen. I can't tell you. And I am guilty of this. I'm. No, no, better in fact late to believe. That's me. Family on the back burner, that's me. Okay, where, where you sit back and say, well, they'll be there. So I got to work tonight, I got to work this week. And I get it, we have to work, we have to make a living, we have to generate income. But the question is at what cost and in what happens is that when I talk to the millionaires here and, and talked about this, they realize too late that wealth cannot replace the lost moments of life. That they wish they had the moments back that they wish they, they, they were spending more time that they were at their kids games or their kids practices, but that they missed those moments. And not only did they miss the moments, they missed the moments to be able to create deeper relationships with the people that are in your life, that are your family that are, and the loved ones and what it leads to is strained relationships and, and you cannot fix that with money. Just throwing this is not one of those where you can throw the money at the problem when Jeremy, if you haven't heard the story, it's one of the things that was the, the catalyst that caused me to talk about building your money machine. This idea of the money machine concept came out of a drawing that Jeremy did for me. And at six years old he came home from school saying, daddy, Daddy, I drew a picture of you at school today. And here's this picture that he drew. And I'm a blue stick figure and there I am standing in front of two computer screens with a phone in each ear and one on the desk ringing and, and I can't tell you how much. This was a mirror into my soul. This was a six year old's way of looking at his father and saying, you're screwing it up. And it is easy. It would have been easy for me to make an excuse to say but I gotta work to put the roof over our heads, to do the things that we want to do and have fun and all that stuff. But we weren't doing the things he wanted to do. He wasn't clearly having fun Our relationship was eroding because all he saw was me at work. And it wasn't about me throwing money at the problem. It would have never solved it. What I needed to do do is throw presence at the problem, time at the problem, quality time at the problem. And it didn't mean that I changed everything and stopped working or stopped traveling. It just meant that I did it differently, that I made sure that he felt like he was a priority and that he became that priority. And I still found that, that space. Because money is not going to solve a relationship that's suffering. All right, so that's number two. Number three. Oh, man. I call this the future trap. And. And this is. This is not living in the present time, not living in the present moment.

And where I see this show up in the folks that I've worked with is that they accomplish something, and immediately they're on to the next goal. They're on to the next.

Level of success, the next achievement, the next accomplishment. And they don't take the time.

To celebrate. They don't take the time to acknowledge. They don't take the time to be grateful. And in having a conversation with one person in particular about this concept, he said, I was not grateful of anything I had, but at the same time, I should have been because it's given me this great life. But I didn't appreciate the life because I didn't slow down enough to take it all in. And this is one of the reasons that when we're doing your plan, your vision for your life and how to build that and everything, one of the first things that I want people to do is in the plan to make sure that you intentionally plan in joy points. If we're not creating the points of sustainable joy, meaningful joy in our life on the journey to financial freedom, we will never, ever.

Enjoy the destination of financial freedom. Constantly going from goal to goal, from accomplishment to accomplishment, from achievement to achievement, without taking in the success. Being grateful for the success and cherishing is going to leave, lead to burnout. It's going to lead to dissatisfaction. It's going to lead to you sitting back, looking at all the stuff that you have and wondering why you're not happy, wondering why you feel empty. And this is something that I think that some of these things really blew me away, how honest they were with their journey, that because every single one of these millionaires, billionaires that I spoke with, you would look at them and go, they have such a great life, but there's some potholes in the road, all right? And then number four. So number four is. Is really about transactional, Transactional relating. Here's what I mean by this, is that.

In the process, on their journey to financial freedom, to building wealth, they primarily focused on transactional relationships. In other words, what can this person give me? What can I get from this person? What is the transaction at play? And it was kind of like, everything's business, everything's business. And I'll tell you something, that what ends up happening is that they never ended up with deep relationships that were meaningful, that have friendships. You know, there's two examples of this. One is I do a lot of speaking around the country around money, wealth, financial freedom, creating and living legacy, all those keynotes and, and everything. And when someone books me to speak, like, I just got booked to speak, and I. And I told them, I will come out. I am not a transactional speaker. There are those speakers, and sometimes you can't help it, but. But there are those speakers that will fly in, do their thing, and fly out. They're in, they're out. That's it. I don't do that. I literally just did a keynote in Las Vegas, and I flew in, I spoke, and then I spent literally two hours there signing 300 books for everyone as this line kept coming through. I'm a relational speaker. I'm a relational type of person. I want to build relationships, and it's not about the compensation in the process. One of my dearest, dearest friends is Brendan Richard. I am with him at every single one of the events, helping run the events, call the events. I am by his side. He's by my side. I'm his business advisor, financial advisor. He helps me with the marketing and all that stuff. We do it because of the relationship with each other, not because it's transactional. We don't pay each other. Okay, but we pay each other, if you know what I mean, in the relationship. And so when you make everything transactional, if you're making it transactional, you're going to find that there's so many times that you feel isolated and lonely because the only time someone is in your life is, is for a transaction, and that's fleeting. All right? The fifth regret, the fifth regret is what I call the lone wolf.

