I’ve been poor, middle class, and I’ve had some wealth, and I can tell you right now there’s a difference between the mentality at each level in terms of how they look at money and how they look at things.
Poor people in America often want to look better than what their current financial status or situation is, and so oftentimes you’ll see poor people in America make poor financial decisions in an effort to look better on the outside and feel better about their current financial situation.
Middle class people in America want to feel good about their financial situation too, and they really want to feel like they’re not struggling. They want to feel like they’re not broke because they work so hard, and you often hear middle-class people in America say things like “I want to enjoy my life too” and “I want to have work-life balance.” What happens is they end up buying things and doing things where they accumulate status symbols with money to feel better about their financial situation even though they’re middle class and can pay all their bills. Their decisions are wrapped around looking better and feeling better on the outside.
Wealthy people in America think a little bit differently, and they usually could care less about how they look on the outside or impressing people that they don’t know. Wealthy people in America tend to have a sense of security that has nothing to do with how they look on the outside or what they have.
In the rest of this article, I want to explain exactly why looking poor is important for living well, and really looking poor is really what you want to strive for. There are some psychological reasons why looking poor is important for living well, and there’s also some very practical reasons.
Safety and Security: The Practical Foundation
Let’s start off with a very practical reason why looking poor is important for living well, and that is for safety reasons. I mean, let’s just be real with it guys. In certain environments, appearing less wealthy can reduce your chance of theft, being robbed, or becoming a target for a scam or somebody who’s looking to do some damage.
Look, nowadays when people have less than you, they might target you. We live in a crazy world, so keeping a lower profile can be a really good thing in a lot of instances. When people know what you got, you become an easier target to people.
You don’t have to have the newest this, the latest that, the fanciest car, the biggest car, or go on the fanciest vacations where you’re snapping photos and taking selfies to post on social media. Look, none of that is really necessary, but when you do that, you set yourself up to be more of a target potentially. It can cause some unwanted attention and more drama than you really want. We have more and more people in this world today who have less than, and they feel bad about it, so just be careful. That’s a real practical reason why looking poor is important for living well.
Modesty and Respect for Community
Now let me say this – this article is not to put anybody down who may have a different opinion than I have, or it’s not meant to criticize anyone else in terms of how you think about money. It’s just my perspective.
Another thing is modesty and humility, guys. Oftentimes it can show some respect for communities of people that just don’t have a lot. It ain’t always super duper fun to be flashy in a world where, frankly guys, there’s a lot of people around you who are struggling and who are hurting and who are hungry or going without or can’t take care of their kids properly – whatever it may be. The struggle is real out here for some people.
Now I’m not saying you have to look poor to make other people feel better about themselves – that’s not what I’m saying. Or to make everybody else happy and feel good about you – that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m just saying looking poor can be sort of sensitive to some of the general public who simply may not have what you have, even though they may have been given the opportunities to have it. It’s not your responsibility for their feelings, but it’s still a good idea to be sensitive to the environment that you’re in. In other words, keep it on the low.
After all, when you downplay what you have, you could really end up with more genuine relationships that are free from the potential influence of your money and what you have. Honestly speaking, guys, when people know you have money, people treat you differently, and you end up not knowing if they’re treating you differently because they know you have money. So they laugh at all your jokes, or they pay closer attention when you talk. This happens. This is real.
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about looking raggedy, looking dirty, looking distraught, looking disheveled all the time. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m just saying avoiding worrying about your outside appearance to the rest of the world, and the fact that you’re going to want to avoid trying to look flashy or trying to look a certain way or wear the latest this or drive the latest that. You want to avoid that.
Financial Discipline: The Power of Restraint
Another thing to think about in terms of why it’s important to look poor in order to live well is simply financial discipline. Some people prefer to adopt a more minimalist lifestyle or just to look poor to encourage themselves to live with more frugality and just be more disciplined with their money.
Think about it like this: by not investing your money in looking good on the outside with expensive clothing, expensive shoes, the fanciest car, the biggest home, whatever it may be, you can ultimately save more money and of course invest and grow more money, and you can ultimately reach your long-term financial goals quicker.
When you look poor, the fact is it costs money to look a certain way. It looks like you have money. It takes money to look like you actually have money. So looking like you have money is expensive, and it’s cheaper and much less expensive to look poor. It also costs a lot of time, a lot of energy, and emotional stress often.
Think about it like this: when you spend so much money on clothes and vacations and all the things on the outside to look a certain way, you’re really just forfeiting a lot of future wealth to look a certain way today. The truth is this – if you insist on driving half your wealth and wearing the other half of your wealth, you’re going to have a hard time actually becoming wealthy or having some money because you’re spending so much of it on what’s on the outside and what’s up front to impress other people that you may not know.
It’s reinforcing the fact that you don’t have the one thing you need to build wealth, and that’s discipline – discipline over yourself, discipline over your money, discipline over your spending habits. None of that, all that goes out the window when you’re trying to look rich on the outside.
When you allow stuff to make you feel better and make you feel happy, you ultimately are going to have to go back and get more stuff to keep making you feel happy or feel better because you’re striving for this feeling of happiness that only comes with stuff that you put on the outside of you to make you feel better. This is the same stuff that’s robbing you of your future wealth because you want to look good and feel good on the outside today.
It takes discipline to pull yourself away from all of that and that mentality that is really prevalent among poor people and middle class people in America. People who really build wealth, they don’t trip on the stuff so much to make them happy.
The Real Millionaire Next Door
By the way, we’re talking about the wealthy people in America that have that net worth of one million, two million, three million dollars – just sort of regular average wealthy people. We’re not talking about that uber rich person who has hundreds of millions or billionaires. We’re not talking about them. We’re talking about regular rich people.
