15 Signs You are the New Poor

The World Economic Forum said, and this is a direct quote: "By 2030, you will own nothing and you'll be happy." There's a new breed of poor people out there, some by societal design, some by choice. They don't look poor on the surface, but they are cursed to live their entire lives being anxious about money. Here are 15 signs you are the new poor.

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Number one: Your rent consumes half of your income or you still live with your parents. You don't own much, and what you do fits in a travel bag. If someone would only lend you one. They told you, location, location, location, and now you're paying a premium price for a broom closet and a toilet. You tell yourself it's fine because you wouldn't live anywhere else.

For the first time in modern history, we've got multi-generational mortgages, meaning your parents have a mortgage they won't be able to pay in their lifetime, so they pass it off to you in hopes that you will become an owner. Owning a home is one of your biggest goals in life, yet you don't understand that the house you live in is not an asset but a liability. Hearing that doesn't make a lot of sense to you, which is why you're one of the new poor. Yes, the Boomer generation screwed everything up for you, but there needs to be some level of personal responsibility if you're ever going to make something happen. But hey, math makes your brain hurt, and you're more of a soft skill personality type.

Number two: Your emergency fund is under one thousand dollars, so basically, you have no emergency fund. Ask yourself truthfully now, if you had no ability to generate money starting today, would you be able to afford your current lifestyle: rent, bills, food, and health for three months? If the answer is no, then know that you are what is considered the new poor. You are one small emergency away from personal bankruptcy. The last time something like this happened, you either borrowed money or pawned or sold off some of your stuff. You justify it by calling yourself a free spirit and say that possessions are holding you back, when in reality, you feel lost and anxious. You blame it on the state of things, the world being on fire, literally, but the truth is, you avoid thinking about it, the same way people avoid going to the doctor because they might find something is wrong with them. Your decision to not face the truth is only doing you more damage later on, but you're okay with that; that is future you's problem.

Number three: You don't have a career; you have a job, and even that might be taken over by AI soon. You hate your job. You barely earn enough money to cover your living costs and go out a couple of nights a month. You've got a certain lifestyle that hangs on by a thread, but since that thread hasn't given up so far, you keep at it. This job isn't what you want to do, so there's no point in figuring out how to get promoted because that would mean even more responsibility doing something you hate. So you do it poorly, but not poorly enough to get fired. In exchange, your boss pays you just enough so you don't quit. You're both unhappy with the arrangement, but you push through.

You've got this idea of buying land out of the city, growing your own food, and maybe having some small rentals that would supplement your income or doing something creative with your life. But you've been having these ideas for over a decade, and you haven't done shit. You don't see technology as a threat because you think you'll be able to reinvent yourself anyway, but there are fewer and fewer avenues where that might be the case, so deep down, you block it all out.

Number four: You have student debt or other debts, for that matter. You realize your degree didn't do much in today's economy. You keep pursuing the field of your specialization just so you don't feel like you've wasted all that money, but plumbers and electricians are out earning you by a landslide. The thing about debt is you have to realize that you're not even broke; you're less than broke. A homeless person on the street might not have much, but they're above zero. You, on the other hand, don't have that luxury; you're technically in the negative. You need to work for several years just to catch up to them. Even when you do generate income, the bank that acts as your master needs to be paid first, and you survive on what's left. If you're unable to pay it, your student debt will be passed on to your children.

Number five: You have no investable assets. If you want to grow your wealth, you need to own something that generates or increases in value over time. Your car, for example, is a liability, not an asset. You need to put gas into it. You need to change the oil, fix it up whenever, so it's costing you money just to have it. What do you have in your life outside of yourself that is either making you money or going up in value consistently? This right here is why ninety percent of the population is struggling financially. Rich people buy apartments or houses not to live in them but to rent them out so they generate money for them, but alux apartments cost too much money and I'm poor. Then buy stocks. You love going to Starbucks and buying overpriced coffee and snacks, but do you own any Starbucks stock? Did you know that you can buy one share of Starbucks for only one hundred dollars? Most platforms today allow you to buy even less than that, not just because if the company does well, the price of your stock will go up, but you get paid dividends. For example, Starbucks pays a two percent dividend; that means that for every one hundred dollars you invest in Starbucks, you're getting two dollars every year. And there's no limit to how much or how little you can buy.

Buy things that go up in value. Most people laugh at rich people paying millions of dollars for art, but the rich know something you don't. For every one hundred dollars invested in art, investors saw a 13.8 percent return annually. That's better than owning gold, real estate, or investing in the S&P 500. And today anyone can become an investor in fine art starting with only 20 bucks.

