As a teenager, Iâve been privileged to grow up in a predominantly wealthy neighborhood a few miles north of New York City for most of my life.
Traditionally, it is most common to have families live here for generations, inherit estates and businesses, and grow up in 17th-century cottages.
I may or may not have already given away the place from a few of those clues but regardless, these points are crucial to point out plus if you do figure out where I’m talking about, it could make for a great weekend getaway trip.
Just saying.
After going to the same school with these wealthy kids for 13 years, myself included, I found a huge disparity in the lack of financial literacy. But it is understandable since we graduated high school 2 years ago now and at 18, I donât expect much from my age group except knowing how to blow a gum bubble, convince teachers to raise your grades, make a TikTok and tie shoes.
As one of the few immigrant families in this town, I wanted to understand how the Rockefeller and Carnegie families got, stayed here and their methodology of preserving wealth for 300 yeasr.
Yes, a few of the non-rich families own Teslas and Masseratis here, and by rich I mean they have no real rich mindset which means preserving their wealth.
But the majority of residents live in shabby old dens, broken down white picket fenced homes, and cottages with moss shedding out of the roofs for decades since the Kennedys lived in town.
For 13 years of being dragged to parent get-togethers, holiday parties, graduation ceremonies, school events and town gatherings, my family has gotten a keen sense more or less of the true meaning of wealth that the top tier Americans use that has lead ourselves as immigrants into financial freedom ever since moving here.
Just to clarify, since we live here we did have the means and financial freedom but we learned a lot more strategies that Poland just didn’t teach us.
These skills were all learned through those get-togethers.
They have made our investment portfolio grow, our egos smaller, our friendships blossom, and our jobs not feel like work.
There is no secret sauce to success. The same thing with building a business.
The advice online isn’t great, especially when it comes to starting a company.
All you will read online are the conventional steps such as making a logo and getting a name.
Yes, the name is everything but isn’t the type of advice we need.
We all assume that in order to live in a place of your dreams, you have to get rid of a few things and sacrifice to earn and grind before you enjoy life 60 years later when you canât appreciate the life you wasted to get here.
But in fact, it is the opposite.
Wasting precious years off of your life will get you nowhere becuase you won’t be able to sustain 110% effort every day for 40 years if you did that.
I’m not saying take vacations every week but giving yourself a break, family time, and living below your means are the first practical steps that they truly keep.
Stealth Wealth
Without bothering families or getting into the question of money during these gatherings was the biggest hurdle becuase my family wanted to learn how to stay here like them but also make sure we were relatable.
This brings me to my first point of hiding what you have not what you know.
This is a phenomenon that specifically people with no financial literacy, education, or understanding of how wealth really works can process or utilize to their advantage because they believe in these misconceptions that only make them broke:
-More bling the better
-Must show off your wealth in material goods
-Cooler things = better life
Although some of that might be true because you are able to purchase more, your wealth as I was alluding to from the start, comes from your mindset not what you own.
We always hear, “it’s not what you make but how much you keep in the bank.”
For sure, but also make sure you are letting it grow at the same time, outside of the bank.
This requires a bit more diligence and action than just spending less.
Being selfless will do the trick.
Besides a few rotten, spoiled gangsters in this town, what the 1% really wonât tell you is what they truly value.
It is hard to tell their secrets becuase you cannot tell who they are.
Let me explain.
Most of these folks would not be recognizable as wealthy or privileged on the street.
If you are able to go âuncoverâ without feeling assaulted, accused, or embarrassed, then you have achieved the ultimate feeling of confidence.
Staying down to earth and living below your means is how you become wealthy.
Blowing it all and trying to keep up with the inflationary lifestyle will only make you work harder and eventually burnout.
You have no reason to impress others becuase you are focused on what will lead you to more growth: education and your hidden abilities.
Impress yourself with how much you can stop impressing others.
Be on the same level as others so you can foster more relationships and be relatable.
Just like conversations.
No one wants to hear or care about your successes, just want you can provide and help with.
Diversity
People in my town value community and friendships dearly.
Almost every weekend, there is some sort of book sale, mini-marathon, or cookout going on where anyone can join, even if you arenât from here. Of course, socially distanced.
Yes, it is very homogenous town, but that doesn’t mean that the residents act like it exists.
We are very open to new residents, value dedicating our time to diverse opinions and culture to create new ideas and happier existence.
Prioritize people not things and they will be there when you need it eventually.
