20 Things the Rich Do.

A recent blog entry by Dave Ramsey quotes Tom Corley, on his website RichHabitsInstitute.com, outlining a few of the differences between the habits of the rich and the poor. I have summarized these differences in the table below, which makes the comparison a bit more readable.

Percent of Wealthy Activity Percent of Poor
70 Eat less than 300 junk food calories per day 97
23 Gamble 52
80 Focus on accomplishing some single goal 12
76 Exercise aerobically four days a week 23
63 Listen to audio books during commute to work 5
81 81% of wealthy maintain a to-do list 19
63 Parents make their children read two or more non-fiction books a month 3
70 Parents make their children volunteer 10 hours or more a month 3
80 Make Happy Birthday calls 11
67 Write down their goals 17
88 Read 30 minutes or more each day for education or career reasons 2
6 Say what’s on their mind 69
79 Network five hours or more each month 16
67 Watch one hour or less of TV every day 23
6 Watch reality TV 78
44 Wake up three hours before work starts 3
74 Teach good daily success habits to their children 1
84 Believe good habits create opportunity and luck 4
76 Believe bad habits create detrimental luck 9
19 Believe in lifelong educational self-improvement 5
86 Love to read 26

There’s no question that these are habits which will improve one’s mind and create an environment where the chances for wealth-building are increased. There’s no guarantee that you’ll get rich if you do every one of these things (or don’t, as the case may be), but your odds of strengthening your position in life are radically increased.

I will be looking at this list closely as I determine what worked during this past year, what didn’t work, and what’s next.

Apparently Dave’s blog post attracted a storm of ignorant and negative comments, so he added some commentary which is worth the read.

The Old Wolf has spoken.