9 SIGNS You’re Secretly Getting RICH Even if You Don’t Feel It

If getting rich feels exciting to you, you're probably doing it wrong. See, today I want to break down the nine signs that you're quietly getting rich, even if it doesn't feel like it. But fair warning, this will challenge almost everything you've been told about success and what it's supposed to look like. Because real wealth isn't loud, it doesn't flex, and it doesn't need applause. In fact, the people who are actually building wealth usually think that. That they're losing, while the people who look successful a lot of times are one bad month away from panic and disaster. All right, I'm your host, Mel Abraham. I'm a cpa, an entrepreneur, and a money mentor that has spent the last 30 plus years helping people build their wealth, but also walking the financial freedom journey himself. This is building your money machine, where we help you master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life by choice. Because earning more doesn't make you free. A money machine does. So if you're ready for the truth instead of the hype, let's do this. Most people think getting rich is supposed to feel like something. Like there's a moment where the fireworks go off, the sparks hit. Your bank app, like, congratulates you, and suddenly you walk around and say, hi, yes, I've arrived. Hate to tell you, that's not the way it works in reality. If you're building real wealth, it's quiet, it's boring, it's. And half the time, it feels like nothing's actually happening. Which is why I want to talk about this. It's why I want to break down these nine signs that you're quietly getting rich, and maybe why you don't feel like it. See, more importantly than getting rich is this idea of understanding how your life is actually being built. See, some of these will feel validating. A couple, though, might feel uncomfortable, and one of them might completely change how you see money, because it did for me. So let's start with sign number one, and that is this. Your spending is intentional, not impulsive. Okay? See, quiet wealth doesn't mean you don't spend money. A lot of people think, oh, you got to live on beans and rice. No, no, no, no. You know, it's about being deliberate with your money, being intentional with it. It means that you don't spend it accidentally. Your money has a governor now. And it's not because you're scared. It's not because you're cheap, but it's because you're intentional, because you're deliberate, because you're aware. So you still spend, you just spend on the things that actually add value to your life. The experiences, the health, the relationships, the growth. Not impulse buys, not emotional spending, not swipe and grab just because it seemed like the thing to do were scrolling on Instagram one day. It's not for the stuff that looks exciting for 12 minutes and then lives in your drawer for the rest of its life. Here's the hard truth that most people don't want to face. Most people do not have a money problem. They have a meaning problem. They spend to numb stress, to impress people they don't even like or they don't even know to feel successful instead of being successful. High value spending gives you your energy back. Low value spending just drains it quietly. So if your spending slowed down but your life didn't get smaller, that's not restriction, that's actually maturity. And so the thing to think about is this. If this sounds anything familiar, then the next sign explains why the shift happens. So it's okay to understand this, but the idea is to be intentional. Now sign number two is your lifestyle is values driven, not income driven. Now I made this mistake early. This was one of the things that pivoted for me is that that as I made more money, I expanded my life. And it wasn't things that I really enjoyed, it was just expanding life because that's what I thought I was supposed to do. And I thought it would look good from the outside. This is where most people lose the game. Income goes up, lifestyle follows. And that raise, that was supposed to change everything, changes nothing. Okay? I've lived this decision, okay? And that's the thing. You get the bigger house, you get the nicer car, all the external markers that say look, I made it. But at the time when I did this, I was single, but I was a single full time dad. And when I looked at it honestly, I realized something that was really uncomfortable. I didn't need any of these upgrades. I didn't need a bigger house, I didn't need a bigger or nicer car. And the only reason to do them would have been for status to do it, for image to be seen. And we all have that choice. I had that choice. And the idea is either was going to let my ego make the decision or I was going to logic and values make it. Ultimately we stayed exactly where we were, the same house. I mean, lord knows we didn't need any more. We had 3,100 square feet for me and a six year old boy. Okay, Stayed in the same car, stayed in the same life. Well, we got a few upgrades here and there and instead I accelerated funding my money machine, accelerated my, my building of investments. That decision didn't feel exciting. It didn't look impressive. No one, I couldn't tell anyone about it, but it literally changed everything that came after. And this is the line I want you to hear really clearly. Just because you can afford it, just because you can afford something doesn't mean it belongs in your life. See, if your income has grown and your lifestyle hasn't automatically inflated with it, you're not missing out. You're building margin. The question is, before we make an expansion to our life, is it truly something that's aligned with what we want to have? I'm okay with it at that point because it's intentional, it's aware, it's conscious. But if we don't make those decisions intentionally, consciously, then we're making the decisions for other reasons. And we wonder why, when we have all this stuff and we have all this debt and we feel the stress that we're not happy, we're not fulfilled. And margin, when you have that, is the freedom fuel. This is where most people get stuck. Not because they don't earn enough, but because they actually don't even know what it truly costs for them to live. Okay, now one of the things I'm going to give you here is something called the lifestyle cost calculator. Because if you're not sure of what it costs you to live, this will be a tool. It's