There could be very many reasons why people do not get rich / retire wealth here is one more enumeration:

  1. People do not think they can get rich: If a person is born in a poor or a lower middle class family he does not even think he can get rich. So a person who is born poor, goes to school with poor people,  he reconciles to the fact that he will remain poor. He socialises with poor people, he has no role model, and it will never ever occur to them that they can get wealthy.
  2. People do not want to be successful: A person has to decide that he wants to become successful. Or wealthy. Many people – rather most people do not want to pay the price of success. Success is really scary. They see movies where the successful man or woman is shown to be of dubious character, so somewhere there is a fear of being successful. To be successful you need to accept all the challenges that come your way – not just the challenges that you like. Most people do not want to face challenges.
  3. Procrastination: Its so easy to procrastinate! Ask them anything and they will have excuses – so action is postponed. So a guy with the idea of getting rich, and wanting to be successful, is just too lazy to do it. Now procrastination can also be caused by (2) above. When a person is scared of something, there is just a natural tendency to avoid that work. Unpleasant things are likely to be postponed – and procrastination helps. So its the wrong month, wrong day, after my marriage, after I buy an office, after my father retires, I need to provide for my sister’s marriage, I have just had a baby – he has a zillion reasons to procrastinate and not a single reason to start. Now. They forget the old saying “Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there”.
  4. Unable to delay gratification: For most good things one needs to have the ability to delay gratification. Most people cannot. They must have things now. Immediately. This means they are good only to live on a month to month salary. The shortage of money is made up by using the credit card. The CC helps them tide over the last 2-3 days. If you cannot delay gratification, cannot budget, and just get addicted to the ‘things’ they must have.
  5. Their life is decided by people who sell to them: People who can be sold anything – the big Coke bottle, the running shoes, a bicycle, a plasma tv, a ulip – name it and they have it. Well such people can never, ever be expected to buy solid financial assets like mutual funds or shares. The ‘buying’ of such products give them no pleasure. So it is always more ‘things’ not financial security.
  6. No time perspective: People who have no control over their time or their thinking about time usually have no control over their money. They do not know the difference between a short term need and a long term need. They cannot anticipate their immediate needs – how does one expect them to think of a retirement fund? Concepts like retirement corpus building, creating a corpus to buy a house / car – are all alien. Just no knowledge of time.
  7. Somewhat repeating – people who do not know the difference between an ‘urgent’ want (a new car) and an important need (life insurance, medical insurance, old age pension) will never be able to prioritize – he/she does not even know that they are ‘choosing’ something means they are ‘unchoosing’ something else.

7 is a good number to close a list!!

  1. when life has become so “premium” ! even a glass of milk or a bucket of “water” has become so premium” ! how can anything be “left” for ordinary guys to invest and become rich”?

    surendra

  2. I will tell you one easy way of becoming rich. If you happen to be among the backward caste or lower, get a govt job and earn plenty by the way of bribes and no need to worry about investing and stuff. You will be rich in a matter of few years.
    If you are among the forward caste, change it by paying a bribe and repeat the above idea.
    Easy least and it works only in India.

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