9 Subtle Behaviors That Quietly Signal You're Upper Class

Have you ever looked around and thought, I'm doing all the right things, so why do I still feel rushed or stressed or behind? Well, in this episode, we're going to walk through the subtle behaviors that quietly signal that you're upper class. Now, here's the promise right up front. This is not about money. But it is about money. But it's more about the way some people move through life with calm, with control, with confidence, while everyone else feels like they're sprinting on a treadmill. Okay? So it feels like your life is louder than it should be. You're not broken. You were never taught how to remove the pressure. And I've spent 30 plus years as a CPA, as a money mentor, as someone who's walked the path doing that. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and this is Building youg Money Machine, where we help you master your money, eliminate financial stress to live a life of choice. Because earning more does. Doesn't make you free. A money machine does. So let's jump in. Let's do this. All right. Let's set the record straight right from the get go. We're talking about the subtle behaviors that quietly signal that you're upper class. But what I'm not talking about is income. What I'm not talking about is your net worth. And I'm definitely not talking about what you drive, what you wear or what you post online, the vacations you take. Because if that is what upper class meant, then I would have been upper class at some points in my life and not upper class at others. And very definitely not upper class during a recession. See, upper class, the way I'm using it here is a way of operating, a way of showing up. It's how someone shows up when money is not panicking them and time is not chasing them and validation isn't running their life. See, it's the heart of everything we teach in the money machine. Okay? A money machine is not about being wealthy. It's about living richly. It's about building systems that remove pressure from your life. And when that pressure drops, behavior changes. So to make this practical and clear, I'm going to walk you through this across four different domains and the four places that upper class behavior shows up. Your internal control, your time and energy, your money and material things, and your social presence. Okay? Once you see these patterns, you'll start noticing them everywhere, including where you might be leaking authority or calm without even realizing it. So let's start with domain one, and that's the internal control. Upper class. And how you show up always starts on the inside first. See, before money ever becomes calm, the mind does. If we are so focused on money, our mind's spinning a mile a minute. And I learned this early in my CPA years, I worked with people who had wildly different net worths. And what surprised me was not the money, it was actually the behaviors. See, if building wealth is 80% behaviors, then this is the most probable predictor of what matters on your journey to living a rich life and building wealth. And the people with the most money were often been the least dramatic. They didn't panic. There was no emotional roller coasters. There was no constant reacting. That was not personality. That was actually regulation. See, psychology will back this up. People who build and sustain wealth tend to have a stronger and internal locus of control, meaning that they believe outcomes are shaped by their decisions, not luck or chaos. And that mindset shows up in very specific behaviors. So let's look at a couple of behaviors in this domain. And the first behavior is this. They do not outsource their identity. Think about this. This is really, really important. Upper class people are not auditioning for approval. They don't explain every decision. They don't justify their values. They don't narrate their life choices like a documentary. They decide and then they move forward. And early in my entrepreneurial journey, I explained everything. Why I left public accounting, why I chose this path, why I said no, why I said yes. And eventually I realized the explaining was not for them, it was for me. And here's the truth. Insecure people explain, secure people decide. That's the core of the money machine principles. When your identity is stable, your decisions get quieter, they get stronger. So here's in this behavior, one of the key action steps here is to pay attention. So pay attention. When you over explain too many details, if you will, okay, that's usually a sign that you're giving someone else authority over the decision that you're not ready to own. And it's not about not saying anything, not explaining, but ask yourself why you're giving all the details. Okay, that leads me to behavior number two. Behavior number two is they have emotional liquidity. Here's what I mean. This one matters more than people realize. Because I've been through four recessions and one pattern shows up every single time. The people who panic first usually suffer the most. And I've watched people, they freak out, they sell out, and they sit on the sidelines and they lose out in the process. Upper class behavior under stress is not emotionless. Okay, so they're not devoid of emotions, but their behavior is measured. Markets drop, deals fall apart. Life throws a left hook. Some people implode. Upper class people. Pause. This is why I emphasize liquidity so much in the money machine, and not just financial liquidity. Liquidity buys time. Time buys clarity. Clarity prevents bad decisions. Calm is compound interest for your life. That's the game that we're playing. And research has consistently shown that emotional