10 Important Daily Habits and Attitudes of the Rich

Out of the original 20 Rich Daily Habits, I chose the 10 that are the most relevant/important and my reasons why:

1. 23% of wealthy gamble. 52% of poor people gamble.

Gambling is a tax on those who are poor, or who think like they are poor people.

I know this syndrome very well, as my parents won the lottery.. and then continued to gamble and waste most of it away, in hopes of winning a second time.

If you have ever taken any course in statistics, you know that the odds are extremely stacked against you. So why would you waste money on hope with such a low chance of succeeding?

Why not put your efforts (and money!) towards bettering your education (learning a new language, going back to school) or self-educating yourself on how to get out of your financial situation?

2. 80% of wealthy are focused on accomplishing some single goal. Only 12% of the poor do this.

Note that they said “SINGLE GOAL”. They don’t try and overload themselves with 5 goals for each area in their lives.

My life goal is pretty simple — reach $1 million in liquid assets before I retire, and have a home fully paid off as well, and to achieve this, I am aiming for an average of $50,000 net in savings a year (actual in-your-hand cash savings, not net worth increases).

3. 76% of wealthy exercise aerobically 4 days a week. 23% of poor do this.

Healthy body, healthy mind.

It lowers stress as well, which helps keep you mentally sane in addition to cutting back on your health issues which lower your health insurance (saves you money), and lastly, makes you more energetic and therefore more productive & alert in your personal life and career.

Exercising doesn’t mean going to the gym either. I walk an hour or more a day, and that’s considered exercise. I also do yoga, which is more stretching than exercise to me.

I’ve also noticed that once you start a good, healthy habit somewhere (like exercising), you start slowly improving other areas of your life once you have “Health” under control. It becomes a very good, positive, life-changing snowball effect.

4. 81% of wealthy maintain a to-do list vs. 19% for poor.

If you don’t keep track of what you have to get done, how will you ever remember it?

It drives me bonkers when people forget to write things down for stuff that is important, like tasks to finish for their job which brings an income and puts food on the table, yet they can easily remember to drop by a store to pick up the latest DVD release, or to pick up pizza on the way home.

5. 63% of wealthy parents make their children read 2 or more non-fiction books a month vs. 3% for poor.

I read a lot of fiction when I was a kid, so this one is a bit iffy for me…. however it does show that they want children to have a grasp of reality.

It’s great to have an imagination and build creativity, it is not so great when you slowly fall out of touch of what’s real and what isn’t.

6. 88% of wealthy read 30 minutes or more each day for education or career reasons vs 2% for poor.

I don’t always read just for education or career. I read fiction too, sometimes really bad fiction that I regret afterwards… but the key is that reading does broaden your horizons and improve your language skills, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.

7. 6% of wealthy say what’s on their mind vs. 69% for poor.

I am outspoken, so this one doesn’t jive with me completely, however I think maybe it’s referring to being tactful and diplomatic.

You can’t just blurt out everything that comes to your mind, or do anything you want without thinking it through.

There are plenty of times I wanted to tell people off, but held my tongue. It’s hard, but it’s the only way to get along with others and climb the ladder or keep the contract.

You’d definitely get fired at work for such behaviour, especially if you blow up at your co-worker or boss without stepping back and assessing the risk of doing so.

8. 6% of wealthy watch reality TV vs. 78% for poor.

Again, as ironic as it sounds, reality TV does not equal reality.

Watching the Kardashians live it up being famous for the sake of being famous, is not a good way to go about life because then it starts to feel as though you could emulate what they do too (except you can’t).

That said, I do watch reality TV once in a while, but it does grate on me after a few episodes. Then again, I prefer reality TV like Millionaire Matchmaker, HGTV (is that considered reality TV?) and Top Chef, and less of the variety of Jersey Shore or Keeping up with the Kardashians.

9. 84% of wealthy believe good habits create opportunity luck vs. 4% for poor.

I am a strong believer in that you make your own luck. Luck has a lot of hard work behind it, no one who ever became rich, can attribute 100% of it to sheer, dumb luck.

Sure, perhaps they had more opportunities, perhaps were in the right place at the right time and so on, but they also saw the opportunities, took the risks presented and worked as hard as they could to position themselves so that luck would rain down on them.

10. 86% of wealthy believe in life-long educational self-improvement vs. 5% for poor.

I’d agree with this. Goes with reading and improving yourself. If you plateau and call it a day, your whole life starts to go down the drain.

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The original source of all this is Tom Corley, and I obtained the subsequent summary list from Fig, who got it from Dave Ramsey, who listed out 20 Rich Daily Habits.I merely chose 10 of what I considered to be the most important because the rest seemed repetitive.