In This Episode
- Why it's important to have role models
- When we usually get programmed
- Why younger generations may be less likely to think that rich people are bad
Overcome the “Rich People Bad” Mentality
One thing that many people hear when they are growing up relates to “rich” people. Our parents, friends and strangers often instill in us that people who have a lot of money could have only got that money by illegal or dishonest means.
That can be a huge hurdle to becoming a successful trader. On one hand, you want to make a comfortable living by trading financial instruments. But if all of your programming is telling you that making money is bad, then you're going to subconsciously prevent yourself from succeeding.
So in this episode, we talk about how you can change your programming around money, so you clear the path to your success.
Read the Transcript
Hugh: Hi, Walter. Why do we think rich people are bad and how does that affect their trading?
Walter: I don't know about you but for me a lot of times and a lot of traders I know, their ideas, their stereotypes it comes at a young age. I remember when I was a kid, I went to a birthday party. A friend of mine and she was in my class. Her dad owned all the McDonald's like all the McDonald's restaurants in the area which is kind of rural.
I grew up in a rural area so it's spread out you know over maybe like say fifty miles. This guy had all the McDonald's restaurants. So it was really funny when I came back from the party my mom and dad would be like, “Oh, what was it like there?” Do you know what I mean?
It's kind of like I went to the North Pole or something. Everyone's asking about Santa Claus, you know. So you pick up these things I think over time from growing up. These stereotypes about you know I wonder how many people he had to screw over to get that money. These sorts of things and so there's two things to untangle here.
One is your relationship with money and your attachment to money. Two would be what you think about people who have a lot of money and that usually comes pretty early. You can even see it in movies. There are these movies about the rich old miser or you know like a Christmas carol.
There's another one where like there was a show, there was a movie with Richard Pryor in it and this kid. The kid was really wealthy and then Richard Pryor came out somehow like got connected in the family. He was hired to be the kid's friend or something. There's all these movies where they have this stereotype of the rich person.
How they're kind of not doing exactly everything right you know. Whereas the people that don't have the money are doing everything the right way and sort of thing. I think you have to untangle that and see. One thing that can help is just having someone that you look up to when you're growing up that has a lot of wealth.
For example, my grandfather was a good example of this. For me because he adopted my mother and her siblings. He was a farmer growing up and he married my grandma on the farm next door but what was interesting was you know he kind of built up his wealth over time. He started making more money than the president of the company that he worked for and all this stuff.
There's a lot of issues with that and then he had these vacation homes in different islands and stuff that I got to visit as a you know as a young grandchild. I saw a really good example of someone who had done pretty well you know in his life. There was nothing bad about him, do you know what I mean?
Everything we knew about him was great and so it was kind of nice to have that role model. I think allowing your kids to have a role model, someone that they can look up to that knows the game of money because it is a game.
You can see that for who they are and not you know pigeonhole them as someone that's negative. I think a lot of it has to do with the stereotypes that you grew up with. Being able to find a mold or find a role model. Someone that you can relate to and learn from that has already kind of done that in a good way can be really helpful.
That's always something that I want, you know for my kids and I feel like even young adults growing up. There's a lot of indoctrination in stories in the school system about what it means to be wealthy. I think all you really need to do is have a one role model of someone who is wealthy. Who breaks that stereotype and I think that can really help.
Otherwise it's a lot of deep programming. What are your thoughts?
Hugh: I totally agree. I think a role model is definitely the best thing because when you see it in action then you can say, “Hey, this guy's not that way so not everybody's like that. I was doing some thinking on this recently. I kind of realized that you know that's something that we have to distance ourselves from as traders because if you want to be wealthy you have to think of wealthy people as being good.
Some are good, some are bad but I think throughout history really wealthy people, there have been a few, more than a few really wealthy people who have abused their power. Like you are talking about kings in the medieval times or certain politicians you know in other times and I think that has carried forward into our collective psyche.
I think that's kind of where that comes from so you have got to realize, “Okay, that is not always the case”. But there were a few bad examples and that probably has led to where we are now thinking that rich people, most rich people are bad. Once you can kind of see where that came from and distance yourself from it, I think it's really beneficial.
Walter: Exactly. I think the younger generations coming up behind us aren't going to have as much of an issue with that because it's almost like we're the fish in the fishbowl. We cannot see the reality of what money is. Do you know what I mean?
Money is a centralized thing. However, that's changing and money is becoming a decentralized thing. It is going to be completely like that is not in the future. It's already here with cryptos. So in the future what's going to happen? Actually if you go back in the past, think about this, we didn't always used to have these centralized money stations.
You think about back in the old days there was like a bank out in California that would print notes. You could use those notes out in California and Nevada. There was another bank out in Illinois, Ohio, do you know what I mean? It was like this regional thing. I am talking about the United States here but I am sure it was similar in other places with possible exceptions, you know.
Exceptions of the new countries that never had this. So what is cool about that? That is changing now and what will happen is you are going to see exactly the same thing that we saw with all these banks that printed their own notes. It is exactly what's happening right now with cryptocurrencies. These are decentralized and basically it's like a market of money.
So the market gets to decide which ones are useful. If you took that note that was printed by the bank out in California and you took that to New York it was up to the people in New York to decide whether or not that was worth anything. That is exactly what is happening now with cryptos.
These cryptos, there's more than enough out there and so people get to decide now which ones are actually worth anything. Which ones are you willing to, is the demand going to go up for? So this has always been the case. It has only been recently with the centralized bank model that we've seen all the money go through, you know, through one thing.
So I think the upshot of that is that the kids growing up now or the kids that are yet to be born like those generations, they are going to have a completely different concept of money than you and I do because we've always been in this centralized economy. Where all the money goes through one spot.
These guys print the money and they loan it to the countries because that's how centralized banks work. They print the money and they loan it to the countries. The countries take the money and they have to pay back the bank. That is how it works. I just think the whole thing is fascinating.
Hugh: Totally.
Walter: To see how this unfolds.
Hugh: I have seen several examples of kids who are like sixteen or whatever and they saved all their birthday and allowance money. They put it into something like Doge. Now they have like a million dollars. Now they are the rich people, right?
Walter: Exactly.
Hugh: Cool. Thanks, Walter.
Walter: See you!
Hugh: All the information in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not trading or investment advice.
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