19 Reasons You're Not a Millionaire (Yet) - Everybody Loves Your Money

Most likely a confluence of factors are keeping you from becoming wealthy, rather than any single cause. Here are 19 reasons you’re not a millionaire (yet). Take a good look at how many of them might apply to your situation.

You Spend More Than You Make

If you fail to do this one simple thing, it doesn’t matter how much money you make — you’ll always find that you don’t have enough money to make ends meet. Of course, living within your means isn’t enough on its own to make you a millionaire. You have to take it a step further and actively save and invest a portion of all the money that you make.

You Replace Things Too Soon

If you’re the type of person who is constantly replacing products that still have a useful life in order to buy the latest and greatest gadgets, chances are that you’ll have a difficult time building the type of wealth that you want. People who are able to afford the newest and shiniest things by upgrading every year are those who have already built their wealth, not those that are currently trying to.

Your House Is Too Big

Some people assume that purchasing a big house is a good investment. While this can be the case, purchasing more house than you can afford is a good way to make sure that you’re unable to create real wealth. It’s not just that you have bigger mortgage payments. Your expenses also get bigger: property taxes, insurance premiums, furnishings, and maintenance.

You Keep Buying New Cars

Many people fail to realize that cars are depreciating assets — and as such they’re not to be confused with investments. If your career requires you to have a new looking car, consider leasing a vehicle. Otherwise, try not to worry about what your car looks like so you can be content with it longer.

You Have Kids

They may be loveable but children are very expensive — especially if you have them when you are young and have a limited income. It’s nearly impossible to put money aside when you’re young with children — all of your extra cash ends up going toward the children’s care instead of being invested for wealth creation.

You’re Divorced

Just as getting married can be a wonderful way to help build wealth, getting a divorce usually has the exact opposite effect. That’s not to say that you should stay in a marriage solely for financial reasons, but it’s important to know that divorce is usually a giant wealth destroyer — and if you’re already divorced, it can be one of the more significant reasons you’re not a millionaire.

19 reasons youre not a millionaire yet

You Have Bad Habits

Classic bad habits are smoking, gambling and drinking alcohol, but a bad habit could be anything that costs money you don’t need to be spending — like that daily cup of coffee or the three sodas that you drink each day. It doesn’t even have to be buying things. Being lazy and sitting in front of the TV five hours a day instead of working on making yourself better is also a bad habit that hurts wealth creation.

You Haven’t Set Financial Goals

You can’t get to where you want to go if you don’t know where you’re going. By taking the time to lay out exactly where you want your finances to go, and putting in the steps necessary to make it possible to reach those goals, you put yourself in a position where you can actually achieve them.

You Don’t Pay Yourself First

One of the most fundamental steps that you can take to ensure that you put away money for yourself is to pay yourself before you pay anybody else. The simplest way to do this is to set up a 401(k) plan with your employer, since that takes the money out of your paycheck before it can go to you.

You Ignore Your Finances

There are a lot of people who wish that their finances would simply take care of themselves, but taking on that type of attitude is a sure way to have your finances become a mess. Leaving them alone and hoping that they somehow take care of themselves instead of actively monitoring them and making needed changes as issues arise is unrealistic. You also don’t spend time looking for additional revenue or you aren’t focusing on developing multiple streams of income.

You’re Too Risk Averse

In order to grow your money; you are going to have to take some risk. If you don’t, you end up losing money to inflation. This doesn’t mean that you want to go out and take on speculative investments, but you have to take a long-term view and take calculated risks in order to grow your money.

You Pay High Fees on Your Investments

There is nothing wrong with getting the opinions of others to help you lay out a plan to build your wealth, but it’s important to be an active participant in this planning. Paying full price for financial advice can cut into some of the upside you would otherwise enjoy. Giving full control of your finances to somebody else creates a situation where you’re no longer in control of your financial future, and the only one who you can truly trust to be looking out for your best financial interests is yourself.

You Invest in Things That You Don’t Fully Understand

You can lose a lot of money quickly by investing in things that you don’t fully understand — then you’re not able to determine the amount of risk you’re taking. Take the time to learn how things work before you put money into them and you stand a better chance of becoming a millionaire.

You Lack Diversification

While not having diversified investments may not seem like a big deal when the few investments you have are riding high, once they take a tumble you might feel differently. Just like you want to have more than one egg in your basket, you want to make sure that you diversify to limit the risks of wiping out all your wealth when one investment goes bad.

You Have Only One Source of Income

If you derive your income from a number of different sources rather than a single one, you’re in a position to be able to better protect your wealth if you should lose a job. Diversifying will save you from draining the wealth that you have amassed up to that point.

You Fail To Take Care Of Your Health

Getting sick can drain your finances and push you into bankruptcy if you’re not careful While you may not be able to control all aspects of your health, there are certainly steps that you can take to make sure that you’re as healthy as you can possibly be. Eating right, getting exercise, taking preventative measures, getting annual check-ups and taking care of medical problems before they become truly serious all put you in a position to live a healthier life.

You Haven’t Prepared for Emergencies

Having the proper insurance for when things do go wrong is an important aspect of making sure that you don’t squander the wealth that you have already created. Understanding the risk that things could go wrong and taking the appropriate actions to prepare for them is essential if you don’t want to suddenly lose all your wealth to a disaster.

You Don’t Invest In Yourself

If you don’t think that it’s necessary to constantly and consistently improve yourself, you’re going to have a difficult time becoming a millionaire. With technology constantly changing, taking the classes and doing the research necessary to stay relevant in your field.

You Don’t Enjoy What You Do

It’s certainly possible to make money doing a job that you don’t enjoy, but it’s much more difficult to build wealth this way. To put in the time to move ahead to get promotions and to creatively think in ways to make you a bigger asset to your employer, you have to like what you’re doing.

Reasons You’re Not a Millionaire

Even if you have a high-paying job, if you spend more than you make that could keep you from being able to save and invest. Most likely there are several reasons you’re not a millionaire. Fortunately, it’s never too late to start trying to get there.

Jackie Cohen

Jackie Cohen is an award winning financial journalist turned turned financial advisor obsessed with climate change risk, data and business. Jackie holds a B.A. Degree from Macalester College and an M.A. in English from Claremont Graduate University.