Taboo Myth
Although discussing income is forbid and only spoken about from an insecure, seeking appraisal type of person, discussing wealth shouldnât be a taboo topic especially if you truly care about increasing your knowledge and helping your community become smarter.
At many of these holiday gatherings, I could faintly remember the adults discussing, even the women which is quite rare so bravo, about the types of investments and good purchase prices they got for weekend getaway homes to AirBNBs.
Even though the conversations were more upscale with yachts and SoulCycle, you will learn a lot about simply discussing consumerism.
In fact, if you arenât in the top tier income bracket, that should be the ultimate reason to educate your community even more. It doesn’t take effort, only 1 person to initiate the vital conversation. You can ever sneak people into joing you at a party and then end up discussing RobinHood and their top brokers in the neighborhood by posing a question.
Anything can be done from setting up a finance 101 zoom meeting sponsored by your public library to posting on NextDoor.com on who is familiar with compound interest.
Small, free acts like that will be incredibly helpful not only for the party but for the community.
Don’t feel there is competition because that will only hinder your growth. We must work together in learning becuase the corrupt education system hasn’t done justice.
Diversify
Roughly 7% of the richâs income comes from their salary.
Ask yourself, if you lost your job tomorrow, would you be able to sustain yourself for the next year? The majority of Americans would go into bankruptcy and on the streets. That is due to not having a diversified portfolio, not taking the initiative to invest in the first place, and thirdly not having 6-12 months of leeway cash on the sides to support them on the job search which I will cover shortly.
If you want to put yourself in jeopardy and not be prepared for a recession, economic downturn, whatever you want to call it, stick to one job.
The rich have roughly 7-12 income sources that they could fall back on for support.
At these gatherings, they were discussed and this was done in a nonselfish or egotistical way simply to educate the community and share their year-long insights to save us money and time figuring the clues ourselves.
Their money is always working for them.
You need money to make money, but you donât need much to start out with.
The majority of their wealth comes from investments, dividends, capital gains, real estate, and business(es).
If you are in the position of landing your first job or have had a great one for 30 years, this applies to anyone.
The more you make in your job, then the heftier deductions and higher taxes you must pay and as a result, you lose almost half of what you make.
Investments on the other hand have little to no taxes, along with capital gains tax when you sell a property.
Otherwise, compared to your salary from your employer, it turns out to be much less and taxes keep increasing each year due to our best friend, inflation.
Along with diversification, having multiple accounts is beneficial to set up different funds and keep them in order.
Whether you are getting ready for a wedding or contributing for your child’s college fund when they are born, setting up a dedicated account for the 529C plan or a short-term goal fund will help you stick to your goals as opposed to stashing it all together in a savings account.
The last thing, in regards to working.
This should be obvious but it is vital that you are never working for your manual labor because that will slowly kill you.
Your money has to grow passively, when you are sleeping, on vacation, and taking PTO and preferably can work anywhere.
That is a much more sustainable, reliable career path than waking up at the crack of dawn to shovel snow 2 months out of the year.
Donât Undermine Debt
Debt is definitely bad.
Donât think that it isnât but when it comes to your time horizon and the best choices you can make now for your future, paying off that mortgage piece by piece and not rushing it, will make you more money in the long run.
Many assume that because one is wealthy, they donât owe anything and all their debt and loans are paid off.
The government and bank donât restrict anything from them.
They encourage more borrowing so the lenders can get more wealthy.
Once again, the image one displays of wearing Gucci and Prada doesn’t mean anything. They could’ve easily purchased that with credit card debt.
If you don’t believe me, I suggest you go on CNBC Millenial Money’s YouTube channel.
Most of the videos are about, well, Millennials living their best, luxurious, Canada Goose lives in the most expensive cities in America with thousands of hundreds of dollars of debt. They disclose their portfolios and lives hiding their image for privacy reasons becuase if you knew that was your friend, you wouldn’t want to be sharing the brunch bill with them anymore.
That makes me wonder, how do they apply for this?
They must know their situation is bad and eligible for this YouTube series but still care about being famous online.
How sad.
That is the worst decision you can put yourself in and frankly, they arenât to blame as much as the education system is.
If you are in that situation, you must reduce your spending to make up for the careless debt you put yourself in.
With those extra cash reserves and money youâve now saved, you can now slowly pay down debt.
Of course, quickly as possible, but donât rush all of it because it is important to emphasize good versus bad debt.
Rushing can lead to a sloppy job as well.
