How the Wealthy Got Rich

Here's a post listing the five habits of the wealthy that helped them get rich. Their list includes:

1. They take risks.
2. They invest in themselves.
3. They associate with those they want to emulate.
4. They have a dedicated morning ritual.
5. They review their goals consistently.

My thoughts on each of these:

1. I'm not a big risk taker. In fact, I'd say I'm risk adverse/very conservative. That said, the few times I have taken what I consider to be a decent risk, it's paid off. Most notably, my rental properties are now the biggest source of my early retirement funds.

2. Yes, yes, and yes. I have consistently read throughout my working career in an effort to improve myself. And as I did, my career blossomed. Reading later translated into listening (audio books and podcasts) so I could consume even more material. For over 25 years my car was my university. Yes, I could have listened to music or talk radio, but I preferred to listen to non-fiction books. IMO this was one of the key reasons I was able to grow my income so dramatically.

3. I know the "old saying" that your income is the average of the five people you hang out with the most, but this has never been the case for me. Most of my friends are average, middle class people who make a lot less than I do. However, I did try to learn from the more successful people I'd meet at business events, seminars, church, you name it. I am always open to taking the wisdom of those who are where I want to be.

4. I've been reading/implementing The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM) and I agree, there is power in a morning ritual. Combine that with getting up earlier than usual and you can get far more done than the average person -- and thus get far better results.

5. I have annual goals that I break down into daily habits. I actually set goals for these habits and track them via a point system on a spreadsheet. I know, it's a bit anal-retentive. But I know myself. If I set goals, monitor them, and have a reward (the points), I'll accomplish what I want to. If I don't, I won't. I set the goals at the end of each year and update major tasks quarterly. It works for me.

How about you? Do you follow any of these habits?

Comments

[Apex]

I think the list is good and accurate for most successful people. The one I have struggled with and struggled to verify my whole life is the morning ritual.

My whole life I have been an anti-morning person. I am horrible, useless, unproductive, out of sync, just flat out worthless in the morning. I am very much a night owl. I am very definitely the antithesis of a morning person.

In college most people I knew would say they couldn't think anymore, it was too late, they were too tired, etc. They were going to go to bed and get up at 4AM and study for the test, etc. I never understood this. To someone like me this seemed like a crazy person talking. There were 2 main reasons for this. 1. For me at least, once I went to bed I was going to be tired and less alert after I first wake up for quite some time. Any tiredness now unless I had been up for 36 hours, was going to be worse at 4AM. 2. Right now I have as much time as I need. I can work on the task (in this case studying) until I feel comfortable it is done. If I get up at 4AM and have a test a 8AM and I have to get ready and get there in time what if I don't have enough time and feel rushed and start to panic and do a terrible job of studying because of it.

This carried forward into work etc. When I needed to get more done at work, I didn't go in early, I stayed late. On a few occassions I worked all the way through the night to deliver a product the next morning. When I was working on my own I did my extra work in the late evenings, never in the early mornings. I worked two jobs before going independent. All the extra work done into the wee hours of the morning. All my real estate extra work is done in the evenings and sometimes the late evenings. When I need to turn over a rental and get it ready for a new renter I stay at the property and prepare it until it is ready. Sometimes that takes until 1AM. I never go over there and start working on it at 4AM in the morning. I start working at 9AM and work until it is done. And I work like a machine. I don't stop, sometimes don't even take a lunch break. But I might need to work until 1AM to get it done and that is what I do. My extra work comes at night, not in the morning.

I coach baseball and need to do a lot of work preparing line-ups for games. When we have a weekend tournament I need to prepare half a dozen line-ups and to move all the kids around and get equal playing time takes a lot of adjusting. It can take hours. I do all this work in the late evenings. Sometimes I am up till passed midnight doing it. But I never get up early to do it. I always do it late into the evenings.

As to work outs which I know a lot of people like to do early in the morning to get the juices flowing, I have always felt more productive doing them in the evening. Going back to my earlier statement, I am out of sync and unproductive in the morning. I have in the past at least tended to be able to do less of a work out if I tried to do it in the morning.

I am open to doing some of this stuff in the morning if I can find a way to make it productive for me, but thus far my whole life has been built around late mornings and late evenings. And I have thus far been quite successful at it.

So I would be interested to know if people believe there is a secret to the morning or if the morning is just the time that works best for most people but for someone like me who does it in reverse it is just as productive as long as you have that time to get things done. Or would I be twice as productive if I could switch it to the morning. It sure doesn't seem like it to me because of how hard it is for me to get productive in the morning but I am open to being shown how I can do it better.

[FMF]

@Apex

You just described the person I was for most of my life. Spot on. 100% agreement.

Then something happened when I moved to Colorado. I started getting up earlier and earlier each day. I think part of it was that I had started a new workout routine with a trainer and I was exhausted, so I'd go to bed at 10 pm.

I got up at 6:30 am, then 6:15, then 6. Not with an alarm -- I just started waking up.

Then I started waking up before 6 am. At the same time I read The Miracle Morning and started being more purposeful with my mornings (though I have a long way to go).

One reason I liked that time was because it was the only time I had to myself where things were quiet.

Anyway, I have a long post on this subject coming up on my other blog in mid-September. I hope you enjoy it.

[K]

Seeing comments from Apex makes me miss the FMF community even more! This is still my favorite website.

[Janet R.]

@K -- Yes, I miss Old Limey. Hope he and his wife are doing well. . . I do like receiving posts from both sites, though :-)