Jeffrey Strain at TheStreet.com pretty much sums up the reason most people don’t have wealth: it’s not because we don’t make enough money; it’s because we don’t treat money on a day-to-day basis very well. Check out the ten poor habits he’s narrowed down as our reasons for low wealth:

1. You Care What Your Neighbors Think: If you’re competing against them and their material possessions, you’re wasting your hard-earned money on toys to impress them instead of building your wealth.

2. You Aren’t Patient: Until the era of credit cards, it was difficult to spend more than you had. That is not the case today. If you have credit card debt because you couldn’t wait until you had enough money to purchase something in cash, you are making others wealthy while keeping yourself in debt.

3. You Have Bad Habits: Whether it’s smoking, drinking, gambling or some other bad habit, the habit is using up a lot of money that could go toward building wealth. Most people don’t realize that the cost of their bad habits extends far beyond the immediate cost. Take smoking, for example: It costs a lot more than the pack of cigarettes purchased. It also negatively affects your wealth in the form of higher insurance rates and decreased value of your home.

(for descriptions of the following, check out his complete article)

4. You Have No Goals
5. You Haven’t Prepared
6. You Try to Make a Quick Buck
7. You Rely on Others to Take Care of Your Money
8. You Invest in Things You Don’t Understand
9. You’re Financially Afraid
10. You Ignore Your Finances

A lot of people love satelite TV, and I can understand why. What I can’t understand, though, is justifying such an expense every month.

I was looking at a row of houses built by Habitat for Humanity and started wondering. I’m not here to make judgment calls about these people’s habits, but I plugged in some numbers you and your friends might want to think twice about.

If you paid an additional $50 toward your mortgage every month, a thirty year mortgage could be paid off in 24 years! (I assumed a 7% interest rate, which is higher than you want for your own home.) 24 years!

Think about what a few extra bucks each month could do to any loan. Interest is a powerful thing, especially when it works to your advantage. Know of any other powerful examples?

(NOTE that some lenders don’t allow prepayments without penalty, so read the fine lines of the contracts you have signed.)

According to The Motley Fool (fool.com) now is historically the best time to invest in the stock market. In their article “Now Is the Best Time of the Year to Invest” they bring up some historical data about the average return of the market during the year.

Average return, November to April: 6.52%.
Average return, May to October: 0.98%.

Yowza.

Surprised?
That’s one of the lesser-reported stock market stats I’ve ever seen.

Of course, you’ve probably heard the old Wall Street adage to “sell in May and go away.” So, there’s some conventional wisdom that the summer has historically poor returns. Many are also aware that October (mother of a pair of Black Mondays, and more than a few other Black Days of the Week) is a scary month.

November, on the other hand, has clearly been a very good month for market returns, perhaps juiced by the weak three months that typically precede it. For 11 of the past 12 Novembers, the market has had positive returns.

There is of course a tendency for many of the articles at the Fool to end in promoting one of their investment advisory groups, and this article is no different. It’s a good read, just skip the last paragraph.

Experts are saying that the dollar is only going to get weaker.

My husband, a German, threatened to move back to Germany when Bush was elected. Maybe we should have! Anyone else been watching the euro grow against the dollar? We were in Germany exactly one year ago when the exchange was $1.20 per euro. Now it’s $1.45.

Just think if we had all decided to work in Europe then transferred our dollars to the United States. Minus taxes, think of the effortless gain you’d create.

Maybe we should have moved to Germany. Maybe it’s not too late. Check out what these experts are saying on currencytrading.net

It turns out your people-pleasing work ethic may not get you ahead. You’re not taking any risks to make the company—and you—any better. Kate White, author of Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead but Gutsy Girls Do is already teaching me a few useful strategies… and I just started the book.

This subsection really stood out in my mind:

Never Appear at the Mercy of Your Time

Because it’s important to a good girl to be perceived as a hard worker, she never minds (in fact she likes it) if someone catches her looking a little frantic: riffling through papers, dashing down the hall with her hair flying, lugging home a huge pile of work on Friday afternoon. Begin in overdrive, she believes, shows everyone that she not only has lots to do but is getting it done.

Though it’s import to be perceived as energetic, acting frazzled or short on time actually creates the impression that you aren’t under control, and that calamity is waiting just around the corner to ambush you. It makes bosses reluctant to turn more responsibility over to you and it makes co-workers and subordinates as anxious as passengers on a bumpy 747.

Anyone else seen him/herself doing this same thing in the past?