15 Things Poor People Do That The Rich Don't (2025)

You know, most people do these things without even realizing that they're involuntarily putting themselves into a box. As uncomfortable as it sounds, you know, poverty is often a choice, and you're choosing it every day with the little things you do. We asked all of our mentors and millionaire friends to put together a list of what poor people do way more than the rich.

Here are 15 things poor people do that the rich don't. Welcome to Alux, the place where future billionaires come to get inspired. Number one, poor people watch a lot of TV.

You've seen The Office twice, and you're watching a rerun of Friends while you eat. You know the many celebrity names from dating shows and following them on social media. Minute by minute, hour by hour, season by season, you waste your time giving your attention away to people who don't even know you exist.

You say you don't have enough time, yet you're eight seasons deep into a series that you don't even like. Reality TV is brain rot content. There's no growth in get ready with me videos.

Nor is, and this will get some people mad in the comments, obsessing over sports. Here's the data. According to a study conducted by the General Social Surveys of Nordak at the University of Chicago, people earning less than $50,000 a year watch at least 12 times more TV per day than those earning over 150,000 per year or more.

12 times. Poor people are forever spectators, never players. You choose to escape reality into worlds where others are winners instead of winning yourself.

Rich people try to get on TV because people like you will make them even richer. Poor people are consumers. Rich people are creators.

We live in a world where we vote with our attention. And what you're watching, you're reinforcing. Even when they consume, there's a major difference.

Poor people consume entertainment while the rich primarily consume big ticket news because real life events affect the market so they affect them. You wake up when you realize you're actually paying money to waste your time. So stop.

Number two, poor people eat more fast food. High sugar, corn syrup, and artificial sweeteners lead to low brain development. Bad fuel for the mind and body.

Cardboard food fills your stomach and tricks your brain into feeling happy at the expense of your ability to think straight. Yes, junk food is making you dumb, tired, and unable to problem solve your way out of poverty. On average, they've got more body fat than everyone else, more likely to get sick, lower sex drive, which leads to lower confidence.

This impacts productivity and how long you'll live. A comprehensive study over 13 years found that individuals in the top 1% income bracket lived approximately 14. 6 longer than those in the bottom 1% with three primary reasons being nutrition, environment, and preventative care, which we'll get to in a second.

You live more, you earn more. Just think about what an extra 14. 6 years means for your life.

The same thing happens with alcohol and other addictions, which by the way, most poor people can't afford in the first place. Stop buying smokes when you don't have rent money. Yes, okay, healthy food is getting expensive, but so are your vices.

Every millionaire out there knows this quote. What you're not changing, you are choosing. But you'll never hear it come out of a poor person's mouth.

Number three, poor people buy things on sale just because they're on sale. Getting a great deal on something essential that you would have paid full price money for is actually encouraged. But that's not what this is about.

Look at your house and how filled with junk it is. Poor people utilize volume over quantity. Which is why the old saying, you buy cheap, you buy twice, is true.

How many times did you buy something you didn't need just because it was on sale? Store owners get rich by tricking people like you into buying their inventory by attributing makebelieve value to their unsold items. The reason these products are on sale is because nobody who could afford to pay full price thought they were worth it to buy.

Poor people math is looking at a product listed for $200 that you can buy for $100 and thinking to yourself, you just saved $100. The truth is you wouldn't have bought it at $200. So now instead of saving 100, you're out 100.

The paradox of this reality is that when you're poor, spending money makes you feel rich. While the thing that would actually make you richer is exercising self-control. You can't save yourself out of poverty, but poor people spend themselves in it indefinitely.

The only thing you should buy on sale are stocks. Number four, on average, poor people wake up later than rich people in their early years. People of purpose are usually early risers.

It takes between 7 and 10 years to build wealth, no matter when you start. So, you might as well start early. This means there's a minimum required number of hours to put in as the cost to participate in the game of wealth.

Poor people are on average less motivated than rich people in their first part of their lives. While you're sleeping late, not educating yourself, and wasting your time on meaningless activities, who you consider to be your peers are putting in the work. You think you can always catch up to them because of your so-called potential, only to realize too late that this is not how life works.

Nobody cares about potential. The world only cares about what you can give it, and it'll reward you based on that. The paradox is it'll take two or three times the same effort later on in life just to stay afloat than it does right now while you're young.

