I remember my dad saying that poverty was in many cases the inability of people to postpone gratification...
I was having a discussion this AM with my sister about the exact same thing.
A friend of our teens, whose parent's are lower income, and will not be able to help him with college costs, bought himself a big screen LCD TV with the money he had made from his job.
We told our teens that purchases like that would lead to a "poverty mentality."
Now when he needs money for college, he'll think he's too poor to go, or will have to take on student loans, when in fact, if he had saved the money and not bought the TV he would have had almost enough for a year's tuition at a state college.
He is right. If you can afford payments, you can afford to save that much each month.
quote "I remember my dad saying that poverty was in many cases the inability of people to postpone gratification..."
Your dad was a very smart man.
That's one of the key lessons in becoming rich.
Wealth isn't determined by how much you make, it's how much you save of what you make that matters. This can only be accomplished by postponing gratification.
The man who earns 50K a year and saves 20K .... is far richer than the man who earns 100K a year and spends 120K.... until a person understands that... they will never be wealthy or happy.
The ability to postpone gratification is a key element of IQ test design for very young children. Apperently it is very predictive of later-life outcomes.