Number six: Inflation is outpacing your earning power. You know you're the new poor when things are becoming more expensive faster than you're able to increase your income. For example, 2021 inflation in the U.S was seven percent, meaning most things got seven percent more expensive. 2022, another six and a half percent on top of the previous year, so in the last 24 months, prices have gone up by 14. Has your salary or income increased by at least that? Last year alone, rent went up 14.07 percent. Whatever your job is, you need to be paid more to be able to support the same kind of lifestyle you have right now. If your income earning ability doesn't go up at least as much as rent and inflation does, you're getting poorer by the year.

Number seven: You use payment plans to buy things, although you end up paying more. Buy now, pay later services and installment payments are everywhere. You mean I can just pay a little bit now and get my hands on it immediately and pay the rest later in multiple installments? Sure, sign me up. What most people don't realize, though, is there is an interest attached to this service, which can be up to thirty percent more if you were to just pay the full amount.

Let's say a phone costs one thousand dollars. You could either pay the thousand up front or get it in installments. Most people assume that the installments would be four payments of 250, adding up to one thousand, but that's not how it works. The average retailer will typically charge a flat interest rate between 11 to 27 percent, so instead of paying four installments of two hundred and fifty dollars, you agree to pay four installments of three hundred. At the end, the retailer pockets 1200 bucks, two hundred dollars more. Just because you have enough money in your pocket to take it home today, doesn't mean you can afford it.

Number eight: You transact with digital money, not cash. If we were to tell you that cash was a superior form of payment from a value perspective, you might call us crazy. It takes 32 digital transactions for the value to go from the individual to the credit card companies. Just bear with us for a second; this might blow your mind. Let's say you've got fifty dollars in your bank account. Every time you pay for something online with your phone or card, MasterCard, Visa, and the payment processors charge a fee of 2.87 to 4.35 for each transaction. To make matters worse, it's usually a small fixed fee plus the percentage. You could ask any online retailer, and they'll tell you exactly what the split is. So you take your fifty, and you go to a retailer to spend it; not all of that fifty dollars ends up in the retailer's account.

Assuming a three percent processing fee, only 48.50 is now available for the retailer to spend. The retailer goes and spends it; the processors take their cut once again, and out of that initial fifty dollars, you only have forty-seven dollars and thirty cents left. They'll chip away at it every time they use digital money to pay. Do this 32 times, and almost all the value has been moved from the hands of society and into the pockets of these businesses. So why is cash a superior form of payment? Well, if I give you a fifty-dollar bill, you get fifty dollars. If you go somewhere and buy something worth fifty dollars, that person gets to keep all of the value. Not to mention that they'll charge you a maintenance fee just for keeping your own money in your account.

Number nine: You are your parents' retirement plan. The new poor are chained to costs unrelated directly to them. Your parents did poorly in life: no savings, no investments, little pension. And now that they've gotten older, you realize there's no real way for them to support themselves. So you have to step up. Your parents will need support, treatments for illnesses that become more and more frequent. You're happy to be there for them, but you realize you can barely take care of yourself, so your already poor financial life is taking an even bigger hit as the hole just keeps getting deeper. You tell yourself you’ll figure it out, but the confidence is low.

Number ten: Everyone around you is living the same way as you are. Everybody around you is struggling; no one is thriving. You're fine with that, and you blame the system, whatever that is. This week, you could look at someone's friends and quickly figure out exactly who they are. If everyone is dealing with the same struggles, and no one is winning, there's no path out. There's no guidance; nobody is clearing a path. The new poor have already given up. There’s no motivation to change anything because the problems seem out of your control, so you settle in your mediocrity. If you're surrounded by losers, by poor, unmotivated individuals, you need another source of input. You could still be friendly, but you're not going to find answers with them. How valuable would it be for you to have a mentor, someone to point you in the right direction and teach you how to build your life brick by brick? How much would you be willing to give someone to show you the way to a great life? Some in your position would say everything. We built the alux app for people like you. Millions of dollars of coaching sessions, actionable mentor advice, and step-by-step plans right at your fingertips. Go to alux.com/app and get yourself a yearly subscription. Ten minutes a day, and see what happens. One hundred thousand people have downloaded the app, and their lives are changing progressively for the better.

Well, you're out there missing out because you just don't trust that things could ever be different. Go to alux.com/app right now and allow us to prove you wrong.

