I came across an interesting list recently that caught my attention, the daily habits of wealthy people. Originally credited to Tom Corley on his website, RichHabitsInstitute.com, the wealth guru Dave Ramsey posted a rundown of the list. Furthermore, he compared this to the percentage of lower income people (called ‘poor’ in their study.)
After reading, it begged the question – do wealthy people have money because of these habits? Or does their affluent lifestyle and culture afford them the time and freedom to further develop these practices? For instance, does the single mom working 3 jobs and living in poverty have time to read to her kids every night and find time to network 5 times a month? Do the core roots of poverty go far beyond our daily habits of watching reality TV and listening to audio books? Basically, does this list exhibit correlation, or causation?
The answer is probably “both,” but for anyone, no matter what our economic station, I think it can’t hurt to look at a roadmap to self-improvement and follow it as much as possible. We all can prioritize things that will promote our health, happiness, future success, and yes, even grow wealth. Some traits are universal, like delaying gratification, time management, investing in education, organization and goal setting.
Therefore, I find this list to be a manual for positive, conscious living no matter where you are in life or how much money you make. I hope you agree!
This is the list verbatim from Dave Ramsey’s website. I’ve highlighted a few statistics that I think are particularly interesting.
1. 70% of wealthy eat less than 300 junk food calories per day. 97% of poor people eat more than 300 junk food calories per day. 23% of wealthy gamble. 52% of poor people gamble.
2. 80% of wealthy are focused on accomplishing some single goal. Only 12% of the poor do this.
3. 76% of wealthy exercise aerobically four days a week. 23% of poor do this.
4. 63% of wealthy listen to audio books during commute to work vs. 5% of poor people.
5. 81% of wealthy maintain a to-do list vs. 19% of poor.
6. 63% of wealthy parents make their children read two or more non-fiction books a month vs. 3% of poor.
7. 70% of wealthy parents make their children volunteer 10 hours or more a month vs. 3% of poor.
8. 80% of wealthy make Happy Birthday calls vs. 11% of poor.
9. 67% of wealthy write down their goals vs. 17% of poor.
10. 88% of wealthy read 30 minutes or more each day for education or career reasons vs. 2% of poor.
11. 6% of wealthy say what’s on their mind vs. 69% of poor.
12. 79% of wealthy network five hours or more each month vs. 16% of poor.
13. 67% of wealthy watch one hour or less of TV every day vs. 23% of poor.
14. 6% of wealthy watch reality TV vs. 78% of poor.
15. 44% of wealthy wake up three hours before work starts vs. 3% of poor.
16. 74% of wealthy teach good daily success habits to their children vs. 1% of poor.
17. 84% of wealthy believe good habits create opportunity luck vs. 4% of poor.
18. 76% of wealthy believe bad habits create detrimental luck vs. 9% of poor.
19. 86% of wealthy believe in lifelong educational self-improvement vs. 5% of poor.
20. 86% of wealthy love to read vs. 26% of poor.
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