And this is all about not getting help when you need help, not getting the mentor or the coach earlier. And gosh, I would just say 80% of the people I talked to said, I wish I would have gotten. Got a mentor or coach earlier because they would have accelerated my progress. They would have Allowed me to avoid the mistakes and the pitfalls that I made, or they would have given me a perspective that I wasn't seeing in doing that. And so by not seeking guidance, I actually made a lot more mistakes. It delayed my success and certainly curtailed the fulfillment for a period of time. And so there was missed opportunities and that type of thing. So they looked at it and said, by having the right mentor, by having the right coach, by having the right person in your life to give you perspective, to challenge what you're doing, to avoid the things that you shouldn't do, to give you direction because they've been there, will one, shortcut your path to success, Two, allow you to gain knowledge faster, shorten that learning curve, and three, find your path to the fulfillment sooner so you don't feel like you haven't reached your full potential or that you're delayed in reaching your full potential. So lone wolf is number five. Okay, then number six. And this is something that we need to be mindful of so it doesn't. It doesn't carry us away. And this is what I call the money identity crisis. This, I'm gonna. This could be a little bit of a hot take here. Because some people believe that everyone that has money is like, money is the demon. If you just listen to media and social media sometimes and, you know, demonize the wealthy, the rich, the. They're. They're kind of their. Their greedy, horrible, horrible people. I gotta tell you, that's not the case. That's not the truth. There. There are plenty of greedy, horrible people. Doesn't mean that they're all rich, and it doesn't mean that they're all poor, and it doesn't mean that they're middle class. Doesn't mean that. The question isn't about the money. The question is about the identity and the values. And I think that money can expand who you already are. But we have to be careful, because if we aren't careful, we allow the money to define ourselves and the money actually becomes our identity. This is what I mean by a money identity crisis. That all of a sudden, because I have money, I am this. It's that feeling of, do you know who I am? Okay. And if you ever had that feeling and there's. Look, I'll be honest, there's been a couple times where I. I have felt that kind of nature of.

Almost coming out of my lips, and I go, oh, hold on a second. I know who I am. I'm just a dude. I'm a guy who did enough things Right to be successful. But I've done a lot of things wrong, so I've learned a lot. I came from an immigrant family. I am nowhere above or below or we are all humanity together, so I don't want to lose that. And when we allow money to become our identity, we lose the path to true fulfillment. We lose the path because we've disconnected from our true values, the true relationships, and the things that bring richness into our life. Because the sense of purpose is never going to be in the bank account. And so we need to look at it through, through those eyes. So if, if that happens, that becomes a challenge. And one of the biggest regrets is when they allowed money to become the identity.

Then.

Manipulated it, impacted the way they did things. And I'll give you an extreme, extreme example. There's a guy, and I don't know that the numbers are correct, so don't quote me on this, but, but there's a guy by the name of Merkel. He was one of the richest people in Europe. Like his, his wealth was somewhere in the neighborhood of like $16 billion.

So he's one of the richest people in Europe. He made a bad investment and some things that went into his business that dropped his net worth. He, he went from like 16 billion to 13 or 14 billion, y'. All. He's still 13 or 14 billion. His identity was so tied into his money, he could not handle it and he threw himself in front of a train. I know that's a, a morbid thing to put on a show, but I want you to understand the, the power of, of allowing your money to be the thing that defines you. Because just like the stock market goes up and down, if you feel your emotions or your self esteem, your worth going up and down with the stock market, that's when we start to realize that maybe my identity is tied to the money, the wealth. We can't allow that because it will erode your self worth. And, and that self worth is internal. And we can talk about that and all that stuff. But the point being is that that when money becomes your identity, that's a, a, a very, very slippery slope to be on. All right, then. Number seven. Number seven is emotional stagnation. And, and what I mean by this is that I'll just touch talking to a couple of.