stability correlates with better long term financial outcomes. Because what happens is it allows people to think clearly under stress. Now, what else happens is that if you have a system or you have a process to follow, that helps take control when you feel out of control. So here's the action step with this one, and that is when something's going wrong. Pause and ask yourself, is this a real problem or just uncomfortable? See, most things are just uncomfortable. Now, some of them are real problems. Like for instance, when I got diagnosed with cancer, that was on a Friday. My wife and I were out of control. The rest of Friday, the rest of Saturday, in tears, crying. And then Sunday came along and we took a moment to pause. We took a moment to say, these are the cards we're dealt with. What decisions do we need to make? Now, there are things that we could control in this process, and there were things that we couldn't control. But being able to have that space and place and calm to make a decision and move forward is huge. And it happens in your life and it happens financially. And those people that have upper class behaviors, that's what they do. And now that leads me to domain number two. And this is about your time and energy. And I think that when you look at upper class behaviors, upper class people protect what cannot be replaced. And this was something that I didn't take as seriously until the cancer, because the cancer showed me that, oh, guess what? Our time here, it's limited, okay? It's finite. And so if you want a fast way to tell if someone's internal wealth is there, watch how they treat their time. See, I actually think we should be measuring our wealth in time, not dollars, okay? Because people who operate with real autonomy, they don't do it living in some constant urgency. They know that if they have agency over every moment, every minute, every hour of every day, and that has nothing to do with finances. You can have hundreds of millions of dollars and be out of control with your time, and you can have tens of thousands of dollars and have 100% control of your time. And I'll take the control of my time more than the money. That's the thing that I think we start to realize is that the most finite resource is time. So behavior number three, the first behavior here is upper class behaviors. They move with margin. Here's what I mean by that. Upper class people are rarely rushed, not because they don't care, but because they plan. See, they don't stack meetings back to back or calls back to back like a bad game of Tetris. They don't arrive everywhere completely breathless and behind and two minutes behind, five minutes behind, they leave space. I have a friend, James, who talks about always leave space for the magic of life to happen. And I think that too often we're packing things in over and over and over again. So we're running from one thing to the next, one thing to the next, and a couple things happen is that you don't give enough focus to the thing you're doing. But more importantly, you don't give enough gratitude to the thing that just happened. Okay, this was a big shift for me early on. I equated busy with important. Turns out busy is usually just unprotected. Time rushing is usually a sign of life owns you instead of the other way around. That's exactly why one of the first things in the money machine priorities is to stabilize your cash flow instead of just maximizing your income. See, the margin in your money creates margin in your time. Okay? So the action step here is this. Add buffer time into your calendar this week. When I do my calendar, when I give someone access to my calendar, it puts a buffer time so they can't some, they can't just back up all my meetings. There's an hour between meetings and everything to give me some time. But even if you can't do an hour, if you can just do 10 minutes, that changes how you show up everywhere. So the key here is that if you're going to book some calls or you're going to book some time or you're going to book some meetings, put a buffer before and after it. See what it does to your life. Now the next behavior is this. Behavior number four is that they're selective with urgency. This is huge. Upper class people do not confuse loud with important. You know, every email seems urgent. Every email is their urgency that they're putting into your life. Okay? So we need to understand that not every request deserves immediate access. I mean, I think it drives my, my wife crazy because if you look at some of my emails, I've got thousands of emails that are, that are not responded to. Now, I trust me I respond to a lot of my emails, but there are some things that I just schedule out that, that I don't respond to immediately. I tag them and I respond to them in an orderly fashion. Because not every problem is mine to or it's not mine to solve right now. So I respond instead of reacting. And I don't allow someone else's agenda to become my agenda. Okay? I used to pride myself on being fast. Fast replies, fast decisions. But what I learned is that speed without clarity is really just anxiety. With a schedule, urgency is often just anxiety wearing a badge. And so now I sat back and said, I'm going to go at my pace. And you end up training your clients. You end up training the folks that you work with, how you work. And that space, that urgency, that immediacy is determined by you, not by them. Okay, so your action step here is this. Before reacting quickly, ask yourself, if I respond tomorrow instead of now, does anything actually break? And most of the time the answer is no. All right, all right, so let's jump to domain number three, which is about