Monetary Ritalin for the "Hyper" Spender

March 17, 2011 - PRLog -- So we are gleaning from the book, Stop Acting Rich and Start Living Like a Real Millionaire, written by Dr. Thomas J. Stanley and published in 2009. We pick up on Page 28 where Dr. Stanley is comparing the tax burden of the income affluence versus the balance sheet affluence.  

“IA’s pay nearly six times more in tax than the BA’s. IA’s pay the equivalent of about 10 percent of their wealth each year in tax. BA’s pay less than 2 percent. The large tax burden associated with being an IA is reflected in their less than stellar wealth index. This situation will worsen given federal and state tax increases that high income earners now face. If you or I are determined to hyper-spend like most IA’s, a high income is required to buy prestige consumer goods. So is paying high income taxes to say nothing of sales tax on the goods purchased.”

So as we look at this particular quote here in what we’re reading and this is something that I’ve always said is that some people in life just always go through life complaining about taxes. Usually, the people that had the biggest issue with it, the biggest complaint about it, are the ones whose income is high and who are spending most of what they make, or they’re saving and hoarding for themselves. We’ve talked about this in past The Entrusted Steward issues, and it’s critical to touch on this topic again. One of the things that I learned when I was going through Kingdom Advisors was the importance of deciding how much is enough, and once you reach that point to go ahead and give away everything that you make and earn above that.  

The wonderful thing about our tax code is that the government allows us to deduct up to 50 percent of our income that we give to public charities, and by doing that we can greatly reduce our taxable income regardless of how much we’re earning, and I think that’s one of the things that BA’s are able to do because they’re not interested in buying the expensive car. They’re not interested in buying the expensive home. They’re not interested in buying the expensive watches and all of these things that the people that are acting rich are trying to do. So they have money to give away. They have money to put into tax deductible accounts or investments, and they can lower their tax burden which I have seen time and time again when working with all different types of clients as well and can confirm Dr. Stanley’s research.  
Then on Page 30, Dr. Stanley goes back in and he says, “As I who study and analyze the rich can fall into the symbol trap, is it any wonder that many others have as well, though sadly much more expensively? In a way, it’s not your fault: the messages bombard you every day.  They are nearly impossible to escape. It takes a strong will to beat back the messaging. It is said that the first step in solving a problem is to identify and name it. Our problem, then, is acting rich.”  

It’s very difficult to argue with any of the research that Dr. Stanley is laying out here for us to consume into our own lives. But certainly one of the things that we can do is to renew our minds in things that are good things. One of the things that always shocks my relatives is that I rarely know about the latest murder, kidnap, rape, or natural disaster, that they so frequently want to talk about every time we go on vacation together.  

And they constantly harass me. They say “I can’t believe you haven’t heard that so and so was kidnapped. She used to be a model and she was five years old when she was kidnapped. You haven’t heard about that?” Or they’ll say “you haven’t heard about the tsunami over in so and so?” One of the things we can do is to not watch TV and not listen to the radio which is something that I have not done much the past decade. I do listen to music in my car. I do read the internet every day. I do read financial articles daily. I read multiple financial newsletters that I subscribe to and the one thing that I do completely indulge myself in is reading about Georgia Tech football.

But certainly something that all of us can do is take a break from the media, and I know even our church will have what the pastor calls a “media fast” where you drop something that you do that involves the media for a week. It’s very hard for us to avoid these messages, and we must recognize our weakness and the frailty of our minds. We as humans have weak minds. But to God’s glory, He has given Christians a sound mind! Because God knows our weaknesses He has said, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

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