totally free. You can Download it@melabram.com lifestyle and start to understand what it's costing you to live. Because when you do now you can make some different decisions. You can be intentional, you can be conscious, you can be aware. Okay, it might be eye opening and that's okay. So now when you look at this, you've talked about the values and value spending. Now let's look at sign number three. Because sign number three is that you think in systems and not decisions. I look at this and say instead of transactions, you're thinking in process. At some point wealthy people stop asking what should I do next? And they start asking the question of what system removes this decision forever. Because decisions create friction. Friction creates risk, risk creates loss. If I'm constantly have to decide, decide, decide, decide, that's fatiguing. But when we put a system in place, automatic contributions, automatic investing, automatic savings, automatic bill paying, the system runs for us and we don't have the willpower, we don't need the willpower because Willpower is a terrible long term strategy. And if your financial success depends on you being disciplined every single day, every single moment, it's probably fragile. But when you systematize it, when you put it in a system, it compounds quietly in the background. I'm not constantly looking at my accounts. I'm not constantly looking at the things, the money that comes in, comes in and it knows what to do. Because we set systems up to automatically invest. We have rules based savings. The bills are handled without drama, literally automatically paid. I do annual reviews of everything, so I'm not living in daily anxiety. I look at everything on a monthly basis, at least my spending and my cash in and my accounts just to keep my finger on the pulse. But we do the big review once a year. And here's the truth that surprises most people. Wealthy people aren't more disciplined. They're just more engineered. See, you don't think your way to wealth, your system, your way to wealth. The money feels less emotional than it used to when you do that. And the fewer the decisions you have, the less stress you have, okay? That's not luck. That's structure doing its job. Sign number four. You hold cash as decision insurance. Now, I want to clear this up because this is something that some people will push back on. Cash is not there to make you rich, okay? Cash is there to keep you from being forced to make bad decisions at bad times. It's to protect your wealth, okay? That's what it's there. It's to protect the foundation of everything. It protects your investments, it protects your peace. And when something breaks, and it will, that's just the way life is. You don't panic when the markets dip. You don't sell in fear to try and make your bills. In fact, that looks to you like a sale. And you start to start, move into it and buy more. See, when life throws a curve ball to you, you don't reach for debt, you don't start liquidating. Here's the line to remember. Cash doesn't grow your wealth. It protects everything else that you've built. If you have money set aside and you don't talk about it, that's quiet confidence and it's progress. You need cash to keep you from making impulsive or panicked choices in life. All right? Sign number five. Your financial decisions are internally referenced. This one's a big one, okay? Especially in our society. Because at some point, comparison will lose its grip on you if you do this. Because right now we live in a society where everyone's comparing. I mean, you're constantly swiping on social media, you're listening to the media you're watching in the movies, you're reading, eating things, and it's comparison, comparison, comparison. And what ends up happening is we start letting, letting social media define what we should do, what we should wear, what we should be. And when you stop letting social media define what success is for you and you find that internal locus of control, the reference point, you stop reacting to friends spending, you stop reacting to the neighbors, to the press, you stop letting the marketing tell you what you need, your decisions become internally referenced and based on your values that we just talked about. You have a plan that determines what you're going to do and you follow the plan. You've defined your version of a rich life, not someone else's. Not your parents, not your siblings, but yours. And you're making decisions to move you towards that definition of a rich life, not someone else's. And something interesting happens when you make this switch. Okay? Marketing all around you gets very quiet. Urgency doesn't get you to move, immediacy doesn't get you to move. It doesn't matter that it's on sale. If it doesn't fit the plan, it doesn't fit your life. Because once your values are clear, status stops being persuasive and you're not anti nice things, you're just no longer impressed by expensive distractions that don't move you to the life that you want. And this is where money itself starts to change the meaning for you. Because remember I said that money is simply the paintbrush to paint the masterpiece called your life. But it's your life that's the key, not someone else's. And so when we start to make our decisions with our money from an internal space and place, we start to make the right decisions to move us closer to where we want to be. Okay? And that leads us to sign number six. Money stops being the point. My son once drew something for me. You know, Jeremy came home at six years old and said, daddy, daddy, I drew a picture of you at school today and I bent down to look at this picture and it was me standing in front of two computer screens with a phone in each ear. Jeremy wasn't even in it. We weren't having fun. That was a mirror into my soul from a six year old boy that said, dad, you're screwing it. If someone drew a picture of your life, what would it look like? Because like I said, money is that paintbrush. Life is your canvas. And if we're not Careful. That's where we start to get ourselves in trouble. What Jeremy showed me in that picture, it hit me is that money isn't the goal, it's the tool. It's the paintbrush. And I worked with plenty of people who had a lot of money, but they had no picture. They had the brush, but they had no vision. And most people stare at the brush their entire life and forget to paint. I was doing the things, but I wasn't