You'll Never Feel Rich, Here's Why

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. Here's a number that should mess with your head a bit. More than half of the households earning over $100,000 say that they're still living paycheck to paycheck. All right, that's why we're talking about today, this episode. You'll never feel rich. And here's why. Because today I'm going to break down why income alone doesn't create the feeling of being rich. How the psychology, not the math, is usually the real problem. And so if you've ever been told that if you just earn more, everything will settle down, the data says otherwise. All right? This is building your money machine, where we help you master your money, eliminate financial stress so you can live a life of choice. Because earning more doesn't make you free. A money machine does. All right? And after 30 plus years as a CPA, an entrepreneur and a money mentor, and someone who's walked the journey to financial freedom, I've seen what works, I've seen what doesn't. I've made the mistakes so you don't have to. My name is Mel Abraham and I'm the host of this show. And I can't wait to jump in with you. The title of this episode is you'll never feel rich, and here's why. And if that title hit a nerve, don't scroll, don't pass it on. That's the point. And if that title irritates you just a little bit, that's intentional. Because if you've ever made more money and quietly thought, why doesn't it feel better? Or I thought this level would finally calm things down. Or maybe you're sitting back saying, how am I still stressed when I make this much? Well, most people think those thoughts, including me. Very few ever talk about them, though. So that's what we're going to talk about here. We're going to talk about what matters more than your next race. And I promise you that we're going to get through this by the end of this, this episode, you're going to understand why income alone doesn't create the feeling of being rich and why some people live paycheck to paycheck at any income level. What actually has to change? If you want your money to stop owning you and have it the other way around somewhere in this video, you're going to recognize yourself, because I know I did. And when that happens, don't click away. That's the moment things change. So let's start. Let's talk about the paradox that actually confuses people. Because here's the paradox that nobody really talks about. Some of the most financially anxious people I know make six figures, seven figures. And some of the calmest, most grounded people I know are still growing their income every year. See, if money alone solved this, that sentence wouldn't be true. That alone tells us that something's important, something's amiss. Money doesn't automatically create peace. If it did, higher income would equal lower stress. And it doesn't. Okay, More money doesn't fix chaos, it exposes it. Which means that this isn't an income problem, It's a behavior psychology and clarity problem. And the science backs that up. Okay, there's something that people will talk about called the hedonic treadmill. Now psychologists studied this back in the 70s researchers Brickman and Campbell, they coined the term the hedonic treadmill, which basically describes how humans adapt very quickly to improvements and return to baseline of happiness. Here's what happens. It explains why raises feel amazing in the moment and then that amazement disappears emotionally. The brain gets used to good things fast. And there was probably a time in your life where maybe you thought, if I could just make $60,000, I'd finally breathe. And then maybe it became, well, if I can now get to $100,000 and you hit that number and it felt good briefly. And then stress crept back in. See, breakthroughs don't change your nervous system, baselines do. That's not because you failed. It's because your brain recalibrated what normal is. Okay, when you look at like Kahneman's work, the day to day emotional well, being, being. And this study has been cited, but it has also been refuted and the plateaus may be higher that anything above $75,000 doesn't give you any more happiness. Now it's an older study, so that number is going to be higher today if you adjusted for inflation. But the point is this, money doesn't fix feelings. Once your basic needs and you have a modest buffer in there that's covered. Money stops working like emotional relief. Here's the line that I think we all need to remember. Your brain turns breakthroughs into baselines. They normalize them. And when that happens, most people assume that the answer is more. That's like an addiction, that you need to continually increase the hit that you're getting. And that's where things start to go sideways. That's where they went sideways for me, because I was chasing a number, and it was just more, more, more, more, more without a definition. And then you add to it this idea of lifestyle creep, and this is where the psychology hits the money. Lifestyle creep is the hedonic treadmill with a debit card. It's not reckless. It's just quiet. All of a sudden, our lifestyle just gets more expensive. And it almost never looks