Why Everyone SEEMS to Have More Money Than You

Have you ever felt like you were falling behind while everyone else was doing better than you? No matter how hard you try? Oh, cool. This kid already has three mansions and $15 million. If so, then you're not alone. I'm Vincent and I'm breaking down six reasons why you might feel like everyone else has more money than you and how you can use that to your advantage. The first reason is they made a bad choice. And let me explain. So back in 2019, one of my coworkers, he posted these incredible photos from his two week vacation in Italy. He stayed at the Four Seasons. He ate at Michelin star restaurants and he flew first class. And here I was sitting dumbfounded on my phone, right? We both had the same salary. We both worked the same amount of hours and worked at the same time. So I couldn't figure out how he could afford all this. So when he got back from his vacation, I was obviously nosy and I asked him how he did this and he just laughed. Turns out he recently broke up with his girlfriend and he wanted to make her jealous. And now he has to deal with $15,000 in credit card debt. Now, unfortunately, we live in a world that rewards visible wealth. That's the car you drive, the clothes you wear and the jewelry you own. These things aren't just accessories, they're kind of status symbols. Just like how peacocks flaunt their feathers to attract a mate, people use these things to feel validated in society. But unlike peacocks, we have the option to buy things with money that we don't have. Like most luxury spending is paid for with a lot of debt. In fact, the average American household carries over $7,200 in credit card debt as of 2024. But what's interesting is in the book, The Millionaire Next Door, the author discovered that most of the millionaires he surveyed, most of them drove secondhand cars, they shopped at Walmart and they dressed and looked like normal people, meaning most wealthy people aren't here showing off their money every chance they get because they know it's more important to prioritize saving and investing to actually become financially successful than just signaling it. By the way, if you want to learn how you can save 1K this month without changing your lifestyle or pinching pennies, I'm hosting a completely free five day 1K savings challenge starting January 6th, where we're going to cover the best saving strategies, tips and resources that actually work. It's completely free. And if you want to check it out, the link is down below, or you can scan the QR code. If you get to that site and it says it's no longer available, then unfortunately, we already reach capacity. Next, you're not really sure what you want in life. Like I spent years working a job that I wasn't a fan of because I basically followed what everyone else did. Like during my senior year, everyone is looking for a job, but I honestly had no idea what to do. And my parents are immigrants, they have blue collar workers, so they didn't know too much about corporate America or all the different job opportunities available. So it's not like I could just go ask them. But I noticed that some of my smartest friends, they really wanted to work in finance or consulting. So I was like, why not? What's the worst that can happen? And let me tell you, my God, the worst happened. I was depressed. I felt empty. I was sad every single day that I went there for four years. And then one day I just cracked. I had enough. And I realized that I had never once asked myself if this is what I truly wanted. You see, our brains are hardwired to need some sort of reference point in order to make sense of our world. So if you don't have a clear vision of your own goals, then you're more likely to compare yourself to others and use where they're at to figure out where you should be doing or what you should be doing. There's this thing called this self-determination theory or SDT that says that we all have three foundational psychological needs that we need met before we can feel comfortable about ourselves. The first psychological need is autonomy, meaning you feel like you have control over your own life and your own decisions. The next is competence, meaning you feel capable in your skills and what you do. And the third is relatedness, which means that you feel like you belong to a community or have meaningful connections with people. And not being sure of what you want in life is one of the easiest ways to make yourself feel insecure about your own finances. So don't be like me, where I spent years letting other people's definition of success define my own. I think everyone should spend at least one afternoon or two and really sit down and try to figure out what you want and then start using your past self as a reference point instead of other people. For instance, are you doing better today than you were doing a few years ago? Did you get a job promotion, a pay raise? Did you pick up a new skill or did you grow as an individual? The next reason you feel everyone has more money than you is because of how naturally people want to portray themselves. I think it's natural that we all like to take pictures or record videos of moments in our lives that are different from our regular day to day. Like no one out here is actively taking selfies of ourselves, walking into our nine to five job doing the same thing that we do every Monday to Friday. But when we do something different, like when we go on vacation or we buy something really expensive that we wouldn't normally do or buy, that's when we wipe our phone camera lens and we start turning into professional photographers with all the angles. And since it's human nature to seek validation from other people, we tend to share these pictures with friends and family and even put them on social media to the point where all our social media feeds are just highlight reels of everyone, like the very best moments of everyone's lives. And there's nothing inherently wrong with any of this, but that's just why everyone seems like they're living it up and spending a lot of money. Most people aren't sharing the normal or the bad stuff they go through, like them paying off their credit card bills or them working overtime to afford something really nice. And even for me, right, I try not to record when I have pimples on my face, but I've been getting them a lot recently and I can only hold off recording for so long. So thank you everyone for pointing it out. By the way, if you got any advice for these bad boys, let me know in the comments. The next time you're doing scrolling and you come across one of these highlight reels, just acknowledge that it's okay to feel a little jealous, but just