Good debt includes anything that will pay for itself or make you money in the long run such as a mortgage on a home or student loans.
You have to be patient since a degree doesn’t come overnight nor does the uptick in your home price. In particular, a degree takes 4 years of no progress or results to shine through for the rest of your career.
Bad debt is exactly the opposite. It doesnât help you in any way except make you feel better temporarily and weaken friendships, as one of the hundreds of reasons. This includes car loans, credit card debt, luxury good debt, and the worst, clothing debt.
So why is good debt actually good to have when you are wealthy?
As opposed to paying down your whole entire mortgage at once where you just gave up half a million right away, you couldâve paid that at an interest of a couple thousand per month for 3 more years and invested the rest in a low-cost index fund or mutual fund to make great returns in the stock market.
Get Off Track
At those dinner parties, long term mentality and expecting the worst in the future was emphasized a lot.
Even the tempted day traders at the town gathering told us to look past the daily volatility becuase it will indeed smooth out long term.
Don’t ever try to time the market and predict the future, becuase we can’t even predict tomorrow.
Expect to be wrong and never always right.
If you think differently, your money will treat you differently.
Read the Buffet and Lynch books but also divvy off the traditional path of paying off debt quickly and investing in trendy stocks.
The stock market isnât trading in real-time.
It is trading futures for 5-10 months down the road.
Think decades ahead like Musk and you will see real progress.
Build MySpace for tomorrow and die.
Cash On Hand. No Debate.
As a 19-year-old, I read many of the articles on Medium and various other sites by self help millennial gurus that state the younger you are, the less cash you should have.
Why in the world should you do that?
Do hurricanes and pandemics avoid you?
I understand these gurus say this becuase we have a longer time horizon and so we can take more risks with our money, but that doesn’t mean emergencies aren’t nonexistent.
No matter who you are, where you live, or how old you are, you always have to plan for the worst during the best times to live safely, comfortably during the worst.
The last thing you want to do after a tornado swept your home and crashed your car into a tree is get drowned into the dreaded lane of going into debt and have to now pay exorbitant fees just because you didnât put a little bit down before and prepared.
I get it, preparing takes time and can seem like a helicopter nonsensical parent.
Why prepare for something that might not happen?
Itâs the same thing with insurance and a will.
You eventually will die. You donât know when but still need to give your family a peace of mind when it happens so they donât have to deal with court filing and lawyer fees to divide up your assets which end up costing more, believe it or not.
Put in the extra effort now to prepare for the worst and not struggle like careless everyone else, so you can survive and have things go a little more smoothly when you need them to.
It always pays off.
Otherwise, expect to walk on eggshells for the rest of your life and pay double when you get a flat tire.
Skip the Other Type of Socializing
Building relationships and acting dum is the greatest thing you can do.
Learning from others and teaching your neighbors the best investments and mutual funds that have outperformed for your portfolio will be a better investment than learning from Mr.Wonderful(Kevin O’Leary) who is not relatable and the advice doesn’t apply to your circumstances.
These families have so much confidence that they not only drive Hondas, eat Dino chicken nuggets, and always look for the best deal, but they always have a curiosity for learning more from people who are like them.
They don’t care feeling stupid and make mistakes in order to get better!
A few years back at the village Christmas party, one of the spin the bottle questions to a resident was, “Would you give up food or books?”
Her answer was immediately food.
What would you say?
In order to become the best version of yourself and help your family grow financially, you must be an avid learner.
If you believe that learning stops after you graduate, then there is no point in getting a job because you will be expected to learn on the job!
On that note, managing your time is the most important thing you can do.
They believe that surrounding yourself with diverse ideas and people who have differing opinions will make you stronger.
The true test of your strength is if you can listen to someone you disagree with and still get along.
They donât treat everything like a gamble and fight.
They are always in the position to learn and utilize their time efficiently, because as much money as they have, the only thing you cannot buy is time.
Time is the best asset you have.
As a result, with their time, they never spend it on the usual suspects that kill their motivation, inspiration, and overall productivity: social media.
Now if you need to be on social media, at least be a producer, find new inspiration, and apply it.
Donât scroll away and be jealous.
Find your new customers and find hidden marketing strategies that work with popular pages.
Don’t just consume!
No Excuses
When I started waking up at 5 am I felt the urge to tell all my friends about it even though it felt miserable.
To this day, it still feels that way sometimes but especially back then, I was doing it solely to gain approval and feel like a morning warrior.