So, you're on the clock here. That said, it's not enough to wake up early alone. It's what you get done during the day that keeps you away from misery.

Waking up early just gives you more shots at the goal than those who are still sleeping. Number five, poor people often blame others for their misfortunes. There's always an excuse, right?

They're forever the victim. Everyone's out to get them. If only they were luckier.

If only they could just catch a break. If only someone would just look the other way. You definitely know someone like that, right?

Let's cut the Life isn't what happens to you. It's how you react to it. What so many poor people have in common is a lack of personal responsibility.

The truth is, you don't get poor because of one poor choice. It's always a series of choices. And if you're born poor, it actually takes a lot of effort and a lot of poor choices to stay poor in a world so abundant in opportunity.

Saying the system is set up against you is the primary way that many poor people justify their lack of action. So, they might as well not even try, right? Bad things happen to everyone.

Okay. But the rich become rich because they learn from them and adjust course. It's always poor people you see making the same mistakes over and over and over again and still blaming somebody else for their misfortune.

Poor people can't see past their own pain. So, they're not persistent in their pursuit of escaping it. The only way out is through brutal ownership of your life and future.

Poor people stay poor because, well, poor people want rich people outcomes without doing what rich people are doing. Number six, poor people have no money saved. We know what you're thinking.

No, Lux, poor people don't have any money saved. Wow, how insightful. But put your pitchforks away.

All right, let's unpack this here because there are two extremely important parts to this. First of all, controlling money. Poor people have no control over how much they earn.

To be able to save more, you have to generate excess income or cut your expenses. Both require you to take control of your earnings and spending, and this will grant individual power to alter the future. This means you either work longer hours or increase the value of your work while developing the self-control required to not touch the additional capital.

Which leads us to the second part. Having no money saved makes you poorer over time. So, let's explain why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

So, let's say your car breaks down or you have any kind of emergency come up. Having money saved allows you to go into those funds and take care of it immediately so you can resume your life without any delays and at a fixed cost. If you lack the discipline to save money when Murphy's law hits, you'll have to borrow money at interest or sell some of the stuff that you have at a discount from what you paid for it or else your life will be turned upside down.

You'll be late for work. Your earning ability is immediately impacted. The poor get poorer here.

And let's say an opportunity presents itself to acquire an asset at a great price. It doesn't matter how phenomenal a deal is because if you've got no funds saved, you're missing out on all that value. So, the opportunity will pass you by.

The rich simply go into their savings and take advantage of that opportunity, making themselves even richer. Number seven, poor people don't understand how credit works. Credit is debt.

Rich people borrow money to buy things that make them more money. Poor people use credit to buy things that lose money over time or even cost them money. If the thing you're buying doesn't put more money in your pocket, never buy it on credit.

Here's something that poor people don't realize, okay? Debt is modern-day slavery. Someone else is entitled to the fruits of your labor until that debt is repaid.

The moment you get in debt, you're enslaving yourself until you buy back your freedom with interest. That's why they send you the credit card for free in the mail. That's why they allow you to pay it in installments.

The sooner they get you and the longer the payout period, the more money you'll make them. That's why they made student debt a thing. If you don't have enough money to buy it in cash, you cannot afford it.

You need to act your wage. Okay, as harsh as it might sound, just because you can afford the monthly payment doesn't mean you can afford the item. Most people are living on credit, buying the latest iPhone, driving a car much above their income level, or living in a nicer apartment than they should, and their price for these choices is the inability to ever thrive financially, feel like they're losing control over their lives, resulting in anxiety and long-term depression.

Pay attention to where your money flows. The rich get rich by spending their money on things that grow in value over time. The poor get poorer because they buy things that are worth less year overyear.

And speaking of spending, number eight, poor people spend money before they get it. Now, spending money the moment you get it is incredibly dumb, but the only thing dumber is spending money before you get it. A survey as recent as March 2025 on American workers earning $75,000 a year or less revealed that on average, individuals had mentally allocated 59% of their upcoming paycheck before receiving it.

Approximately 43% of their paycheck was spent within the first 3 days of receipt and only 40% had no overdue bills while 55% had between 1 and four outstanding bills monthly. And that is when your life starts spiraling down. You're guilty of this if life feels like you're constantly playing catch-up.

Believe it or not, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that the poorest people spend more in a month than they will earn that month. Phrases like give it to me now because hey, I got you when my fill-in- thelank comes. Be it check, salary, social security, disability, inheritance, etc.

