Why “The Rich” make me sick, part 6 (of 21)
Continuing the analysis of the Yahoo! Finance article 21 Ways Rich People Think Differenly, a condensed “interview” with Steve Siebold, author of How Rich People Think.
6. Average people see money through the eyes of emotion. Rich people think about money logically.
“An ordinarily smart, well-educated and otherwise successful person can be instantly transformed into a fear-based, scarcity driven thinker whose greatest financial aspiration is to retire comfortably,” he writes.
“The world class sees money for what it is and what it’s not, through the eyes of logic. The great ones know money is a critical tool that presents options and opportunities.”
Ugh. Statements without evidence, effects with no cause, sycophantry, and tautology.
Let’s take the first statement in the headline and the first body paragraph together. While the paragraph uses more words, it’s essentially saying exactly the same thing as the headline statement. Thus, both statements are oversimplifications. Yes, I’m sure it is true that some “average people” are very emotional about money, but there are some who are not and who deal with money logically. I know from personal experience that sometimes I’m emotional about money, but sometimes I’m not.
Also, these statements, even taken together, are incomplete. They don’t include any reason for “average people” being emotional about money. But I think it should be pretty obvious that people are emotional about money when they’re afraid they won’t have enough. It’s called being in “survival mode”, and it’s one of the most stressful things a human being can go through. When you have to choose between electricity and food, or between the car payment and the rent, you’re always afraid! Once again, John Cheese puts it better than I do in his article 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor, specifically in point #1 (last item on page 2). I won’t quote it, because I don’t know where to start or where to end. Just go read the article.
So now let’s look at the second headline statement and the second body paragraph. And let me make something perfectly clear. Yes, it is often true that rich people can be more logical about money than “average people”. But Mr. Siebold gets the causality backwards. Rich people aren’t rich because they can think about money logically, they can think about money logically because they’re rich. Being able to think about money logically is a luxury, and one that a lot of people don’t have. But take one of those rich people, take away all their money, prevent them from doing the thing that made them the money in the first place-in other words, give them the same circumstances as most poor or working-class people-and I can guarantee you that that rich person will be scared to death when it comes to money.
And finally, the tautology: “The great ones know money is a critical tool that presents options and opportunities.”
At this point, I oughtn’t be surprised that Siebold presents something so bloody obvious as some kind of divine wisdom, but I still find myself gobstopped.
This one was a bit short, and the next few may be kinda short, too, because they deal with very similar points in only slightly different ways. In fact, I may combine a few of them into one article. We’ll see.
Anyway, the next article in this series is about why rich people can work on the things they love, while “average people” have to take jobs they don’t enjoy. And if you can’t guess the gist of what I’ll have to say about that, then you probably haven’t been paying attention very closely.
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Previously in this series: Prelude and Introduction | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
6. Average people see money through the eyes of emotion. Rich people think about money logically.
“An ordinarily smart, well-educated and otherwise successful person can be instantly transformed into a fear-based, scarcity driven thinker whose greatest financial aspiration is to retire comfortably,” he writes.
“The world class sees money for what it is and what it’s not, through the eyes of logic. The great ones know money is a critical tool that presents options and opportunities.”
Ugh. Statements without evidence, effects with no cause, sycophantry, and tautology.
Let’s take the first statement in the headline and the first body paragraph together. While the paragraph uses more words, it’s essentially saying exactly the same thing as the headline statement. Thus, both statements are oversimplifications. Yes, I’m sure it is true that some “average people” are very emotional about money, but there are some who are not and who deal with money logically. I know from personal experience that sometimes I’m emotional about money, but sometimes I’m not.
Also, these statements, even taken together, are incomplete. They don’t include any reason for “average people” being emotional about money. But I think it should be pretty obvious that people are emotional about money when they’re afraid they won’t have enough. It’s called being in “survival mode”, and it’s one of the most stressful things a human being can go through. When you have to choose between electricity and food, or between the car payment and the rent, you’re always afraid! Once again, John Cheese puts it better than I do in his article 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor, specifically in point #1 (last item on page 2). I won’t quote it, because I don’t know where to start or where to end. Just go read the article.
So now let’s look at the second headline statement and the second body paragraph. And let me make something perfectly clear. Yes, it is often true that rich people can be more logical about money than “average people”. But Mr. Siebold gets the causality backwards. Rich people aren’t rich because they can think about money logically, they can think about money logically because they’re rich. Being able to think about money logically is a luxury, and one that a lot of people don’t have. But take one of those rich people, take away all their money, prevent them from doing the thing that made them the money in the first place-in other words, give them the same circumstances as most poor or working-class people-and I can guarantee you that that rich person will be scared to death when it comes to money.
And finally, the tautology: “The great ones know money is a critical tool that presents options and opportunities.”
At this point, I oughtn’t be surprised that Siebold presents something so bloody obvious as some kind of divine wisdom, but I still find myself gobstopped.
This one was a bit short, and the next few may be kinda short, too, because they deal with very similar points in only slightly different ways. In fact, I may combine a few of them into one article. We’ll see.
Anyway, the next article in this series is about why rich people can work on the things they love, while “average people” have to take jobs they don’t enjoy. And if you can’t guess the gist of what I’ll have to say about that, then you probably haven’t been paying attention very closely.
-------
Previously in this series: Prelude and Introduction | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5