So, have you ever looked around and felt like everyone else is just ahead of you in life? And like no matter what you're doing, it seems like everyone has more money, more success, and just more of everything.

If so, you are not alone. This is a pretty common feeling, and in today's video, I want to break down seven reasons why you might feel behind financially, and we'll actually uncover if there's any truth to these at all.

Number one: you judge a book by its cover. So, appearances on the surface usually aren't an accurate depiction of somebody's wealth. And let me give you an example with cars.

There's always a big misconception that what you drive is reflective of how much your net worth is or how much money you might be making.

Pretend you have $600 a month to spend on transportation. Well, you are a reasonable and modest person. Let's say you go out and finance a used 2021 Toyota Corolla hatchback that has a price of $25,000.

Your car payment is about $424 a month, and after everything is included in terms of gas, insurance, et cetera, you're probably close to a $600 a month car payment for that used car.

Your goal is to pay it off in 5 years, and then you just own the car outright and therefore you don't have to make any more payments.

But then you have a friend, let's just call him Eric, and you're both at the work water cooler one day comparing finances, as many good coworkers do, and you find out that he makes the same exact yearly salary that you do.

Eric shares with you that, man, his car payment is killing him, and he confides in you that it's actually $459 a month for his car.

You look at him strangely because, well, something doesn't really add up. You're paying close to what he pays, and you're driving a Corolla.

But Eric over there is whipping around in a 2025 BMW i4, not to mention this really confuses you because you guys make the same amount of money.

So you figure he must be lying. A 2025 BMW i4 retails for at least $53,000 when you Google it, and there's no way he has a car payment that's remotely close to yours.

Now, that's where you would be wrong, because Eric is indeed telling you the truth. What he's not telling you, though, is that he's leasing the car and he got a lease special.

His lease only lasts 3 years, so he has to give up the car after that. And not only that, he had to put up $5,389 due at signing that he didn't tell you about when he was complaining about his car payment.

His insurance and gas are both higher as well, and that's not something he shares with you either.

Now, on the surface, both of you guys are spending roughly the same amount of money on a monthly payment.

But if we dig beneath the surface a little bit, we can clearly see that Eric might be living beyond his means, all for appearances.

Judging a book by its cover is one of the ways that you can torture your mind because it easily can become a thing where you start to feel inadequate or insecure about your own finances.

What you really want to focus on is just focusing on what you can do and what you can control and trying to put blinders everywhere else.

Number two, spending habits are invisible. So let's pretend you are someone who loves to invest money, spend on experiences like going to the Taylor Swift concert or perhaps you like to ride a camel in the desert.

But then you might have a friend, let's call her Chloe, and she likes to spend money on the car, the bag, jewelry to the nines, and she gets her hair done every single month.

However, Chloe doesn't invest any of her money, and when it comes to experiences, she'd much rather just Netflix and chill. So, who's actually living a richer and fuller life?

I would like to argue that you are, but maybe Chloe thinks that she is. While you might not have the possessions Chloe has, you have an investment account that is growing, your financial peace of mind is improving daily, and you have lived a lot of different life experiences.

The truth is that spending habits can be visible depending on what your preferences are for spending money.

If you like to spend on material things, perhaps you like Back to the Future posters like me, it's going to be noticeable.

Now, if you like building your wealth in the shadows, well, it's just not going to be as visible. So, you really can't compare yourself to someone who might be of the former, and that actually brings me to my next point, number three.

People that have money won't actually show it off on social media.

One problem I noticed that we as humans have is that we fall prey to easily looking to social media for role models or inspiration on how we should act, what to wear, or what to buy.

But in my opinion, true wealth is pretty silent and actually not visible at all.

So, there was one time I went to go and meet my friend's dad for a lunch, and he's worth over nine figures, and guess what he wore?

He wore shorts and a simple polo shirt. Honestly, from the outside, he probably looked like your average Joe dad.

He wasn't driving a fancy car, he wasn't wearing a flashy watch, and nobody would certainly know that he was rich.

And often times, the wealthiest people that I meet in my own life generally are just the most down-to-earth and humble type of people, and they honestly don't try to be too flashy.

Another story I want to tell you guys is that I grew up with a lot of really wealthy kids.

Now, my family, we were well off, yes, but we weren't super wealthy. And one of the wealthier girls that I knew would always be traveling and she would share photos of her family trips on social media.

But what I noticed about it was that she would make it look very normal.

Like, she would only showcase normal places that everyone had access to. For example, if she went to Rome, she might take a picture of the Colosseum or the Trevi Fountain, but she never was really showing you where she was staying or how she even got there.

But at some point in my life, I got pretty nosy, so I asked some of her friends, who are also my friends, like, how come she never just like showcases where she stays or perhaps how she gets to the destinations that she gets to?

Well, it turns out she was flying private everywhere, staying at really nice villas and five-star resorts. And what I actually realized at that point was that wealthy people, they want to keep their wealth a secret because that way it's more anonymous, it's more private, and that also just means they're going to be more secure.

And a huge pitfall of society is that we see people with flashy cars or flashy bags on social media and just assume that those are the people that have money.

But studies suggest that a significant portion of luxury goods are actually purchased using credit cards.

This is true particularly among younger demographics, and according to a Bain & Company report, luxury sales are actually being driven by younger generations like Gen Z and Millennials.

So, just like earlier, you don't see what other people's financial situations look like.

It's rather opaque, so I just don't want you to believe everything that you see on social media. Number four, a big problem today is that we are always trying to compare ourselves upwards in society.

So what I've noticed is that people don't like to compare themselves to someone less fortunate than they are.

