Spring Cleaning for the Brain: When Spending $5,000 is better than $1.89

Some folks say the best way to have money is to not spend it!  Truth.
Poor folks blow money on all kinds of stuff, and like Chuck Palahniuk's Tyler Durden observed, "the things you own end up owning you". Go visit and get a good book  http://chuckpalahniuk.net/books
But, gosh, don't the rich blow all kinds of money too?  I mean just WHO is buying all that high-end loot advertised in GQ, Forbes Life, and The Kiplinger Report?
And who is manipulating the price of oil and trading carbon credits and junk? That can't be cheap and has to be the work of rich folk.

If we may ever so humbly opine:

Rich or Poor is not a statement of one's financial position or check book balance or income.

Rich or Poor is a description of a state of mind: Rich and Poor folks live differently, no matter how much money they have.  Listen to Dave Ramsey http://www.daveramsey.com/home/ and he will tell us that "if we want to be rich, we have to do rich people stuff".

We do want to be rich!  SO just what is this "rich people stuff" and how do we DO it?

We STUDY!!  AND READ!!  AND TURN OFF THE TELEVISION!! (Turning off the television is rich people stuff!  Some studies state that the average adult spends an additional $200 per year for every HOUR of television they watch on a weekly average.  If this is true or not, I don't know, but I don't like TV and this makes sense to me. Watching TV, every few minutes, someone is urging us to BUY BUY BUY.  I can't imagine soaking a chicken breast in Teriyaki Sauce a couple hours a day and have it come out not tasting just a little bit like Teriyaki Sauce. Brains are probably the same.)

SO rich folks don't watch much television, but what about their SPENDING!  How can we as "sales people" be urging folks to not spend money?? 

Rich folks save money, refusing to buy junk.  Rich folks spend money on things that will make them more money (not lottery tickets). 

Some observations:

Rich folks will pack their lunch and coffee everyday for work, and eat the same-old same old for weeks.  Poor folks will spend $4.79 on lunch and coffee, everyday, and "buy themselves a treat" that they "deserve".  The rich has an extra $1,000 or so a year, just on that one difference.

Poor folks balk at the thought of spending $499 on a college course. They "can't afford it".  Yet over the length of the class they did not take, they will spend $1.89 a day for a bottle of soda.... You see where that is going.

Rich folks skip the soda, buy the class, and become more valuable at work, and get a raise.

Can spending $5,000 on a piece of equipment be a better deal than a $1.89 bottle of soda?  HELL YES!  Which one is rich people stuff, buying the capital equipment or the soda?  It depends, but, my guess is, successful business owners (the rich folks) are spending a lot less money on soda, as a percentage of revenues, than they are on the right equipment and service.