The Real Reason Why You Feel Behind Financially

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. Have you ever felt that everyone else is ahead of you financially? Listen, you scroll through social media, you see the luxury vacations, the new cars, the dream homes, and it leaves you wondering, why does it seem like everyone has more money than I do? Listen, if you've been stuck comparing your financial progress to others and feeling behind or frustrated your efforts and you're thinking, man, they're not paying off this episode, it's for you. All right? Because I'm going to break down the truth behind those feelings. What's really happening behind the scenes, and most importantly, how you can stop comparing and start focusing on your own journey to financial freedom to live a life of choice. That's your life.

Ever scrolled through social media and seen someone's luxury vacation or new car thought, why is it that everyone seems to have more money than me? Listen, you're not alone. Listen, in this video, I'm going to explain why it feels that way and what's really happening behind the scenes and how you can break free from this comparison to focus on your financial success, because that's really the only one that matters. So, because I know the feeling. I've been there. I still do it. There's a reason I own a $900 coffee maker is because I was on here comparing and, and things like that. But it causes you, if you're not careful, to feel stuck, to feel frustrated, to feel inadequate. And here's the truth. The appearances can be really deceiving and comparison will not only steal the joy, but it steals your progress. So let's talk about why someone feels this way, what to do about it, and the steps to make sure that you're on the right journey for you. So let's look at this social media. I think the first thing is that social media creates illusions. People's social media.

Is basically their highlight reel. You see the fancy car, you see the vacations, you see the, the fun trips, you see all the glamour, but you don't see the Seven year loan behind the car, you don't see barely getting by with the bills. Behind the facade they're creating, there's people out there that are creating a facade that they're parading on social media that's not their real life. There's a guy, I saw that literally, he owns a fuselage of a plane, okay? It never leaves the ground. It looks like a private jet. And he rents it for people to get videos of them boarding the plane, sitting on the plane, getting off the plane. Y', all, social media distorts reality, okay? We look at people that I watch, someone that I know that went on a dream vacation, and I saw the pictures. Now, the unfortunate thing is I know how they live. Their credit cards are maxed out, they're playing the zero credit card transfer game, and yet they're still living something and trying to portray something on social media that isn't the reality. It is a house of cards that's going to come crashing down. And so what I don't want you to do is, is to use someone else's fabricated highlight reel to judge your reality because it's not their reality, okay? The other thing that I think contributes to this is that you don't know the backstory. There's hidden wealth factors. There's hidden things that come into play. Some people get to do things because.

They get financial boosts or support from people that you don't see. So they might have family help, they might have had an inheritance. They might get silent money. They might be. I was talking to someone just the other day. I didn't know this, but they were a trust fund. They live off of a trust fund. So it's not them making the living. It is something that was given to them. And look, I'm all for making sure that we take care of generations, but you'll know. In my book, Building youg Money Machine, I say we don't pass on assets without skill sets. But here's the challenge. When you don't understand the backstory, you judge it through your set of eyes. So, for instance, you might see a coworker that has already bought a house and they got their new home at 28 years old or something. And you look at it and go, I'm just a freaking loser because I'm renting an apartment. I can't afford a house. But what you don't know is that maybe that house was in the family, or maybe they bought it from a family member, or maybe they got help from their parents to do the down payment. We don't know the backstory behind it. And so we need to realize that your journey is unique. Comparing to someone else's advantage doesn't serve us because we don't know the whole story behind it. So the third thing I think we need to look at to shift our perspective is to know that spending isn't wealthy, okay? There's a whole lot of big spenders out there. They parade the nice stuff. They look rich, but they aren't building wealth. They're spending money. Leasing a luxury car, okay? Leasing the Lambo, leasing the Mercedes, leasing the G Wagon doesn't make you rich. It makes you someone that's leasing a car to parade something. Because here's the bottom line. It doesn't mean you have a healthy bank account. You just leased a luxury vehicle. You played a game with payments so you could afford something, so you could put it out in the world. But that's not true wealth. That's not richness. It's flashy spending. Now look, don't. Don't get me wrong, we have nice stuff, but we have nice stuff because we like the stuff that we have, not because we're driven to parade it in front of people. In fact, we don't do a whole lot of lifestyle posting and things like that because for the most part, we try to be private.