Millionaires. And they basically said I lost my ability to communicate my emotions effectively. And by having wealth, I was guarded, I pulled back, I was distrusting, and I didn't express myself as effectively. And what that did is it strained my Relationships, both personally and professionally, they said. And by having poor emotional communication, there was more misunderstandings, there was more broken relationships, there was more arguments, there was breakups, there was divorces, there was all kinds of things. And when it came down to what created the richness in their life and those that remedy this, what brought the richness back to their life was to be able to be open emotionally, to be able to be trusting, to be able to allow themselves to have conversations. That goes back to the whole idea of being relational and not transactional in doing that. And so one of the things that was a big regret was that they didn't feel life during their wealth journey. And they wish they would have felt life during that journey more. Number eight, it's called the stuff syndrome.

And in this is. This is when people are focusing, they regret focusing so much on stuff.

Steve Jobs talked about this before his death and how all the possessions, all the things, all the money.

But he. He had the stuff, but he didn't have the life and couldn't. He couldn't. All the money in the world, all the stuff in the world couldn't heal him. Couldn't, couldn't affect that. Materialism can become an obsession if we're not careful. The feeling, it becomes this dopamine hit of buying. You talk about retail therapy. What is it? It's a dopamine hit. And we, we are constantly trying to acquire more, acquire more. And becomes a winning one. Upping. I got a bigger car than you, I got a bigger house than you, I got a bigger boat than you. And now all of a sudden, these possessions are the things that are keeping score. And in that process, you wonder why you feel empty, you wonder why that you're unsatisfied. You wonder why you feel unfulfilled because all you got is stuff around you. There's no feelings, there's no relationships, there's no depth, there's no communication. There's none of that. The possessions aren't the things that give riches in life. And some folks didn't realize that until it was too late, until it was late in life and they couldn't correct it. And giving up a handful of dollars, giving up some of the possessions to have a deeper relationship with their children or their spouse. So many of them said, I wish I would have. Okay, this brings me to number nine, the joyless journey, and kind of hit on this already. But you got to ask yourself, you got to ask yourself, what brings you joy? I mean, really brings you joy. One of the biggest regrets is that they didn't actually enjoy the journey, that they were building their wealth solely focused on the goal, solely focused on the destination. And there was no satisfaction, there was no fulfillment, there was no achievement unless they actually hit the destination. Yet had they just enjoyed the journey, there would have been some fulfillment all along the way. They didn't embed joy points in the journey, as I call them. There was this relentless grind that, that was, go after it, go after it. We'll achieve it, we'll achieve it. We'll feel better when we get there. And they never found joy in the process and celebrating the small wins along it. They didn't savor the journey.

And I don't want that for you. I hope that as you're building your wealth, as you're going through this, that you'll find the things that matter to you, the things that actually are joyful for you to be able to, to do that. Number 10 is health. This was a big one, okay? I call it the forgotten wealth, because I don't care how much money you got in the bank, if you have no health, you have no wealth, okay? There is no quality of life. And so many said I sacrificed my physical and mental health for success. I was so caught up in it, including myself. Look, I moved 100 miles south of where I lived, left my doctors behind, and it wasn't until seven years, I didn't see a doctor for seven years. And when I had symptoms of the cancer, the bladder cancer, I finally went to the doctor. I, I was checking. I was checking my wealth. I was checking my numbers. I knew my numbers, I knew my business, I knew all of that. I'm. I'm even checking with my relationship. All that stuff was working well. But I neglected my health. And as a result of that, I. I was in a very, very precarious position. They found a 7 1/2 centimeter tumor in my bladder. They looked at me and they said, look, there is a chance you lose your bladder, and because it's cancer, you could lose your life. Like all the money in the world, all the achievements, the books, all that stuff, it didn't matter at that point. They said, oh, you know, it gets your priorities in place. No, it gets your priority in place. There's only one priority. It's life. And to sacrifice your health, you sacrifice your wealth because there's no way of living it. There's no way of enjoying it. There's no way of being able to be there. I want to be there for my granddaughters as they grow. I Want to see them walking down the aisle. I want to be part of that. So they. So many people said I neglected my self care now I go to the gym five to six times a week. I have done it for a while, for a long time now. There's times that I've fallen off the wagon or I couldn't do it, but I am constantly working out and I'm trying to take care of myself, but I still neglect that and go to the doctors, I check. I am very proactive with my health right now because I'm looking at it going, I want to be here for a long time because I love life so much and I love my wife and I love my kids and my grandkids and my friends and I love serving and I love, I want to be here. But if we don't take care of our health, the rest of it isn't going to matter because it'll, it'll impact your ability to serve, it'll impact your ability to build, it'll impact your ability to enjoy. It'll impact all of that. You can't travel, you can't, there's nothing there. So health, get it right, get it right. All right, last two, last two. 11 is the ego trap. And this goes along with the money identity, but allowing it to go to your head where you get a level of arrogance and a sense of invincibility about you where you start to make reckless decisions. I know of one in particular where he felt he had a series of successes in business and felt like he had the minus touch. There was no way he would go wrong. And so he, he really bet big on another business and he lost. He lost. And it was the fact that his level of arrogance and invincibility got in the way of his logical thinking or his willingness to hear perspectives of the people around him and to listen to it. And he lost his judgment. He alienated friends, he alienated professionals, he alienated colleagues in the process.