This only ruined my motivation because I wasnât working out at 5 am for myself to get a kick start out of my day and get time back, I was doing it for someone else.
Now, I’ve started to be a little selfish. It isn’t a bad thing, especially if it creates immense results in the long run.
Now, I’ve been waking up religiously, even on Christmas Eve, and on weekends for the past 5 years (call me crazy) to workout so I can have more energy, feel good and healthy and enjoy life.
This precious time and making this sacrifice to wake up in the cold morning isn’t for someone else.
I don’t feel the need to post or tell anyone about it.
Yes, motivating others through teaching them your morning regime could be helpful, but if it’s fake, it isnât going to benefit anyone and only make yourself feel worse and unmotivated.
If things really are beneficial, then tell yourself inside and keep it a secret.
No need to prove anything to anyone.
Education > AnythingÂ
The three biggest expenses for most are housing, transportation, and food.
After that, it is up to debate, and depending on your needs, differs widely.
For the poor to the lower middle class, it is typically medical expenses than clothing and unfortunately, tobacco, drugs or alcohol. Think twice when you donate money…
For the middle to upper class, education right behind the biggest necessities.
The best investment is in yourself and with the prevalence of technology, all you need is a stable internet connection which if you are really desperate can get for free at a Starbucks or at your local library.
You donât need a degree to get a solid and good education.
If you have a lack of motivation as a rich kid, then a degree will serve you better than going on YouTube or Coursera but if you truly want to improve your life circumstances, you have no choice but to take the hard route and teach yourself.
The wealthy have a powerful sense of EQ over IQ.
They can sense when a situation has gone wrong or a relationship is not working out.
People skills are involved in everything we do.
Emphasize soft skills over hard skills.
Be an open-minded generalist, not a close-minded specialist.
Education is not just SQL and Excel from a textbook.
It is also dealing with people and your emotions, being relatable, and compromise.
Education will always appreciate in value and can never be taken away from you unless you get dementia.
To rise to the top and get anything done, you must have the skills and put them to work.
They are pointless if you cannot apply them.
Just like with your money.
Sure, you make millions but if you don’t know how to manage it, it is pointless.
WeWork almost went bankrupt becuase of this.
Add value to peopleâs lives instead of striving to make a certain dollar amount.
That will lead you to contribute more, feel better, and serve the world.
Don’t be a college dropout basketball player blowing his first paycheck.
You didn’t deserve that.
Boring Is Evident
Along with living the low life of stealth wealth, this doesn’t mean the wealthy live their lives in misery.
It is actually more fulfilling because they appreciate what they have and earned instead of spending it on frivolous things they know wonât serve them in the long run for their family and future kids.
When I moved here back when I was five, when I saw my friends go away for their summers upstate and on the weekends to Montauk, I thought they partied every night and had a blast.
The truth is until I realized how many times my friends picked up my Facetime calls, which were around 6 per day, that real, exuberant fun only existed twice a year, New Year’s Eve and Christmas Eve.
To really be happy in life, you have to make your own fun and of course, be comfortable in your own skin, not trying to impress people with your wealth.
Most weekends when I Facetimed them, they always told me they were bored, sitting on their RH cloud couch in their  Long Island home by the water.
Nothing was there and they had no interaction, only with their babysitters because their parents were usually working anyway back in the city.
We always think the grass is greener on the other side until we live in their shoes.
We will always want something and there will be endless excuses and things we can say to make ourselves feel worse.
That is no way to live.
In fact, on the Fourth of July when we joined a couple of families at a resort in Florida, most turned off their phones because they said being bored is good.
Thatâs where creativity and wealth comes from.
A parent told my mom they wish they were bored more often so they could make the world a better place and innovate.
The weekends are the only time for this. Netflix is not an option, only on the plane is there are really no choices.
You have to appreciate and especially take advantage of having a mental break.
Being a consumer and occupied on your phone will not get you as far as being a producer and thinker.
Taking a break is never being lazy, it is necessary for growth.
As I continue to live here and quarantine in this town, I’ve become more familiar with who is here and what the residents are up to.
Yes, some of them have been gone since March but most live in the homes that they purchased for a reason.
Iâve unleashed more potential and insights from snooping around the village than with reading any guru or financial expert because their advice is relatable.
The wealthy have achieved something and practice habits that are realistic, not ordinary.
It seems unfathomable to attain becuase it only takes patience and a positive attitude, something most of us cannot deal with.
These habits are free and take mental agility.
Everyone has that.
Now, book a trip to this magical place.