True wealth is quiet wealth. It's not flashy spending. And that's the thing that we need to understand, okay? So spending doesn't equal wealth. The other thing to realize is that there's this thing called lifestyle inflation or lifestyle creep as I call it, that many people will upgrade their lifestyles as their income rises, but their savings never goes anywhere, so they're not really building wealth. And once again, it goes back to spending. So they're spending more, but they're not creating more. So they might look successful, but their financial reality is empty. Okay? So it is important for us to know that we don't get the whole picture and these couple things come into play. But if we're not careful, that comparison will destroy our progress. It will impact what we do. And so let's look at how that impacts you and then how to make sure that you remedy it and don't fall prey to it. So the first thing is this. So there's an emotional trap to this comparison. When you start to compare yourself, it leads to poor decisions, it leads to overspending, it leads to trying to keep up. When we start to allow our emotions to get involved and drive our financial decisions, typically they're Poor decisions. It's how I got caught in the Ponzi scheme. My emotions took hold. The Khan that did this knew how to stroke the emotions of aspiration, desire, guilt, all of it. And there's psychological, emotional triggers. And if we're not careful, they take hold. And we start to buy things that we shouldn't buy. We start to do things we shouldn't do just because we feel behind, just because we feel like we, we should. Just because we want to stay in the game. This comparison becomes problematic and it will destroy our wealth because we actually aren't making the buying decisions for ourselves. We're making the buying decisions for other people. Okay? And when we make the buying decisions for ourself, those are better decisions. Forgetting what other people will think. If I wanted. If I want to drive a 20 year old car, great. If I want to drive a brand new car, fine. As long as it fits in the plan, it's affordable and I'm not going deep into debt to make it happen. I follow the rules, okay? So the second thing that is, is this, is that.

If we're not careful, we. We can only focus on what we can control. You can't control what other people do with their money. You can control your habits and priorities. You gotta ask yourself, what's one thing I can do today to improve my finances? And when you're thinking of making a buying decision, when you're doing the comparison, you go, oh, I want this. I want this. Do you really want it? Do you want it just because they have it? Or do you want it because it moves you closer to the vision you have for your life? If it doesn't move you closer to the vision you have for your life, why are we doing it for someone else?

For someone else? See, we got to ask ourselves, what's that? What's that thing worth to you? Why am I doing. What's the motivation? Because it leads me to the third thing that I think we need to understand. Then we'll talk about how you stop feeling this way. And that is this.

Everyone's journey is unique. Wealth takes time. It takes consistency. It's a behavior. It's not about the money. It's. It's. And we need to look at it through your unique eyes. My definition of living a rich life is different than yours. And that's okay. Okay. Some people want the tent in Montana. Some people want the yacht in Monaco, y', all, I'm a yacht in Monaco kind of guy. But that's how we need to look at, is through Our own eyes. Not trying. We're not here to. To satisfy and impress other people. We're here to live our life. There's a woman, Sylvia Bloom. She was a secretary who. She was a paralegal assistant in the early 1900s for a law firm. She worked there for 60 years. Years. Now, back in the day, when you did investing, back then, you literally had to go in, and it was cumbersome. It wasn't like you had an app. You would literally have to go in and buy. And her bosses would tell her, hey, we want you to go buy this. So she would go down. Down the street, you know, and she would go to the agency, they would. They would buy the stocks. You know what she did? She said, well, if my bosses are buying these three stocks, I will buy these three stocks. Now, she couldn't buy them in the same volume or the same value or the same dollar amount as her bosses because she didn' anywhere close to them. Do you know by the time that she retired, she was worth $9 million? She lived her life quietly her way. Small amounts, habits, behaviors, consistently over time. Okay, so how do you stop feeling like everyone else is ahead? Well, let's talk about steps. The first step, okay? And I'm going to jump to the iPad here, and the first step is this one, is to understand your reality, okay? Not everyone else's. Now, this is to understand it not from a judgment standpoint, but from an awareness standpoint. What I don't want you doing is using this as a vehicle to beat you up and feel worse, okay? So this is about you looking at what you. What you have. In other words, what you own, what you owe, what you make and where it goes, okay? What you own, what you owe, what you make and where. Where it goes. So tracking your spending, tracking your income, tracking your net worth, okay? And asking yourself, how can I improve this? Because if you don't track it, listen, if you don't measure it, you can't improve it. The only reason that I was able to create the wealth and create the wealth for myself, for my clients, for my family, and do that over time is I track it. My fingers are on the pulse. So I know where I'm at. I know the choices that I'm making. I know that this choice worked. This choice didn't work. And I build it so. So you cannot improve it if you don't measure it. It is time for you to get real.