money and material. See, quiet wealth thinks differently about money. And this is where people expect the flash instead of seeing discipline. So here's the thing. The behavior here, the first behavior here is that their lifestyle, upper class lifestyle, is intentionally boring. Okay, here's the thing. When you look at upper class money, their decisions are repetitive and predictable. The things that I do with my money to build wealth, the things that we do are the same things that we did a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. They're the same things and they're on automatic. And we continue to do it because they work. The reason we have a system, a process, the money machine blueprint, is because it works and we just repeat it. If you're doing it with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, you know, seven figures, eight figures, it doesn't matter. The key is this. They don't reinvent their lifestyle every year. They don't chase the trends just to signal relevance. They don't inflate their identity through spending. They take the time to understand what's important to them, their values, what matters, what's driving them. And then they build systems around it to make that real. And everything else takes a back seat. See, this is really the money machine philosophy in a sentence. Okay? Make money boring so life can be rich. Boring money decisions create extraordinary lives. Flashy lifestyles, they're fragile, quiet ones, they're resilient. So high net worth households are far more likely to follow structured financial plans than they than to rely on impulse or guesswork. And I've seen it over and over again. The reason we get to where you're going, why we do the money machine master plans, or we work with our clients or students, is that we need the map to get you to the life that you want. And too often we're operating without a map. Okay, so here's your action step. Look at one expense that you keep upgrading. For appearances, ask whether it's buying freedom or applause. What we're really ultimately trying to purchase is freedom, choice, options in life. Not status, not recognition, not applause. Okay, that's the game I want you to play. All right, Behavior number six. They don't talk about money because they know that money's already working. See, when money is unstable, it becomes loud, that volatility. But when money's working, it fades into the background. Think about it as this. You have a great team of employees, and those employees are working and they know their tasks, they know their roles, they know their goals, they know their processes, they know their systems, and they run their the process with them. You go on vacation and the system still runs, the employees are still running it, and everything is working. That's the same thing with your money. When your money, every dollar that comes into your life has a job description, we call it the wealth priority ladder. That tells it exactly what to do, when to do it, how to do it. Now, all of a sudden, your money's working in the background 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. No PTO, no vacation time, and they won't unite. That's the game that they're playing. See, upper class people, they don' avoid money conversations out of shame, but they avoid them because money is no longer the main character. And so what they'll have conversations around when it comes to money is the systems that are in place because they don't have anything to prove. See, when money works, it doesn't need a microphone. It just continues to work. So your action step here is this. If you find yourself talking about money a lot, ask whether it's because money is unstable or because it's part of your identity. Ask why it is and what it's for. And now you can put it in the proper place. And then ask, is there a way for me to talk about a system that drives the money versus the money that drives the system? All right, listen, let me pause here for a moment because we've thrown a bunch at you, but everything I've described so Far only works if you actually know what kind of life you're building towards. Remember I said a plan. And most people never take the time to define that. They just guess. So I want you to take a simple next step. It's a free tool that I'm going to give you. I created something called the lifestyle cost Calculator. This is something that's going to allow you to define the version of rich that you want and what it actually costs. You'll put some numbers in, it'll give you some numbers back as to what it is that you need to build to give you the life that you want. So you're not running and chasing numbers blindly anymore. So we're going to hook it up down below, but you can go to melabraham.com lifestyle and grab it for free. No, no hype, just clarity. All right, let's jump to the next1. So domain 4 social presence. This is where the signal becomes unmistakable. This is where a lot of the noise is. You know, how are we seen from the outside? What are we doing from the outside? Upper class behaviors shows up. It shows up more clearly when there's nothing to gain, just show up. Think about this behavior number seven, they treat everyone the same. See, upper class folks, they don't play a hierarchy game. They don't talk down to staff, they don't posture with titles, they don't change their tone based on status. And I've seen this because I've worked with some extremely wealthy people. I have worked with some very famous people and I just treat them all the same. I still remember, I still remember one time traveling with my son and we were at the airport and there's Kiefer Sutherland standing there in the airport in