remind yourself that nobody is sharing their normal lives or their everyday struggles happening behind the scenes. So don't measure your financial picture based on what you see on social media. It's like comparing a picture perfect movie trailer to the actual behind the scenes chaos of what it takes to film a movie. Next, you're focusing too much on visible spending. Now if you've been following me for a while, then you've heard me constantly say that one of the best ways to build wealth is by consistently investing for the long term. And if you've been doing this, that means that a big part of your spending is invisible. Like you can't go around showing off your 401k or your Roth IRA accounts at a party. And I know it can get really tough, right? When you see everyone or you hear everyone talking about getting the latest gadgets and gizmos aplenty and you're just sitting here like, oh yeah, well I just bought a stock that's going to help me retire five years earlier. Like I remember when all my close friends and I, we started working, right? All of them started getting nicer clothes, no more H&M or Forever 21. It was now strictly Banana Republic or J.Crew or whatever jazz. One person even bought a brand new Audi just three months into his new job. And then there was me just quietly trying to max out my 401k and HSA accounts and start investing, right? Like I still wore my old clothes. I had my old phone and it would always say, damn Vincent, it's time for an upgrade. But fast forward to today, all that invisible spending was what allowed me the freedom to start my own media company. And now those same friends are now asking me, what should they invest in? How can they make more money, et cetera, et cetera. And then there's also that one guy who's still paying off his Audi car loan. There's a really interesting take about this in the book, The Psychology of Money, where the author Morgan Housel says, wealth is what you don't see, right? It's the savings. It's the investments. It's the financial security. It's the peace of mind that comes from having invisible spending and money. And what you see, in other words, what people show you is often not actual wealth. It's spending. So the next time that you're tempted to splurge because you think everyone else seems to be, remember that true wealth often grows quietly. Your invisible investments may not be Instagram worthy or something you can experience today, but it will be worth it in the future. The next reason is you're focusing too much on the exception and not the rule. I remember back in 2021 when Dogecoin, FTSE, and GameStop AMC was all the rage, right? I would hear all about these overnight success stories of how people turned $100 into a million dollars all over TikTok, Reddit, and even YouTube. And I mean, even I got caught up in that, right? But the problem is, is when most people see these kind of get-rich-quick stories, the immediate natural thought is, hmm, that seems doable. Let me give it a go. Which is survivorship bias hard at work. Which is basically when we just focus on the winners of people who made a lot of money, we often ignore the losers, right? We see the guy with the Lamborghini who got rich off of Bitcoin, but we don't see the tens of thousands who lost their savings. And this all happens because of two simple reasons. The first one is people probably feel too embarrassed to publicize losing all their money on a silly, risky gamble. And I mean, I would. And number two, posts about losing money probably aren't going to go viral. So you tend to hear less about it. But if you dig really, really deep, you can actually find some really sad stories of people losing all their money, their life savings, their nest egg, right? Like even looking at the numbers of comments and likes for these type of stories is nothing compared to how viral the winning stories get. So the next time you see someone post about getting rich on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, whatever, remember, that's the exception, not the rule. The main thing is to just stay focused on investing for the long term, trust the process and know that being consistent will pay off over time. The next reason everyone seems to have more money than you is sometimes people just do have more money than you, whether that's because their parents are rich, they got really lucky or because they worked really, really hard. I think too often people spend their mental energy feeling frustrated or feeling bad for themselves when they see people doing better than them. And I say this as someone who has seen both sides, right? I grew up poor. I had free school lunch my entire life. And then I went to a college where, according to the New York Times, one in four students came from the one percent. That is the wealthiest of the wealthiest in the world. Kids were driving Maseratis in school. They were wearing Louis Vuitton and wearing it to class and flying to Cabo for spring break. And as someone who started literally from the bottom and now can say I've done pretty well for myself, I realized that all the time I spent feeling frustrated in college didn't really achieve anything other than make myself feel bad. What I found really helpful for me was instead of asking myself, why does so and so have more money than me? I started asking myself, how did they do it or how did their parents do it? And it's a simple rephrase of the question that forces you to work backwards and figure out what their process was, what their behaviors were, what their actions, what their habits were that allowed them to build so much wealth, which you might be able to adopt and let it work for you. You see, the shift in questioning is the difference between having a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. When you have a fixed mindset, you believe that your abilities, your opportunities and situations cannot be changed. But if you have a growth mindset, you know that these qualities can be changed. So you start seeing challenges as opportunities to learn and improve. And in this case, referencing someone else's success is a good thing because you're using someone else's journey as a blueprint to follow for yourself, which changes your negative feelings into positive action. And this kind of leads me into something that you've got to start accepting. It's that even if you know all this information, just knowledge and information will only get you so far. It's really taking action that makes the difference. So you actually want to get better with your money. It all starts with what you do with your money after you get your paycheck. Click here to learn the 10 steps you need to take immediately after you get paid.