Don't pretend you have time. Don't pretend that it'll take care of itself. Don't pretend that it's not an issue. We get real with our current financial reality. Use an app, use a spreadsheet. You can use, you know, Ynab, you can use a spreadsheet. You can do that. If you're part of some of the work that we do, we have tools for you. I do, I do money machine master plans for our clients. But get a grip on your current financial reality. Again, not for anything more than awareness, because then you become aware. We can then decide the right actions, the right strategy, the right tactics to take, to navigate to where you want to go. Okay, number two. Number two is to define what. What wealth is for you, not someone else, not what the media says, not what social media says, not for anything else, but to sit back and say, what is the life that you want? What are the value, the things that you value? What is. Are your goals based on your values? Not someone else's life, not what you see, not what the comparison is, not what your neighbor's doing, not what your neighbor says, not what you are interpreting from the outside. What is it for you? Be specific without regards to how you're going to make it happen, because we use how as a filter to not do it. How is a second question. It's a third question. But let's define it first, because we might find that we're not that far off and that all we really need is a little bit. But we set the goals based on our values, to be in alignment with our vision, to be congruent with who we were meant to be. So we know that we're living true to our life, a life by choice.

So for you, wealth might mean being completely debt free. It might mean retiring early. It might mean traveling the world. I look at it and say, I just want choice. I want the freedom to choose each day what I do, when I do it, how I do it, who I do it with. Ask me. My wife and I love to travel. We travel probably one quarter of the year.

We love our dogs, we want to be with them, the family. What is it for you and be okay with it. This is an answer to a question that only you can come up with. And if you're in a committed relationship, the two of you do it. Now you have your current reality. Now you have a vision for where you want to go and what's important. That leads you to then the third step. And the third step is to build your plan. Like a very specific plan, okay, A financial plan that gets you to where you want to go in Other words, you sit back and go, all right, so I have a gap to fill. I have to pay off debt or I have to make more, more money. I've got to decrease expenses. I got to save and invest consistently. If you need a system, if you need a process to follow, get my book, Building your money machine. It is in there and you get a companion workbook that helps you implement and execute on it. We do this with our clients in our money machine master plans where we build it out for them, we show them, and we build it out. And they know specifically what they need to do. And we have it tested on, well, what if the market goes down? What if inflation goes up? What if you decide to retire early? We stress test in all different ways. But, but when you start to build the plan, your dream, your vision becomes the reality. But without the plan, it's haphazard. Without the plan, we don't know that we're going to get there. It's coincidental if we do so you might look at it and that plan might be reduced down to investing $100 a month can grow and say, I'm going to do it. Listen, investing $100 a month or $200 a month will turn into $300,000 in 30 years. If I put, and I, and I put $800 away, it's over a million. So I'm not talking about a lot of money. I'm just talking about getting in the game in a way that's realistic. And a lot of times we think that we need big dollars to make big dollars. We don't. We need good discipline, we need good habits, we need good behaviors. We need to follow a simple process to get us there. And with a plan, if you now have a plan in place to focus on, the comparison starts to dissipate because you can look back to the plan and say, hey, I just saw that. I had this urge to do it. Is it in the plan? Does it move me closer? And you go, no, it's not in the plan. I can let it go. The plan becomes your permission to spend. It also becomes your shield to overspending. It comes, becomes your shield to emotional spending. That leads me to, to number four. Okay, number four is we need to find a way to detach from social triggers. And I talked about at the beginning about, we don't really get the whole picture. And so, so when we talk about social triggers, social media triggers, no, if it's challenging and it doesn't feel good, then take a break. Limit your time of Consumption of social media.