reckless because you go from 60,000 to 90,000 a year. And after taxes, maybe you're bringing home an extra eighteen hundred dollars a month. And it usually gets absorbed because the rent or their mortgage goes up because you upgrade. The car payment maybe goes up 250 bucks. It doesn't feel like a lot. You dine out a little more, and convenience spending goes up. Maybe $300 subscriptions and quality of life upgrades. Eat another $200, and before you know it, $1,200 is gone. That's over $14,000 a year. This is where most people lose the raise without realizing it. You made $30,000 more, but it still feels tight. Not because you were irresponsible, but because you were reasonable. See, you didn't get rich. You just got more expensive. Your lifestyle learned how to spend your raise faster than you did. And if your lifestyle needs your next raise to feel okay, then you're not building wealth. You're leasing relief. And so I want us to understand that as the underpinnings of what's going on, it happens. It's a natural progression if we're not disciplined and aware of it. And it'll continue to happen. Okay? And when you think about why. Why do people live paycheck to paycheck at any income? Well, this is where most people get confused. They assume living paycheck to paycheck is about not making enough. It's not okay. There's a study by bank of America that more than 50% of households earning 100,000 to $150,000 are saying that they're living paycheck to paycheck. There's another study that said 36% of the households, okay, earning $200,000 or more are Saying the same thing. Read that again. Listen to that again. This is not a low income problem, okay? And that should stop us cold. This is not a math problem. It's a behavioral emotional regulation problem. And I've seen it up close. I have a friend that I grew up with, and it literally didn't matter whether he made $50,000 a year, $150,000 a year, or when he was making $200,000 a year. He was always stressed, he was always broke. He was always living at the edges of his check, always waiting for the next check. Different income, same anxiety. I tried conversations, I tried tools, I tried frameworks. I know this stuff I said. But nothing stuck. And eventually I had to accept the hard truth. You cannot help someone who will not follow a plan, who's not willing to bring discipline or process into it, to be accountable. Not because they're unintelligent, but because discipline is uncomfortable. And most people would rather feel temporary pleasure than temporary restraint, okay? So this becomes the challenge. And the real engine in those cases is emotional spending. This is the part nobody wants to admit, okay? Most money problems are not math problems. They're emotional regulation problems. This is where people either lean in or tune out. Stress spending, reward spending, comparison spending, retail therapy, convenience spending, numbing spending, all of it. None of it feels reckless in the moment. I do it. I do stress spending, okay? When I'm stressed or something, I might start flipping through. I'm not exempt from this, but I'm aware of it now. Okay? Let's put numbers to it. If emotional spending costs you $40 a day, that's 1200amonth, that's $14,400 a year. And over 10 years, that's almost $150,000, $144,000. Not counting growth, not counting earnings, not counting any of that. Emotions don't look expensive until they compound. See, emotional spending doesn't scream. It whispers. And it whispers every single day. If this is hitting close to home, stay with me, okay? Because the next sections, the next piece, I want to explain why this keeps happening and what you need to do with it. All right? So what I see and I have fallen prey to this is one of the biggest things, is social comparison and external validation, okay? This is where money stops being about money. Let's hit on this. Because nobody wants to admit it out loud, but I'm willing to admit it because it's happened to me. A lot of spending has nothing to do with joy. It has everything to do with validation, okay? We don't buy Things we buy, what they say about us we don't trust. We don't just want the thing, we want what the thing says about us. Okay? Psychologists will call this a social comparison bias. And in our social media connected world, the media, the social media, the comparison, the TikToks, all that stuff, the tendency is to evaluate ourselves based on how we stack up against other people. And most of these people we don't know, that we don't care about, we don't have any inkling of them, but we see them parading their false facade of perfection on there and we think that that's normal. And study after study shows that the relative income affects happiness as much as the actual income. In other words, it's not how much you make, it's how much you make compared to other people around you. And that's why someone making 80,000 can feel rich in one environment and broken another. Remember, we're talking about feeling rich. It's also why social media is such a mess, quite frankly. See, you weren't thinking about upgrading your car until your neighbor did. You were perfectly fine with your house until