line for some reason. And I tell. And it was back when 24 was on TV and it was the series where New York was under attack. And here he is in la. So I walk up to him, I go, what are you doing here now? I don't know Keith Keeper from. From anyone. And he looks at me confused. I go, what are you doing here? New York's under attack and you are vacationing in Los Angeles. And he started to laugh and he says, I'm going back to save it. You know, that's my point, okay? Everyone is the same. You treat them with incredible dignity. You treat them as real people and you treat them the same no matter what, what their task is, what they're doing. And I have seen people with a lot of money do the opposite. Class is not money. It's behavior. Okay? You know, research in social psychology shows that people with greater internal stability are more consistent in their social behaviors because they're not operating from scarcity, they're not operating from status. They're operating from humanity. All right, so here's your action step here. Pay attention to how you treat people. You know, people who maybe they can't advance you or there's nothing to gain from, or they're not celebrity. That's the real signal. The person, the barista at the coffee house or the Uber driver or the housekeeper or the maid service at the hotel versus someone who's a chairman of a board. They should be the same. All right, that leads me to behavior number eight. They listen more than they perform. Upper class people are not auditioning in conversations. They listen. I remember my wife used to tell me that she would watch me when I was negotiating. She goes, you just sit there so quietly. I said, I'm listening. I want to hear, I want to observe, I want to see. And that's what upper class folks do. They listen, they observe, and they speak when it adds value. And I wait and then I speak, okay? People who talk the most are usually negotiating with their own insecurities. See, listening is a quiet confidence, and it's a skill that we need to learn. Often we aren't listening. Often someone's talking and we're on our phones doing this versus being present and really hearing and being part of that conversation. So action step here is this. In your next few conversations, speak last, speak less. Notice how much more information and respect you gain. Notice how much more you learn with that curiosity in sitting back. Okay? It leads me to behavior number nine. They protect privacy without hiding, okay? Upper class people value privacy because privacy is peaceful, believe it or not. As much as that. I'm out on the interwebs and I have my show and I'm speaking all around the country and all that stuff. I'm a very private, somewhat introverted person. I keep to myself, okay? And the thing is that there are those out there that are documenting every moment, every meal. I don't do that. You don't see that from me because I don't think it matters. I don't think that it means anything. And it certainly isn't going to give me a peaceful life to constantly be filming. And I know people that do that. But true upper class behaviors, they're not documenting every moment. They don't crowdsource their decisions. They're decisive. They don't confuse access with connection. And we have a Lot of access. Today, we have very little connection. And the most expensive luxury is not being discussed. We're not parading it. We're not putting it out there in a way to say, hey, look at me, look at me. I want privacy. I want quiet wealth. I want that. Because that gives me peace. And peace allows me to live the life that I want and allow me to serve at the highest level and give everything I can to the moments to be with you, but then also to the moments to be with my family, my loved ones, and my life. Okay, this ties directly back to the money machine because less noise creates better decisions. That's what we're trying to do. So here's your action step here. And this will be contrary to those that are trying to get a social presence, but just be discerning what you share. Because the action step here is to share less. By default. Choose deliberately what and who gets access to your life. See, not everyone gets access to my life. Not because I'm better than. It's because my life matters. And I'm trying to make sure that I protect it. And it's there for those that are close to me. First, my wife, my. My puppies, my son, my granddaughters, his wife. Okay, so here's the thing. The core truth is this. The bottom line is you don't need money to start behaving this way. But when you behave this way, with internal control, with margin in time, with disciplined money systems and a grounded presence, everything shifts. People will trust you more, they will listen more, they'll respect your decisions more. Because upper class is not about where you sit in society. It's not some income category or some net worth category. It's about what no longer controls you. It's about you defining it and living life on your terms, your way, by choice. All right? That's the game we're playing. Understand this. Clarity first, system second. Freedom follows. I hope that this helps. I hope that you'll look at this and realize that right now, in this moment, you can be upper class in your behaviors. And what that will translate to is wealth and richness in your life. All right, let me know. I'd love to hear from you. Your thoughts on this. Any comments, any questions? Do me a favor. DM me post them down below. And while you're at it, make sure you subscribe. Give me a thumbs up, all right? YouTube likes it and I like it. 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. See you in the next one. Cheers. For now.