According to my Rich Habits study, one of the reasons the wealthy accumulated so much wealth was due to the fact that they worked more hours than those who were not rich. Here’s some of the data:
- 44% of the wealthy worked 11 hours more each week than the non-rich.
- 86% of the wealthy who had full time jobs, worked 50 hours or more each week, whereas 57% of the non-rich who had full-time jobs worked less than 50 hours each week.
- 88% of the wealthy took fewer sick days than the non-rich.
- 79% of the wealthy, on top of their robust work hours, networked 5 or more hours each month. 55% of this networking was done during their lunch hour.
- 65% of the wealthy were working so many hours, in part, because they had 3 sources of income to manage.
- 45% had 4 sources of income. Only 6% of the non-rich had more than one source of income.
- 67% of the wealthy watched less than an hour of T.V. a day, whereas 77% of the non-rich watched more than an hour of T.V. a day.
- 63% of the wealthy spent less than an hour a day on the Internet whereas 74% of the non-rich spent more than an hour a day on the Internet.
So, the rich are just harder working than everyone else?
Yes.
But not necessarily because they have a better work ethic. They just like what they do and, as a result, they devote more hours doing what they like to do.
I initially thought this disparity in work hours, between the rich and the non-rich, was in large part due to the fact that 91% of the wealthy in my study were decision makers, which carries with it more responsibility and, thus, more work hours. But that’s not the case.
According to the Census Bureau, the average wealthy household (defined by the IRS as the top 20% of income earners in the U.S.) worked five times as many hours as the average poor household. The cause of this, according to Census data, is due to:
- The high rate of single parent households among the poor – The poverty rate in single parent households is triple the rate of two parent households – 42% vs. 13%.
- Fewer workers in the household – 95% of poor households have only one worker. 75% of the wealthy households have two or more workers.
- Unemployment – 60% of poor households have no one working at all.
The genesis of much of the poverty in our country has nothing to do with policy or the “evil” 1%.
It has everything to do with the broken family unit, which is responsible for most poverty.
We don’t have a wealth gap in this country, we have a parent gap. We don’t have income inequality, we have parent inequality.
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Tom Corley is an accountant, financial planner, public speaker, and author of the books “Effort-Less Wealth: Smart Money Habits At Every Stage of Your Life” and “RichKids: How to Raise Our Children to Be Happy and Successful in Life“. Corley’s work has appeared on CNN, USA Today, The Huffington Post, SUCCESS Magazine, and many other media outlets and podcasts in the U.S. and 27 other countries. Tom is a frequent contributor to Business Insider and CNBC.
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