And his poor decisions as a result of the arrogance and the ego destroyed one of his businesses. Now he's learned, he's rebuilt it and he's continuing on from there. But the lessons were hard learned. Right. Leads me to the last one. This one's a big one if you're not careful. And I see it a lot is partners, partnership, partnership dysfunction. And what I mean by this is this is that there are those that will get into partnership in their business, in other things and your partnerships matter. And so the way they said this was they didn't vet the partnerships enough. Just like an employment relationship, a partnership is even deeper because it's a marriage. It's a legal marriage, if you will. And since it's a legal marriage, you want to make sure that you are compatible. Okay? Because if you're not compatible, why are we getting in the marriage? Because they can do something for you. Now it's transactional again. But if there's an incompatibility, that's going to rise to the surface. When someone comes to me and says, I'm thinking of going in a partnership, the first couple of questions I have is one, do you need their money or their mind? Which one? And if they say, I don't really need either of them, then I go, why are you going in a partnership? Why are you getting married with this person? And then second, what are their values and what is their vision? If there is a disconnect in values or vision, it will rise and it will rear its ugly head sometime in the partnership. It could be in a year, it could be in months, it could be in 10 years. But there'll be a division in the partnership. And I, as a. As a. An advisor and a financial expert, I have testified in partnership disputes, partnership breakups, to help navigate the divorce, if you will, of the partnership. And so. And when you do that, it destroys businesses, it destroys wealth, and it destroys lives and relationships. And so.

This is one of the regrets for those that actually brought partners in, or brought them in where they said, I didn't vet it enough. I should have been more critical in who I chose as a partner, why I chose a partner, and what the values are. So These are the 12 most often cited regrets of the wealthy, of the rich people, the ones that I've interviewed, millionaires and billionaires, and those that haven't even reached a million yet, that have made the mistakes. I hope that you'll take this and look at this as a checklist. That I hope that you'll look at this and say, how do I make sure that I don't allow this to happen? Because the worst thing to happen is that, hey, you call me up and you say, mel, I am financially free. I've got this in the bank. I am set for life. And then you tell me that I'm alone. I'm not sharing it. I am not enjoying it. I feel lonely, I feel alienated, I feel isolated. That's not a rich life. It's why I use the term rich. I want you to live richly. Richly is how you experience it. Richly is how you feel about it. Wealthy. What's in the bank account, That's a statistic. And wealth without richness is an empty life. All right? So I hope that this helps you and you found it value. If you have any questions or anything comes up, do me a favor, follow me. Stay with me on this journey, okay? If you haven't subscribed to the show, subscribe to the show. It takes, it takes a few seconds. Subscribe to it. We are going to keep putting content out because my job in in building your money machine is to help you master your money and to eliminate financial stress so you can live a life by choice and make that life a rich life. All right. Until I get a chance to see another episode or on the road as we go, always, always strive to live a life that outlives you. See you in the next one. Thank you for listening to the Affluent Entreprene with me, your host, Mel Abraham. 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 youg 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.