It's not aspirational to compare yourself to someone that doesn't have that much. Comparison is truly the thief of joy. But if you ever compared yourself to those that have less than you, or even yet, those that don't even have a reliable source of food, water, or shelter every day, that will give you the perspective that the life you live is probably 10 times more comfortable and could be way worse if you were just born in a different country or perhaps a different set of circumstances.

Part of that is just the hand that you're dealt. You can't choose where and who you are born to; you can only make the best of the situation that you have.

Now, one of the ways that in our society we like to compare ourselves upwards is often with job title and career path comparisons.

This type of comparison can be misleading because job titles don't always reflect true value, skills, or progress.

For example, being a VP at one company can have the same responsibilities of a senior manager at another.

Titles vary so much by company, industry, or even what area of the country you live in. So I don't think they are reliable at all. Now, if you work At a startup, you should know that title inflation is a real thing.

Startups need to keep their employees around, and sometimes giving someone an arbitrary title to make them feel better is basically a tactic that founders and CEOs will use to make people kind of stick around.

Instead of comparing yourself to your friends who have different titles, try to think about your skills.

Are you developing your skills still? Are you happy at work? Are you satisfied with the work that you are doing and the value you are creating?

These are going to be much more reliable markers of true career progress. Lastly, I think instead of focusing on other people's titles, you should think about whether you are growing as a person.

Are you gaining more skills? Are you moving closer to your own goals, or are you feeling stagnant?

If that is you and you feel stagnant, then you might have to do something about it.

That is going to be a much better use of your time and also more fulfilling than just comparing yourself to someone who has a much higher title.

Number five: expecting too much too soon. So another reason why it may feel like everyone seems to have more money than you is that we see stories highlighted all the time online of people turning small amounts of money into large amounts of money.

For example, on Reddit's Wall Street Bets, if you read this subreddit for fun, you will inevitably see some gains that make you question if you should still continue working at your job.

It can be really discouraging when someone makes $100,000 in one trade in just a few days when you work the entire year and you don't even make that.

Or perhaps when a trader turns $80,000 to $1.12 million in just a week. The thing is, though, is that you are literally only seeing the wins on this subreddit, and rarely are people posting losses.

Now, if they are posting losses, they are so bad that if that happened to me, I think I would be at least in a state of shock for at least a year.

Like, for example, this lurker who lost their entire life savings.

And if you read the post, it is actually quite sad. He says, quote, "I would do anything to go back to where I was before the big sell-off on Friday, and yes, it was SPY calls that killed me." Now, if that were me, I would probably need 5 to 10 years to recover from that, not just a year.

But this sort of stuff happens all the time; it's just not really publicized.

Sure, maybe one person out of 10 million actually does something crazy like, you know, when they turn 80k into 1.12 million, but that's only because it worked out.

For 99.9% of people, there's no such thing as a quick buck, and often times making money does take a lot of sacrifice and diligence when it comes to sticking to something day in and day out.

Now, on the topic of sacrifice, number six: the grass is greener syndrome.

You may assume that someone who has money did not work for it. It's easy to look at others and assume that they're better off, but this is a classic case of "the grass is always greener." The truth is is that you don't really know what sacrifices or struggles they're facing behind the scenes.

They could have worked on an oil rig for 10 straight years, never seen their family, and put themselves at risk for different types of cancer in order to make a really good salary.

Or you might see an investment banker who's making a lot of money, but then you don't realize that they're actually working extremely long hours, up to 100 hours a week, early on in their careers.

They also need to be constantly available. They're often highly stressed just so that they can make a good salary when they're younger.

So when you do finally see someone at the age of 30 who has quote, made it, perhaps they had to give up a lot of their life for it, and these are the sacrifices you may not want to make.

If you recognize this, in particular, it will help you stop comparing your achievements to theirs because maybe their challenges were bigger than yours.

Finally, number seven: the silent cost of family wealth.

Another factor to consider is that some people appear wealthy because they have family financial support or generational wealth. This doesn't mean that they didn't work hard, but they may have had a huge head start that makes their financial journey look a lot easier.

For example, someone might afford a luxury apartment or frequent vacations not because of their job, but because they receive regular financial support from their family, or maybe they just inherited investments or a property that gives them a cushion that many other people don't have.

You never know what's on that other side. They may have more emotional baggage that comes with this.

You just don't know. The key takeaway here is that family wealth and generational support can create an illusion of financial success that's not solely based on their own achievements.

It's not something you can control or compare yourself to, so I think just focusing on building your own path can help you find more satisfaction and motivation with your life.

So spend time on what makes you happy, what brings you ultimate fulfillment, and remember to focus only on the things that you can control and try to just put up some blinders up for society and everyone else, and I think you're going to be a lot better off.

Thanks for watching this video. If you want to watch my next video, it's going to be right here and I will see you either in that video or a future one on my channel.

You’re Not Behind: Why Everyone SEEMS To Have More Money Than You

Former Financial Advisor (Series 7, 66), Previously worked in Gaming. Explainers, Personal Finance, Reviews & More.

My friends would ask me finance questions all the time, so I made this channel so I could send them videos answering those questions. I love explaining things simply, and making it fun and easy. This channel is great for beginners and intermediates who are looking to build wealth, learn how to keep their wealth, and get better with personal finance, budgeting, and investing. I also focus a lot of self improvement and productivity, so if you're into that - I hope you stick around!

Business inquiries - please email:
lexie@1stcollab.com
carina@1stcollab.com


You’re Not Behind: Why Everyone SEEMS To Have More Money Than You

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