Most of them are self-made. They didn’t inherit some big old gigantic large sum of money. Most of them, you know, they’re over fifty years old. They saved their money over a long stretch of time, and they also invested their money well over a long stretch of time. They probably own a home, but most of all, they avoid a costly lifestyle that really keeps them looking a certain way but keeps them broke in the background.
Instead, they rather look poor on the outside and have money in the background. These are the people who’ve prioritized long-term financial stability over short-term wants and short-term stuff and short-term gratification. They focused on long-term goals like financial independence and financial security as opposed to luxury stuff. Discipline is everything.
These regular rich people that I’m talking about in this article, they live in modest homes, drive modest used cars, give and donate to their church or other causes they believe in, and they typically avoid these high-end luxury items or these high cost status symbols.
A lot of time when you see a wealthy person that’s this type of wealthy person on the street, you can’t tell that they’re wealthy. Why? Because their wealth is not on the outside. Their wealth is in the background making money and wrapped up in the things that you can’t see – not cars, not clothes, not shoes, not purses or jewelry. Their wealth is in the equity in their home or their brokerage account at Vanguard or Fidelity where their money is in the stock market or ETFs and index funds. They keep their wealth hidden while it’s steady growing and steady going up in value.
I want to reiterate, guys, I’m not talking about the super duper uber rich people, the billionaires, because when it comes to money, those people are in a whole different category. This article is all about that regular millionaire – one million, two million, three million in net worth – the regular sort of “Millionaire Next Door” type.
Breaking Free from Social Media Illusions
The other thing to keep in mind in terms of why looking poor is important for living well is we have to make sure that we separate what we see on social media or on TV, because what we see on social media and TV about wealth and who wealthy people are is usually false.
What happens to a lot of people in the poor and middle class is you end up copying and emulating these people we see on TV or social media that we think are representative of what wealthy people and rich people really are and who they are and what they do. But the key is we have to pull ourselves away from that mentality that everything we see scrolling on the internet we begin to think that’s real life.
We have to stop copying and emulating poor people who are trying to look rich or middle class people who are trying to look rich because if we’re not careful, that seeps into our own psyche and we sort of forget the fact that most millionaires aren’t living like this. What we see on the internet or what we see on TV, most millionaires just really don’t live like that here in America.
Instead of copying those people, copy the understated millionaire. Copy the “Millionaire Next Door,” the regular rich person who you can’t even tell is rich. Copy that person. I know it’s not glamorous, it’s not sexy, it’s not fun, it doesn’t get you hyped up and get you emotionally charged up to copy the regular rich person. But if you really want to be wealthy, you want to copy regular wealthy people. Copy the average millionaire as opposed to the glamorized version of the millionaire.
The Understated Path to Wealth
In other words, do the understated little things out front, and in the back is where you have your money going to work and working really hard for you where everybody can’t see it and everybody doesn’t need to see it.
You know, keep it simple. Do your budget every month, written down. Do a net worth statement a couple of times a year. Make sure you have emergency money put to the side – plenty of emergency money in case something goes wrong, because it will go wrong. Pay off your debts on anything that’s going down in value. Vow to not take on any new bad debt on anything going down in value. Make it a purpose, make it a part of your life to increase your assets and lower your liabilities over the next ten to fifteen years.
Focus on the basics when it comes to money, when it comes to investing, when it comes to trying to build wealth. Don’t be the person who wants to look good out front but in the background it’s looking horrible, it’s looking bad.
Real wealth, guys, it takes time, and you as a person, as you change and evolve over time, your level of wants and things that make you feel good are going to change also. Because as you go along, guys, life goes from stuff, stuff, stuff to make you feel good to people and relationships and the network of people around you to make you feel good.
The True Meaning of Looking Poor
The key is to be wealthy and not worry about looking wealthy, and that’s going to allow you to focus more on your personal growth and less on that fleeting material stuff that a lot of people that are in that poor and middle class tend to think about so heavily.
Again, looking poor doesn’t mean looking neglected and dirty and not taking good care of yourself. It means understanding that your appearance, it’s not the most important thing. Matter of fact, it’ll keep you behind if you’re not careful. Why? Because it’s really unnecessary to look a certain way or to try to show off what you have, despite what many of us were taught when we were little where we were taught that you got to look a certain way, you got to wear certain clothes, you have to present yourself a certain way in terms of your physical outside being, which really, guys, is not as important as we thought.
But hey, when you look poor, you force people to get to know you for you, not get to know you for your money or for what you have.
Money Working Behind the Scenes
Again, in the meantime, you want your money to be working hard for you in the background. Don’t wear your wealth, don’t drive your wealth, but put your wealth to work. Money should be making more money. It should be helping people along the way, giving to causes you agree with and you like and you understand and you want to see further in this world. But it’s also about making more money in the background and providing for your future.
The wealthy understand that true security doesn’t come from what people can see on the outside. It comes from what’s building quietly in the background – the investments that compound over time, the emergency funds that provide peace of mind, the debt-free lifestyle that offers true freedom.
When you prioritize looking wealthy over being wealthy, you trap yourself in a cycle where you’re constantly working to maintain an image rather than building actual wealth. The wealthy person who looks poor has made a conscious choice to prioritize substance over style, long-term security over short-term gratification, and genuine relationships over status-based connections.
This doesn’t mean living in deprivation or never enjoying the fruits of your labor. It means being intentional about where you spend your money and ensuring that your spending aligns with your long-term financial goals rather than your short-term desire to impress others.
So there you have it, guys. That’s why in my opinion looking poor is important for living well. The best person who’s going to take care of the old you is the young you. Take good care of yourself and take care of other people.