Can $50,000 per Year Be Considered Poor?
How would you feel if you woke up one day making $50,000 per year?
Would you be excited? Would it deflate you?
Would making $50,000 per year make you feel richer or poorer?
Someone had asked me the other day whether $50,000 could be considered poor. My answer: ABSOLUTELY. Here’s why:
Poverty is a Mindset
You see, poverty, like wealth, is nothing more than a mindset. Poverty happens when there isn’t enough, or when there is something lacking in your life. In addition to finances, you can also be poor in health, in spirit or will, and even in love and kindness.
What may even be more surprising is people can have a wealth mindset even though they don’t have money. Ever see poor people that are perfectly content? Have you ever met someone who doesn’t have much but they have a serious hustle to them?
They have a wealth mindset, even though they may not have money.
Wealth and Poverty Are Relative
The US Federal Poverty Line is $11,880 per year for an individual. If you think that’s poor, this will really shock you: the International Poverty Line is just $1.90 per day, amounting to a meager $693 per year.
As you can see, poverty sits on a sliding scale. A $11,800 salary could be a fortune for someone in another country, while $50,000 could be a tragedy for someone who normally hits the six-figure range. Chris Rock once joked (explicitly, of course) that if Bill Gates woke up one day with Oprah’s money, he’d jump out a window!
The key is, don’t compare yourself to others. Don’t worry about what everyone else has. Doing so causes us to become completely distracted, take us off our own path, and put us right on the path to poverty.
The D-Word
Debt is the biggest offender for personal poverty here in the US. Debt can make you poor regardless of how much money you make. If you make $50,000 per year, that’s close to $1,000 per week. That’s a pretty good living in most households!
However, when you take out taxes, credit card bills, the car note, the mortgage, and medical bills, how much are you left with at the end of the day? That’s why there are impoverished $50,000 salary earners out there.
How to Avoid Poverty
With so many ways to fall into the snare of poverty, there have to be ways to avoid it, right? In fact, I’ve identified 5 ways you can steer clear of this huge barrier to your success:
Change your mindset. Instead of a poverty mindset, adopt a wealth mindset. You have the ability to attain wealth, and you must trust in that fact. Also, take ownership of your life. Don’t play the victim; be the victor!
Make wise choices about what you do, who you hang out with, and how you react. If you hang out with 5 broke people, you’ll become the 6th! And treat every decision and action carefully, because each bad decision, although a learning experience, could potentially set you further back on your path to success.
Spend less than you earn, and save/invest the difference. Start with paying of debt and building a savings nest egg. Then work your way up to retirement accounts like 401(k)s or IRAs. It’s only after you’ve been consistently investing in your future self that you should look into shorter term investments like Real Estate, Mutual Funds, Stocks, Bonds, etc.
Do what others don’t normally do. As I stated above, don’t look at what everyone else has! Most people don’t put effort in financially bettering themselves. Instead, be the one who does!
Identify wealth opportunities and be prepared to take advantage of them. Success happens at the intersection of Preparation and Opportunity, so you must first see the opportunities that are all around us, and have already put in the work to be prepared to pounce before it is too late.
It can be challenging to see these wealth opportunities when you’re not used to looking for them, so be very observant of your surroundings and interactions with others. Surprisingly enough, they will begin to quickly reveal themselves with enough proper training.
