15 Lessons Poor People Teach Their Kids
Poor parents can't teach their kids how to be rich. Growing up poor, you receive plenty of counterproductive advice from people you look up to. Let's see just how many of these you were taught. Here are 15 lessons poor people teach their kids.
Number one, you need to work for money. Calm down, okay? They didn't know any better. If you're going to work for money, you will be forever poor. You earn money by solving problems for other people. It's a very different way of thinking. The bigger the problem you can solve, the more money you will get for your solution. If hard work was all it took to get rich, people working in construction in July would be billionaires.
Number two, study hard so you get a good-paying job and become rich. Probably the biggest lie our generation was told was that in order to get rich, you have to get a good-paying job like a doctor or a lawyer, a high-status job with an upper-middle-class car. That's what your parents want for you. In reality, the only way to get rich is by starting a business. The richest doctor in the world owns medical businesses and pharma companies. The richest lawyers in the world own the law firms where good salary lawyers work. Getting good grades has little to no impact on your professional career in the age of information abundance, and this is why A students end up working for C students.
Number three, always cut down expenses. You will never get rich by spending less. The only way to build fortunes is by dramatically improving your income. It doesn't matter if you spend five dollars on a coffee every other day if you are earning ten times what your lifestyle costs. And sure, saving and being financially disciplined makes a lot of sense, but it's actually about the income. Money coming in solves everything. You should aim to have more than enough money to support yourself, invest some, and enjoy the rest.
Number four, everyone rich is corrupt. Now this is pretty common with the previous generation. In their time, only crooks had money: mobsters, thieves, people doing shady things at dusk and dawn. But that's no longer the case. Everything has been democratized. You can start any kind of business in just a few days and make a ton of money doing it. In the age of the internet, fame, money, and access are available to anyone. You could build a brand on Instagram or YouTube. You can outsource production, and you could learn how to do all of it in your pajamas. Look, that's why we have 16-year-olds making millions per year, Instagram celebrities with billion-dollar net worths and more. By portraying everyone rich as evil or corrupt, poor people make themselves feel better by their lack of ability to achieve financial success, so they try to flip the script by being morally superior. They're not. There's no nobility in poverty.
Number five, all self-help is a scam. This comes from people who have no problem advising you to go into $100,000 worth of student debt in order to major in social studies, but spending one hundred dollars for someone to show you how they do what they do? That's a scam. Okay, we live in the age of information abundance. You can find everything online for free. What's not readily available is scarce, and scarcity demands a premium. That's why experts charge so much for an hour of their time. They have time-tested wisdom applicable to you directly. Allow other people to find the information you need at this moment in your life, and you will save yourself years of trying to find it yourself. The Alux app does just that. It's actually life-changing, but you have to do it ten minutes every day.
Number six, your destiny is out of your hands. The poorer you are, the more religious you become. Why? Because there's no alternative, so you pray. There is a heaven and that you'll be rewarded for your mediocrity. These are the same people that believe the earth's position around the sun at the moment of their birth determines their compatibility or how their future should be. There's almost a billion people born in September, and y'all think the sign speaks to you? That's one of the main reasons that separates the haves from the have-nots: the ability to craft your own destiny. You're not supposed to be a spectator in life; you're supposed to craft a story worth telling.
Number seven, you can't make it in life without connections. Poor people cut the wings of creatives and talent because they believe there's a group of people that regulate all the fame, all the success, all the money, and they want it all for themselves. But the truth is people are always looking for opportunities to grow. Do great work, show it to people, and then get back to work. Innovate, share it openly, and if people think it's good, they'll care. These connections poor people speak of will come to you to sit alongside your fame, and by that time, you'll realize you don't really need them.
Number eight, in life, you get what you deserve. Not really. You see, bullies grow up to live wonderful lives with zero repercussions for their past actions. Some of them end up becoming presidents of the free world. You don't actually deserve anything in life; you receive what you create for yourself. Create opportunities, create wealth, build a loving family. That's why most of you are single. The person you are right now isn't actually worthy of someone, and look, that's okay. You've got some flaws. You'll get up off the couch, you'll fix them, and life will start looking at you differently. Stop being entitled; nobody owes you anything.
Number nine, listen to your elders. Now this used to be true when humanity lived in tribes. Old people had valuable wisdom to share because they were the ones who survived all the wars. Well, fast forward to today, and old people are so out of touch with reality that their opinion is irrelevant. Their advice sounds good, but it doesn't work. The way we work has changed, the way we find romance has changed, the way we communicate, you guessed it, has changed. Your elders can only give you advice based on how to be a decent human being, but only if they are one, which narrows it down even more. An extension of this lesson is, put others first. It's meant to show how well-educated you are, but run the experiment for years, and you'll realize how people are taking advantage of you.