These sayings are common, right? You're effectively robbing your future self. You're digging yourself deeper into that hole.

You'll work your butt off until the end of the month only to get there and realize the reward for your hard work, well, you've already spent it. Number nine, poor people postpone problems. It's usually health or technical problems.

Poor people think they're saving money by not doing a regular checkup only to deal with the aftermath of something that was cheap and preventable if treated sooner. It's expensive to be ignorant of your problems. You ignore the cavity for a couple of months and you end up having to pay for an implant later on.

The thing about postponing problems is they only grow bigger in time. So, while a problem might actually be manageable in the moment, it'll become an untameable dragon later on if you leave it alone. Number 10, poor people will spend money on anything but education.

Now, here's a quote that made our channel famous over 11 years ago. Your life is cheap because you think investing in yourself is expensive. As cheesy as it sounds, your mind is your most valuable asset.

First, you learn, then you remove the L. Nobody can take away what you know, and you can always convert your knowledge into money if the knowledge is valuable. So, anyone looking to better themselves knows to start with learning valuable skills.

everyone but the poor. Typically speaking, for some reason, almost all poor people look at financial education as a scam. Somebody else is getting rich off of you.

And sure, there might be isolated situations where that is the case. But the more you zoom out, the more you realize that personal growth has the biggest ROI of any investment. Once you learn how to make money and how money works, you get to reap those rewards for the rest of your life.

People with entrepreneurial talents can make money in any industry. We all vote with our money. Rich people buy time, poor people buy stuff, ambitious people buy skills, and lazy people buy distractions.

A book is like $15 and maybe 6 hours of your time if you're a slower reader, but you're getting everything someone has learned in their 40 years of living. A course or a seminar where you learn a skill is a couple of hundred bucks, but someone will show you how they do something that gets them paid. The rich use their money to buy expertise because it saves them time.

An executive coach costs between $50,000 and $500,000 per year. Yes, the rich pay exorbitant fees to other people just to teach them how to get there faster. They do it because they're getting millions in return.

Now, we know this because we paid them thousands and thousands of dollars and made millions off of it. But Alux, what do I do if I can't afford that level of advice and guidance? Well, lucky for you, we've made it our business to solve this exact problem because when we were starting out, it would have saved us years and years of trial and error.

What we do at Alux is we find and pay these highlevel advisers their exorbitant fees on your behalf and have them coach the people in our community for a fraction of the cost. You get access to all of it through the Alux app. It's not cheap, but we've literally paid millions of dollars to the smartest people in the world.

And you can get access to all of that for only $1. 99 a year. Hundreds of thousands of CEOs, founders, creators, business owners, and anyone with the entrepreneurial grit to make something of themselves are just proof of how valuable this app is.

So, go to alux. com/app right now and download it. After you've got it on your phone, since you're subscribed to our YouTube channel, you scan the QR code on screen right now and you'll get 25% off the yearly plan as a thanks from us to you.

The app is designed specifically to help rich people get richer and the poor to break out of the chain of poverty as long as they're willing to commit. Number 11, poor people hang out with other poor people. True aluxers know that you are the average of the five people you spend most of your time with.

If you're surrounded by four broke people, it's no wonder you're the fifth. We humans benchmark our efforts based on the people around us. Our motivation, our goals, and our efforts are dictated by what we see around us and what we consume.

This applies to friends, parents, and teachers. Poor people can't teach you how to be rich, okay? Because they don't know the fundamentals of building wealth.

Poor people are normalizing being poor for you and actually encouraging it because it allows them to feel better about themselves. But there's no nobility in poverty, okay? Even if you have the desire, they don't have the answers you need.

So stop taking advice from people who are just as poor as you are. The thing is, you're not asking the wrong questions, you're just asking the wrong person. Your squad has limiting beliefs.

People who say be realistic have no idea what your reality could become. Because they weren't able to mold their reality into the life they wanted, they think you can't do it either. So shut them off and for once follow in the footsteps of those who've already made it.

Number 12. Poor people often have more kids earlier in life. Kids require attention, time, and money.

Early in life is when you've got the most energy and drive to set yourself up for success. Although not impossible, having kids early in life puts you at a disadvantage because it restricts your ability to take risks and deploy time productively. When you look at the statistics, what you see is that a lot of poor people have kids early and out of wedlock.