Number eleven: You pay for the services and one-off experiences, not the goods. The way the market keeps you poor is by limiting how much value you're able to acquire. They're selling you this service-focused lifestyle where you no longer own anything; instead, you pay a substantial amount to use what they own. You don't own a car; you Uber everywhere. You don't even own a bike; you rent an electric scooter because walking takes you an extra seven minutes. This generational shift removes value from the lives of the youth. If you own the scooter, after a few years you might be able to sell it and return some of the money you spent to acquire it back into your pocket. Convenience is costing you money. You're paying 15 a time, and it doesn't sound like much, but you don't realize just how expensive this is over the long run. The average millennial will spend over three hundred thousand dollars in the next 25 years, compared to approximately seventy-five thousand dollars if they were to use public transport efficiently. Everything is digital now; you buy digital games and digital goods, and there's zero resale value there. Once you spend the money, it's gone. You no longer repair things either; you just replace them fully, but that's another story.

Number twelve: You overpay for the little things, but do it consistently. You consider them small treats, but the same with the ride-sharing example: you're overpaying by 300 to 500 percent for the illusion of convenience. Here's the comparison: the average coffee at Starbucks costs about two dollars fifty cents; making the same coffee yourself costs about thirty-six cents. You're paying 7x for something. Brand name medication is five times more expensive than generic stuff, even though they've got the same chemical makeup. Marketing has got you paying four hundred dollars for a Gucci t-shirt that costs six dollars because you want the status that comes with it. With none of these expenses are you getting any additional benefits in terms of quality, yet you consistently overpay despite not being able to afford it.

Number thirteen: You prioritize the present over the future. The new poor are the YOLO generation. You follow trends that urge you to give it all to the present and not care about the consequences. The trending TikTok sound of the day is, "You will make the money back, but you'll never be X years old doing stupid shit, so spend it." Sounds pretty good in theory, but in practice, you're actually borrowing from the future, and that bill is due real soon. Personal responsibility is crucial. If you only have two hundred dollars in your account and you're thirty-five thousand dollars in debt, why are you spending seventy-five dollars going out on a Friday?

Number fourteen: You lack any high-demand hard skills. Your skills include spending time on the internet and a vague interest in something oddly specific, like locally brewed craft beer or dark cartoon theories, or trying to make your pet's Instagram famous, although we both know that ship has sailed. The new poor are alive, but they don't know how to do much; they just vibe. Take your Hogwarts house out of your Twitter bio and worry about your actual living situation. We know you're such a Phoebe, but "Look, Rose" all day is not really a vibe. This is why there's such a gap between the one percent of this generation and everyone else. That one percent have hard skills; they're able to monetize. People think Mr. Beast is so successful on YouTube because he's got a lot of money to give away, but the hard skills are consistency, discipline, and a data-driven mind. Nobody outworks Jimmy, so Jimmy wins. The new poor got participation trophies, and it developed into feelings of entitlement. The new poor don't understand what it means to be able to bring something to the table because for their entire lives, all they did was sit down, and somebody else put a plate of food in front of them.

Number fifteen: Talking about your money gives you the ick, but you love following rich celebs. Sitting down to talk money gives the new poor anxiety. In their eyes, it's so lame to talk about money because there's so much more to life than financial success, which look, that's totally true, but it's really hard to be zen when your newborn is hungry or needing diapers. The new poor resent traditional success; they label it as a white man's sport, and because they're so woke, they won't even look at what made other people successful in the first place. You drool at displays of wealth and fantasize about being on the other side of the phone screen. The new poor are those who choose to remain the same because changing would require too much effort. The new poor mentality is a virus of the mind; make sure you're not infected. And if you are, there are ways to cure yourself through education.

What other signs of the new poor do you see where you live, Alux? Let us know in the comments. And since you've watched this Sunday motivational video until the very end, it's only fair that we reward you with a bonus. By your age, your parents had more work experience and wealth acquired than you, adjusted for the time that they were living in. You entered the workforce later than they did. They were used to tougher times and had a higher pain tolerance than you do. But you have a massive competitive advantage over previous generations. Your reality is augmented by tech. You can do more in five years than they did in thirty because you have the ability to scale exponentially. Today, a business doesn't look to grow by 10 percent year over year; instead, it tries to double every quarter. Because if the metrics are right, it is more than attainable.

The older generation that's amassed so much wealth is well old and outdated. You want to get rich? Find a business that has a fax machine and put it on the internet. Restructure the business model as a subscription service, and you will obliterate the Boomers' competition. These folks are still cashing in on boring and outdated businesses. It's just a matter of time before other young folks figure out you can easily out-compete them because you're now in tune with the culture; that's your competitive advantage. If you understand this and put it into practice, you will be rich. Those who wake up are no longer considered poor; you're just pre-rich in your journey. And if that's the way you feel about yourself, write the word "pre-rich" in the comments. Let's see how many of you are doing something about it and not just wasting time.

Thanks for spending some time with us today, Alux. We're so glad you did. If you found value in today's video, please give us a like, hit that bell icon to never miss an upload, and hey, don't forget to subscribe.