There's times that I just don't go on there. I don't care. Okay? Literally start. I've unfollowed people. When I. When I see that they have a lot of negativity, pessimism, vitriol, that kind of thing, I. I want nothing. I don't want that in my life. So I unfollow them. So I curate the stuff that comes into my mind and I curate the stuff that comes into my life. And if you find that being on social media creates more avenues for comparison and not feeling good and feeling inadequate, it's time to limit it. It's time to turn it off. It's time to take a break. It's time to unfollow. Okay? Especially if you're following people that you love their lifestyles, but it makes you feel inadequate. Now, if it spurs you and excites you to sit back in an inspiration, different game. But I'm talking about a lot of times it makes people feel bad. So I would avoid. That leads me to the last piece of this, and number five is really to focus on financial literacy. Because the more you understand and educate yourself around the money game, around wealth, around all of this, it's why I do the show, the better prepared you are to not be susceptible to emotional swings, to not be susceptible to facades, to not be susceptible to someone's highlight reel because you understand the truth behind a lot of it. So educate yourself about money, educate yourself about wealth and wealth creation, investing and that kind of stuff. If you're not sure where to start, I'm going to tell you. Start with my book, you know, building your money machine or an old book, the richest man in Babylon. Okay. Get into some of the programs, the courses. I have my investing simplified course. Work with people, get coaching, get mentoring with people that don't have a bias to try and sell you an investment or sell you something. But do this. Why I do the show the way I do is I want to give you as much information that I can to support you, because I believe that in this season of service of my life is to be there to educate you, to equip you, to empower you so you can master your money. Okay? So understand this. There's a couple things to realize also in this game. I've given you some things to do to avoid it. But there are some things to also realize that there's a bigger picture at play here that create a lot of pressure on us. And that bigger picture sometimes is completely out of our Control one is the economic pressures that exist. Okay? There's rising costs, stagnant wages. It. The system can feel challenging, and I get that. And I've done some episodes on this and how to navigate that. So there is this pressure of economics that just exists now. Mastering the skills of financial literacy and money and some of the things that I teach will help you navigate that and not fall under that pressure. And then also to realize that.

Money. You'll never be perfect with money. I'm never perfect. I still make bad money choices at times. I've. I've lost money. I've won money. I've done all right. You know, I've done really well, but I'm not perfect. But I'm always in progress. So I want you to focus on progress over perfection, to take small steps. If you haven't been saving and now you saved a hundred dollars this month, that's a big step in a small. It's a small step in the long journey, but it's a big step in the beginning of the journey. Cutting things out that maybe you don't need and using that to invest is a small step. It's progress. Celebrate the progress. Don't focus on perfection. Don't sit back. Well, if I can't build, build it that quickly or I don't have a thousand dollars to invest, I'll just wait till I have a thousand. No, if you have 10, start there. You're developing the muscle, you're developing the habit, you're developing the behaviors. You're doing the things you need to do. Hey. The third thing is to focus on your why. Tie every single financial goal to why it really matters.

And I promise you this. It's not in the bank account. Financial freedom to me is a life of choice. It's living a legacy with my loved ones each and every day to try and make their life better. The people I serve, to be able to have that choice, to do that, to give and pour into people, to know that I mattered. At the end of the day, focus on your why. Because I could build more and more wealth, but I don't need it for my why and I don't need it for my life. Now we'll continue to build. That's not the driving force. What pulls us forward is the why. And that's what I want for you. Because the money is just a result. It's not a purpose. Purpose is in your journey. Okay? So listen, I hope that you had a chance to think about this and that it's because in our Today's world, it's easy to feel like everyone else has more, and it's easy to feel like everyone else is ahead of us. Wealth isn't about looking wealthy. It's about living richly. It's about living in a way that you have freedom, you have peace of mind, and you have experiences that actually matter. So stop comparing and start focusing on your goals. Stop, Stop, you know, just going through and looking at social media and start developing the habits, the skills, like saving, like investing, like learning, like financial literacy, the stuff that actually moves you ahead. Okay? And know that you're not alone, that there's a lot of people on the same journey, and that I'm here to support you. That's what this. This show is about. That's what my work is about. That's what my speaking is about. It's what my programs are about to help guide you on the path to your financial freedom journey. Whatever that is, whatever that's supposed to look like. It could be a million dollars, it could be a hundred thousand, it could be 10 million or 100 million. I don't care. I just care that you're on your journey defined by your vision and built by your hands. I hope that this helps. I hope this gives you some perspective and that you get a chance to build the life that you were put here to build, and they get a chance to live it fully each and every day. All right, till I get a chance to see you in another episode. If you have questions, if you need anything, reach out, drop it in the comments, send me some questions, post some things, share this out. Okay, Stay with me on this journey because we get a chance to do it together. It's a whole lot more fun doing it with people than doing it in isolation. All right, till I get a chance to see another episode on the road here, Financial freedom. As I always say, always, always strive. I live a life. See you in the next one. Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneur show 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.