Married people earn on average 26. 2% more than their single counterparts. Not to mention that you're splitting the burden of raising kids and having a common vision for the future.

Both extremely beneficial in the long term. Number 13. Poor people often want others to pull them out of poverty since in their mind other people are the reason for their misery.

So, it only makes sense that they should be responsible for their well-being, too. That's the kind of delusional thinking that keeps people poor. They're always waiting for their life to start, for someone to come and pick them up from poverty and give them the life they always wanted.

Life is not a Disney movie, okay? So, there's no version of the prince coming to save you from poverty. There's no castle, no night and shining armor.

Nobody's coming to save you because everyone is too busy trying to save themselves. The great news is is that nothing except for your own belief is stopping you from doing it yourself. Your life only changes after you change yourself, not the other way around.

Nothing is changing because you treat your goals like a wish list instead of a to-do list. Poor people expect outcomes without the proper inputs. So change your inputs, change your beliefs, and start believing in yourself for once.

Number 14. Poor people trade their future for the present. Delayed gratification means putting on work now so that tomorrow can be better than today.

It's the basis of all growth. Sacrificing the present with the knowledge that you'll enjoy a better tomorrow. But what do poor people typically do?

They say things like, "You only live once. I'mma treat myself. I can make the money back later.

" And guess what? Later never comes. Poor people are only seeing as far as the end of the day.

Best case, the end of the week. That's why they live paycheck to paycheck. Their actions need to have immediate results.

The middle class can live quarter to quarter. The rich, they live decade to decade. So, how does this impact the choices you make on a daily basis?

Well, here's one way to put it. Poor people cut the apple tree and sell the wood to buy apples because to them, now is what's important, and they'll figure the rest out later. And number 15, poor people hate the rich.

Rich people love the rich. Here's why this matters. You cannot become what you hate.

The poor justify it by labeling all rich people as evil because anything else would just shine a light on their own limitations. They say things like money is the root of all evil when it's actually the lack of money that makes people do evil stuff in the first place. The paradox is that the only rich people the poor put on a pedestal are in fact criminals.

Okay? see their obsessions with people like Pablo Escobar, Scarface, Don Corleone, and the likes. The truth is, making money is something you learn, and it's never been easier to build wealth legally than it is today.

If there's one thing to take away from this video, it's the following. Okay? As of 2025, there are 58 million millionaires on the planet right now.

58 million people are worth over a million dollars, according to UBS, Global Wealth Report. On average, one in 20 people in a developed country is a millionaire. And that number keeps growing.

These people are white, black, Asian, male, female, born in the mountains, born next to the sea, all walks of life with as many personal and religious beliefs as there are individuals. They serve as proof that they can be done despite the cards that you've been dealt at birth. Here at Alux, we'll roast you into success if we have to.

Okay? The smart ones will find this video inspiring and they'll use it as a pivot point for their future. So, we're passing this question on to you.

What do you think poor people do that the rich don't? What would you add to the list? And since you're one of the few who decided to watch this video until the very end, we've got a secret bonus reserved just for you.

The bonus is that poor people are often more religious than rich people. And look, okay, you can probably imagine why we didn't start the video with this one, but let's dig in. Poor people love the Bible because it's the only book they get for free.

Really, try getting any other book for free. Statistically speaking, rich people believe they're responsible for making heaven on earth for themselves, while poor people expect a mythical force to magically do it for them or reward them somehow for their humble life of misery after they die. So here's an exercise for you, okay?

No matter what religious beliefs you hold, what if when you die, you meet this almighty being and it asks you, "So how was heaven? What did you do in it? " You see, Alexer, we believe we've got the responsibility of making heaven here on earth, and this is the only opportunity to enjoy the beauty that this garden of Ian we call Earth, puts at our disposal.

In order to do that, you have to save money first. Since you're a true Aluxer watching our videos until the very end, we want to help you get there faster. So, here it is.

All right. If you've got the Alux app on your phone, scan this QR code and you'll get 50% off the yearly plan. It's a secret QR code that we saved just for those who deserve it most.

That $100 discount is our way of saying thank you. Let us help you get there in half the time it would have taken you otherwise. If you made it to the very end of the video, please write the word rich in the comments.

It'll confuse everyone else, but we'll know how many of you actually made it here. Thanks for being a true Aler. We'll see you back here next time.

Until then, take care, my friend.