Number ten, Sundays are the lord's day to rest. Want to learn a secret that poor people don't know? Money is made on Sundays when all the poor people are taking the day off. You make progress in life when other people aren't working. These are crucial to wealth creation. You can learn everything you need to know about wealth by picking up the principles of wealth building in the Alux app. The learning pack costs 25 bucks, but if you've got an active subscription, even the cheapest one at 14.99 monthly, you can still access it, so you're saving yourself 10 bucks. Download the app today, and in two weeks, you'll have learned more about wealth than you've ever learned in your life so far. You can even listen to it on Sundays, but Alux, even God took the seventh day off. Well, that's because he supposedly created the universe in the previous six days and wanted to see how it all played out.
You didn't do anything for six days, and you want to rest on Sundays? You're, what, 26, 30, whatever age you are? What are you taking a break from? Honestly, look back honestly on the week you're complaining about so much, and you'll realize it was actually more complaining than work. For every Sunday you work, you're getting an extra week ahead. Work every Sunday for a year, and you'll likely be over one year ahead of everyone else.
Number eleven, people like us can't be rich. Once again, with these limiting beliefs, the problem we have with these kinds of inputs growing up is that it actually takes years to overcome them and rid yourself of what your heroes implanted in your mind. Growing up, you think your mom and dad know everything; they say they do it all out of love in order to protect you from the harsh reality out there. But guess what? You're going to have to live in that reality no matter what, so you might as well learn to navigate it well. Honestly, it no longer matters the color of your skin, your gender, your religion, where you were born, or what you're into as long as it's not illegal. We're not all born equal, but you have a better shot today than any time before in human history.
Number twelve, this is how we do things in this household. Or the classic, while you're under this roof, you listen to me. But what if what they're saying is nonsense or counterproductive? What if the house is so shabby because we keep doing things the same shabby way? Why don't we try another way? And then the pride kicks in and yada yada yada. Poor people skew toward familiarity, even if the familiar is damaging them in the long term. They stay in abusive relationships because they're familiar. They stay with that job that doesn't pay them enough because it's familiar. They spit out the same weak advice because that's what their parents told them, and it's familiar. But the problem with thinking you have all the answers is it traps you and everyone around you in this same mundane reality.
Number thirteen, try to fit in as much as possible. They want you to be average. They want you to not stand out. They even tell you, "Why can't you be like this other kid or like your cousin or brother or sister?" They compare you to others. They ask how classmates did on the test to see where you fall on the respect scale. But funny enough, later into adulthood, standing out is what gets you the big wins, the dream life, the money, the success, the fame. The less you're like everyone else, the better off you are. There are too many of everyone else. The only way you can compete is by being as true to yourself as possible. While everyone else is trying to be like everybody else, being yourself is extraordinary. That's your competitive advantage. Now all you have to do is figure out how to be yourself.
Number fourteen, better safe than sorry. They tell you to play it safe, always take the safe path, never do anything too risky or something that could put you in danger. With poor parents, it's a conservation mechanism, as they don't need another thing to worry about, especially if money is tight. But look, you play it safe for long enough, and you end up without a personality, without memories, without friends, because the best friends are the ones you went through adventures with. They say better safe than sorry, but on a long enough time horizon, playing it safe is what leads to being sorry.
Number fifteen, there is not enough to go around. Poor parents think money is limited. Everything is limited. There's not enough for everybody. They think that if you get something, someone else is left without. Life is a zero-sum game, and they teach this scarcity mindset to their kids. They program it into their mind that if you were to make money, other people would go broke because of you. They assume there's only one pie out there. But in life, you can bake as many pies as you want. You could own a bakery if you want. You could teach others to bake. You could give away your pies for free if that's what you'd like to do. The pie only grows bigger and bigger. Nothing is stopping you from doing the same.
Now that was a trip down memory lane for everyone on the Alux team. How many of these did you encounter growing up, and what other bad advice did your poor parents give you? Let us know in the comments. And now, for those of you watching until the very end, here's your bonus: nobody is coming to save you. But you can save as many as you want. Very few of you watched last week's community update. The YouTube algorithm buried the clip because we posted two videos in the same day. If you haven't seen it, we definitely recommend you watch it, as it's only three minutes long.
When you grow up poor, you realize nobody is coming to save you. You have to save yourself, and a sinking ship can save no one. So we were on a journey of financial success, and we promised that once we got there, we would figure out ways to have a real impact, and that's what we did. A portion of the revenue from the Alux app is going directly to impoverished communities. We helped out 300 families in Ukraine this week. We signed the contract to begin work on a school for kids who don't yet have access to one in Uganda. We're on this journey of changing the world together, Aluxer. The bigger Alux becomes, the more of an impact we can have. We're in this together. Your parents might not have been able to give you a proper financial education, but you're a part of our family now, and we feel responsible for you. If you feel the same way, write "Alux fam" in the comments, and let's just show these haters how many of us there are.