creating the life. I wasn't being the father that I wanted to be. And once you see money, that it is not the goal, that it's the tool, you stop obsessing about the money. You start obsessing about the life the money is going to create. It stops being the scoreboard, it stops being your identity. Money isn't the point. It's simply the path to get you there. And what has to take precedent is the life you're creating. Because I know a lot of people who have a lot of money, like hundreds of millions of dollars, but they live a miserable life. I don't want that for you. So it's not the money that gives you the richness in life. It's the richness that you create in your life. And asking yourself, how does the money support that? That leads me to sign number seven. You measure wealth in time, okay? And these all go hand in hand. Because once money becomes that tool, the question that you ask yourself changes. You know, what is it buying you is? Becomes the question. And the answer isn't stuff. It's time. Because I truly believe that the best measure of your wealth and the richness of your life is how much of the time you have in your life that you control. Because I can have big bank accounts, but if I can't control my time and I'm beholden to earnings, to stress to everyone else, that's not a rich life. That's what the drawing that Jeremy drew showed me, that time is the most precious commodity. And we start to measure our wealth in time, we start to think in time. When we go to purchase something, we ask ourselves, how much of my time do I have to trade to re earn? That time's going to give you time to think. It's going to give you time to rest. It's going to give you time to create, time to be present. That is something you want a wealth of time with. You stop glorifying busy. You protect the white space. You say no more often. That's the thing. Not because you can't, but because you don't want to. I was just having a conversation with a dear friend and she had a big whale of a client that came in and she literally fired the client within eight weeks. And we had this conversation. It was because that client, the demands from the client were forcing them to trade too much of their life away. And there's plenty of times I get asked to do things and I look at it and I go, good money. How much of my life is it going to cost me? And if I can't make that equation make sense, I don't do it. We say no more often. Here's the truth. Most people never learn. Rich isn't about how much money you have. It's how much of your life you're in control of. And if you're gaining control of your time, then you're truly gaining real wealth and choice. All right, sign number eight. You're building a money machine and you're not chasing income. This is the core shift. Earning more doesn't make you free. Building a money machine does. Until you find a path to separate your earnings from the efforts to earn it, you will always be imprisoned to the earnings treadmill. That was what Jeremy showed me in that picture. That was the birth of the obsession to figure out, how do I separate it? That was the birth of the money machine. See, a money machine, when built right, your investment portfolio, the engine to your freedom. It pays you without you having to put a one on one relationship with your effort. And it pays you for having the discipline and structure over time. Because one thing that happens, like one break, if you stop, it keeps going just like it did during the cancer for me is that when I stopped all of my work to focus on beating the demon called cancer. The machine took over and paid for our life and allowed us to live not with draining things, not with limits on it, but to allow us to continue that lifestyle and focus on that. So if your focus starts to move from chasing the income, but how you use the income to build the systems that give you more freedom down the road, you're not just getting richer, you're getting freer. And that's where your focus is. Now. Sign number nine. You walk with your wealth in peace. Here's what I mean by this. This one's a subtle one, but it's powerful. You're calmer around money. You're not reactive. You're not as emotional. Headlines like, oh, recession's coming, all that stuff, they don't shake you. Market swings don't rattle you. You understand what you're doing? With your money and why now you're going to have to build the financial literacy. It's why you're here on this channel while you're doing the work with me. Okay? Peace doesn't come from having more money. I know a lot of people with a lot of money have no peace. And I know a lot of people with a lot less money have a whole lot of peace. See, it comes from understanding how money works. See, financial literacy will create emotional stability and that calm confidence that is quiet wealth. That's the thing that I want you to think about. So here's what I want you to reflect on. Not how many of these signs you checked off, but if money stopped being the focus tomorrow, would your life still work? If your income never changed again, would your systems carry you forward? If no one ever saw what you owned, would you still feel rich? Because real wealth isn't loud. It's calm. It's intentional. And it usually shows up long before it ever feels like it has. And it doesn't feel like you're getting rich yet. You probably are. Just quietly. That's the game I want you to play. All right, y', all, I hope that this helps. I hope that this gets you to think about some things and think about your wealth journey a little differently and to put it more introspectively, internally focused to create a life that you envisioned, not anyone else. No one else in your life. Not social media, not media, not parents, not siblings, not your degree, not society, but you and only you. All right? If I can help you in that journey, do me a favor, reach out. Let me know. DM me comment. Let's have the conversation. Let's get you on the path to financial freedom. Because I truly believe to the core of my being that financial freedom is a birthright. And I want to help you go claim it. All right? Till I get a chance to see you on your path to financial freedom or on the road as I'm out there speaking, always, always strive to live a life that always you. I'll see you. Thank you for listening to the affluent entire 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 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.