Instagram showed you three kitchens you didn't know you were supposed to want. And suddenly what used to be enough feels embarrassing. And here's the dangerous part. Most people don't recognize this as comparison driven spending. They call it keeping up, they call it normal, they call it the cost of living. But here's the hard truth. If your spending is driven by how you look to others, you'll never feel rich because the validation has no finish line. Okay, think about this. And this is the action step I want you to take from this. Ask yourself this question before any upgrade. If nobody ever saw this, would I still want it? And if the answer is no, that's not joy, that's approval seeking. And approval seeking is the most expensive habit you can have. Okay, now there are other things that come into play with this. Emotions, temptation. And why it starts to erode at the discipline. Okay, see, because if discipline never works for you, this might be why. Okay, this is where most financial advice completely misses the mark. And why I try to balance it with tactical stuff as well as the psychology, the mindset, and the other things that I see driving financial, which we think is just a math equation. And it's not. See, people don't lack knowledge. They lack emotional containment in some cases. And when you're tired or stressed, overwhelmed or underappreciated or anxious, your brain wants relief, not optimization. And money is very good at providing relief in the moment. And that's why emotional spending shows up most often at night when you're exhausted. There's times that I wake up in the middle of night, three o', clock, and I'll start doing things, and if I'm not careful, I'll start buying things. That's why the idea of I deserve this spending shows up after hard days. That's why convenience spending explodes when life feels chaotic and none of this feels irresponsible while you're doing it, it feels justified. But here's the problem. If emotions are driving your money decisions, discipline doesn't stand a chance. Discipline isn't about willpower. It's about removing decision making from emotional moments. That's what we're trying to do, okay? And this is why some people will live paycheck to paycheck at every income level. Not because they don't make enough, but because every dollar that comes in is already assigned to an emotional relief, to status maintenance or some lifestyle defense. Here's what I want you to do for the next 30 days. Don't track spending by category. Track it by emotion. Literally, ask yourself, what was I feeling right before I spent this? And track the emotions that are in there. Was it stress? Was it reward seeking? Was it comparison? Was it boredom? Okay? Because we don't fix what we don't know, what we don't name. And once you see the pattern, the emotional triggers, you realize something and it may be uncomfortable. Money wasn't the problem. Money was the coping mechanism. I've done it. There's a reason I have some things around this house, like a $900 coffee maker, that was driven by emotions, more so than logic, need, or anything else. Now, I didn't go into debt to do it, and I've done it responsibly. But if you're not aware, it creeps into all lives, okay? And there's this other fallacy that's called the future me fallacy, or I'll fix it later kind of a lie. This is the lie that keeps smart people stuck for decades. This is how people rationalize staying stuck. They say, I'll get serious when things calm down. I can't tell you how many times I've heard these kinds of statements, or I'll start saving when I make more. Maybe you've said it. I know I did early on. I'll clean it up later. I have time. Okay? That kind of stuff doesn't work. Psychologists actually have a name for it. They call it temporal discounting. Okay? But I'll call It what it really is. It's the belief that your future you. Your future you will be more disciplined than your current you. That belief, it's false. The future you has more money, has more responsibility, more complexity, more pressure. And if you don't have a system now, future you won't magically create one. We have to create a system to make it happen. Because the future you doesn't fix problems. The future you inherits them. This is why raises don't change behavior. This is why bonuses seem to disappear. This is why windfalls rarely create lasting wealth. Those that win the lottery end up broke years later. Here's the action step. Before your next race, before your next bonus, before your next income jump, decide in writing where that money goes. Not after it hits the account and the emotions are there, but before. Every dollar that comes into your life should add a job description before it comes into your life. If you wait until the money arrives and it's sitting in the account, the emotions will decide for you. And emotions always choose now over later, okay? And there's this idea of the hunt for enough and why that race never ends. This one was a big one in my life, okay? If you've ever felt like you're running but you don't know where the finish line is, this is why. Here's the loop most people are trapped in. Earn more, spend more. They adapt. Then