Jul 23, 2014
SITE: http://www.courtneyanderson.com/swca-episode-152-financial-fierceness-series-getting-rich-is-easy-staying-rich-is-hard-why-that-is-and-how-to-beat-the-odds.html
SHOW NOTES: Our FINANCIAL FIERCENESS!™ series integrates our financial goals into our development plan for surpassing our goals. We deal with the specific issues we need to explore in order to achieve (and surpass) our financial goals. This specific episode is “Getting ‘Rich’ is Easy. Staying ‘Rich’ is Hard. Why that is and how to beat the odds.”
As we have previously discussed in other programs, wealth is relative. A person will determine if they feel wealthy (or “rich”) based on their upbringing, culture, ethics, religious, spiritual, education, philosophical and political frameworks. If a person has more resources (or appears to have more resources) than other peers, it tends to make them feel wealthy. If a person has less resources (or appears to have less resources) than peers, they feel poor. I have known people who made $2,000 USD a month and felt very wealthy (as their peers made much less on fixed incomes of around $1,000 USD a month). I also have known people who made $60,000 USD a month who felt poor (as their peers made $100,000 USD a month).
Once we have our basic necessities met in life, there is a universal human tendency to judge our economic ‘success’ relative to peer groups. This leads many people to try to spend money to seemingly match their peer behavior (i.e., keeping up with the Joneses). This is a large part of why people who have resources (aka “rich”) do not keep them.
Consider:
- “On average, 90 percent of lottery winners go through their winnings in five years or less.” (http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/a-financial-plan-for-misbehaving-lottery-winners/?_php=true&_&_r=0)
- “Sports Illustrated estimated in 2009 that 78 percent of NFL players are bankrupt or facing serious financial stress within two years of ending their playing careers and that 60 percent of NBA players are broke within five years of retiring from the game.” (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/story/2012-04-22/Pro-athletes-and-financial-trouble/54465664/1)
How does someone receive individually incredibly large sums of money (by almost any measure) winning the lottery or signing a contract as a professional athlete and end up broke? There is a documentary I found really insightful that I watched about former professional athletes being broke at http://espn.go.com/30for30/film?page=broke. How does someone receive tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars and end up broke within five years? It is a very simple answer, they spent the money.
So, taking even an extremely rare occurrence where someone overnight “gets rich” (by winning the lottery) it is harder to stay rich than it was to get rich. Join in with this show as we discuss why we (humans) make it so hard for ourselves to enjoy resources long term and instead give them away in the short term. Desires for attention, affection, admiration and power are the keys to your ability to either beat the odds (and have a lifetime of economic comfort) or end up broke (with memories of fleeting times in the past when there was an opportunity to stay rich). They say it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Maybe. I do not agree that it is better to have been “rich” and lost it all than to have never been “rich” at all. It is very difficult to “go back” to economic instability and lack of opportunity after experiencing a lifestyle of economic opportunity.
So, let’s make sure that you have a plan to go forward financially and never go back!
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