Excuses that kill your wealth

yes yes yes.
money does not make you happy as you stated but HAPPY will make you money

 

Me too and TV series, I binged on Breaking Bad, watched the total series in 7 days, nearly killed me, up till 4.00 am but totally worth it

Did I mention "Better Call Saul" new series back on.... love this one.

.... and then there is ..... House of Card.... I am an addict - internet, great TV series/shows.... so I work it the other way, I get my priorities right

 

Hi all! First time poster but thought I could contribute to some examples of excuses unfortunately taken from the mouth of my parents after I provide them financial advice... Context included for fun... (For clarity, parents divorced)

"My mortgage broker didn't tell me" - dad's excuse to paying 5%+ pa (variable) for over a year

"Oh well interest is a tax deduction anyway" - mum's excuse to paying 4.5%+ pa (variable)

"My accountant didn't tell me" - dad's excuse to not having a depreciation schedule for 3 years

"I don't want to pay $700" and "apparently you have to pay CGT on depreciation" - mum's excuse to not having a depreciation schedule for two properties for 7 years

"Your mum told me to buy it" - dad's excuse to buying average performing inner city apartment at Perth peak

"It doesn't matter, it's a long term investment" - multiple people's excuse for poor timing in their purchases including my mum and dad

"I save on GST if I pay cash" - mum's excuse for getting cash job done and hence no receipt and no tax deduction

"You can't predict the real estate market" - mum's excuse for buying second property at peak

"I might want to live in it one day" - mum's excuse for buying the first investment property she inspected

I've learnt that all decisions of reasonable to high importance, both financial and personal, should be put through a cost benefit analysis. I think some of these excuses stem from the previous generation not growing up with the internet, and hence not being used to having all (most!) of the answers to life in the palm of their hand!

 

Also @MTR I've watched house of cards twice through! Great show, and very relevant to excuses and what we are talking about in this thread!

 

Great contribution and so very real. I've also heard excuses like "accountant, lawyer etc" should have told me....
it's avoiding responsibilty and not being able to take responsibilty for everything you create is a wealth killer.

 

A friend shared this... enjoy!
6 Habits That Will Keep You Poor For The Rest Of Your Life

 

I'd say the common reason taking the attitude of:
It's always someone else's fault, or the government, or bad luck, or other multitudes of excuses.......
That's all it is, excuses for not taking responsibility for themselves.
If you want to change for the better, don't just wait for others to come and rescue you.
Bite the bullet and commit to making a change.
It's not the physical part that's difficult, it's that people are mentally weak.
Once you build up your mental strength you will be unstoppable.

 

Brilliant - shared on FB
Thanks Ms G

 

"Being wealthy and prosperous requires more than just physical ownership. It is a state of happiness, well-being while wishing the same for others. So while you are working to escape from poverty, remember to be happy along the way!"

This rings true with me, I want to see others succeed always, even if they are doing so much better than I am.

Jealousy is a curse, and hate/anger is wasted emotion and energy that affects no one but yourself.

 

Negative emotions are not good, learnt this one years ago.

I could be wrong but if you are happy with what you have then why would you be jealous of anyone. Next question how do you stop these jealous emotion???? perhaps focus on the end game and not on what others have or what they are doing, don't compare it wont make you happy, there will always be people with more than what we have. So what?

Forums like PC are all about growing wealth and people sharing their stories, strategies etc etc. this may trigger negative emotions in some people and may not necessarily be a good thing if you can not keep this in check... just my 20c worth...

 

We raised 4 kids as we went from dirt poor to very comfortable and were able to watch how our family’s growing wealth impacted them.

Our first 2 were deprived of most material things when they were little: shared a storage room as their bedroom at the back of our workshop, helped in our business in the evening and even weekends, went to a school that was ridden with gangs and drug and rarely enjoyed treats such as excursions.

#3 grew up when we were a bit better off. She enjoyed most things that a normal Australian kid would, nothing extravagant. In contrast #4 had everything: private school, music lessons, mountains of toys, latest technology, nice clothes, large bedroom with own TV,… at a time when as a family we were able to eat out and travel a lot.

Of the four #1 is the most generous and responsible, #2 the most enterprising and socially engaged, #3 the most successful professionally (up to now), #4 the brightest but also the most self-absorbed. It looks as though they’ve embraced whatever mindset/values we had as parents when they were growing up, although this could also be the result of their age and order of birth (and their own personality!).

It’s striking to note that #1 is a hard worker, good saver but struggling financially, and #4 super smart but profligate and impulsive.

The only constant in this whole thing has been the love we’ve given them as parents and the values we've tried to impart by osmosis e.g self-belief, hard work, ethics, etc… that turned out to be some of the ingredients that have lifted us from poverty. In other words, while deprived materially we weren’t deprived spiritually and this has been our saving grace.

Therefore there’s a lot of truth in what has been said in this thread about the importance of good values in building wealth, however what makes me uncomfortable is the implication that the aim for having such values is to become wealthy.

I don’t think it’s a good approach. Happiness is much more achievable if values are pursued for their own sake. Wealth is only the icing on the cake.

 

Thank you for sharing your family's experience and your thoughts @truong . Certainly agree that values need to be deeply ingrained and present whether wealth is there or not (and hopefully wealth doesn't take away those values)

 

My family is similar! Three sisters, grew up in a mediocre suburb. Then when the 4th one was growing up, we moved to a better suburb. She went to a school with wealthier kids and her friends would buy $100 birthday presents.

I never went on a plane trip as a kid, never stayed in a hotel for a holiday, it was always a caravan trip up or down the coast. Whereas siblings 3 and 4 did.

Anyway, you can see I'm very money focused.

 

thats a fascinating result, I wonder if this is the norm!

 

Sorry if I sounded like boasting, but I wasn’t a “true” poor in the sense that I came from a family that valued learning, hard work and resilience, so I had the right frame of mind to rebuild from scratch after political events took everything from us and threw us on a boat. Mindset is half of the work and I was lucky enough to have inherited it from my upbringing.

So no, I don’t think it’s the norm. As I said, many poor people are also deprived of good values and it would take them extraordinary strength to break the cycle. Hats off to those who succeed.

However you kind of lose the “magic” of this mindset revival if from the start you set yourself the aim of becoming rich. A kid from a very underprivileged background once told me that all he wanted was to break free from the insanity and desperation that surrounded him. Once he realised that, all the rest became easy.

The pursuit of wealth for wealth’s sake can also be soul destroying. You kind of destroy the very values that have helped you get there in the first place.

I was alluding to this when mentioning our kids, in particular #4 who had a very comfortable upbringing but lost his ways a little. To impart our values to him has been a struggle because he couldn't see these values at work with his own eyes. There is, I think, an asymmetric relationship between mindset and wealth whereby mindset is a good indicator for wealth but wealth a rather poor indicator for mindset.