they compare. They feel behind again. And the reason it never ends is simple. They never defined enough. See, if you don't define enough, your brain defaults to more. Not because you're greedy, but because uncertainty feels unsafe. This hit me hard, okay? I was literally. I got into a mountain bike accident. I ended up with a grade four concussion. I was stuttering. I had no feeling on the right side. And a dear, dear friend of mine, okay, we call each other cousins. We're not blood cousins, but we call each other because we're that close. Takes me out to lunch. I'm in a neck brace, and he looks at me. He had retired at 37 years old, so he's been living his life. And he looks at me and he says, how much is enough? And I go, what are you talking about? He says, how much is enough? You got on that bike angry, distracted, and you got in an accident because of it. Because you don't know where your finish line is. You're running a race that you don't know where it's going to end. Your finish line could be behind you. You could be standing on it. It could be miles ahead of you, but you will continue to run. He says you might recover from this bike accident and you will. My concern is that you're going to get back on the bike and you don't know what enough is. And you're going to keep running the same race at a faster pace. And you'll do it again and again until you can't recover. See, I had momentum, I had goals, I had ambition. Ambition. But when he asked me the question, how much is enough? I couldn't articulate it. I didn't understand what winning actually looked like in my life. And you can't feel rich if you don't know when you've arrived. Now, I'm not saying you hit enough and you say I'm done. I am saying that when you define it, it's not defined by outside forces. It's defined by you. And now you live in a different way, in a different capacity, and you live by choice, okay? It just means that you stop running blindly. And so here's the deal, here's the action step here. Define your enough line in your life terms, not just dollars. What does your day look like? What does your health feel like? Who are you spending your time with? What are you protecting? Money's supposed to support that, not replace it, okay? And when you do that, then you start to transition from something called the demand driven life to a choice driven life. The earnings, the plan, okay? Because this is the pivot point. Everything before this leads here. This is where everything comes together. There are two ways to earn, okay? Demand driven. It's fueled by fear. It's fueled by comparisons. The fueled by emotional pressure. It's fueled by the expenses of your days. You earn because you feel like you have to. You spend because you're stressed. You upgrade because everyone else is, or you live a choice driven life, something that's fueled by clarity. You earn because you choose to grow. You spend because it aligns with your values. You say no without guilt. Same income, radically different experiences. Difference is a plan. The difference is not a budget, but a plan. A plan defines what matters to you. A plan defines what's enough. A plan defines what money is for. A plan defines what money is not for. That's why when I build plans with clients, I literally have them hardwire things into the plan. 3 or 4 visceral joy points that are theirs. Not defined by external forces, but their internal fulfillment. The things that make them feel rich at a cellular level. Because when your life already feels rich, temptation loses leverage. Okay? That's the game we need to Play. See, feeling rich is not a money game. It's a behavior game. It's an emotional game. It's a psychology game. And some people will never feel rich, not because they don't earn enough, but because they never learn to regulate the emotions to define enough or to follow a plan. See, money doesn't create peace. Alignment does. And you don't feel rich when you make more money. You feel rich when money stops owning you. Money doesn't create fulfillment. It just reveals it. That's the game we need to play. All right. I hope you found this valuable. I'll help you re examine your financial journey and how you're doing it, what's driving it, what your feelings are, and re examine the action steps here. Because if you truly want to feel rich, you can start that today. It's not about what's in the account. It's about what's in your heart and your mind. Let's do it right. If I can help you, do me a favor, comment below, send me your questions. DM me. I love having these conversations because I am on a crusade to light the path to financial freedom for a million families and I want one of them to be you. All right, listen, if you haven't subscribed to this channel or not yet, do me a favor, subscribe. And while you're at it, give me a thumbs up. YouTube likes it and it makes my heart feel good. All right. Until I get a chance to see you on your path to financial freedom out there, when I'm speaking or on the road, as I always say, always, always subscribe to live a life. And I always 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. 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.