smartonmoney.com

In a recent post on his site, online marketing guru John Chow got into a discussion about money and frugality, and why he chooses not to live beyond his means unlike so many of the other folks out there spend as much or more than they're raking in. it’s about living within my means – which for me means not only spending less than I earn but also about thinking about the future and using what we don’t spend in a way to produce income. Of course you can take this principle to the extreme where you never spend any of your money on nice things and live like a scrooge – for me They are displaying the true attributes of those with a millionaire mindset, people who live like true millionaires, and not those who are pretenders.

After reading that post I started looking for other polls to find out how many people are actually saving up an emergency fund in the first place,  and to see what they believe is a good place to get their emergency money. The numbers seem to vary a bit depending upon the source, however, I found a Gallup poll from a few years back that found only about 4 in 10 Americans say they actually have cash on hand in case of an emergency. So besides cash savings (75%), people say they would use these sources  to help pay for an emergency: Based on the fact that only 10% say that they have $1,000 in cash on hand for an emergency, and the fact that so many are depending upon other ill-advised sources of emergency money, I'd have to say people are in general woefully under-prepared. We're currently sitting on a nice 10 month cash reserve in our online savings account, and we're building it to 12 months.

Long-term investments usually offer higher profits compared to quick sale options with tax advantages. The main goal of investing is to earn money for future retirement, college education, to purchase a home, and/or to supplement monthly income. Tax-free investments comprise mainly of employer retirement plans, health savings accounts, educational funds, savings bonds, traditional & Roth IRAs, municipal bonds and exchange traded funds (ETF). There are plenty of resources available online with tools to help educate potential investors on tax-free and deferred tax retirement investments.

He was talking about how the mindsets are so different for people who merely act rich – and those who truly do have a high net worth. Those who want to play the part of “being rich” are more often found at high end stores,  spending money that they don't have so that they can play the part of being affluent. Those who act rich will often justify their high spending by talking about how much money they're saving, and by talking about all the “bargains” that they've gotten. Those stores which were mentioned by at least 20% of these millionaires include:  Costco, Dillard's, “favorite independent store,” J.C. Penney, Kohl's, Macy's, Nordstrom [especially men's shoes], Target, and Wal-Mart.