Think Like A Rich Person:

Think Like A Rich Person: Four Habits Of Mind To Build Wealth

 

If you look at the top of the list of the world's wealthiest people, one of the striking things is that the source of their money can be summed up in one word. Bill Gates: Microsoft MSFT +0.09%. Carlos Slim: telecom. Amancio Ortega: retail

In short, they were concentrated in one area.
 It wasn't just luck that produced those positions: They knew how to double down when they recognized a winning idea. "It's the ability to see the thing that is working for you, and concentrate it and feed the flame,"  said Marc Compton U.S. Trust, .
That is one of the characteristics of the wealthy that emerges from US Trust's survey of 680 people with more than $3 million in investable assets.
Along with having the ability to focus, they place a higher value on physical assets and are more willing to take credit risk -- and risk in general. Taken together, the habits seem to suggest an ability to view their finances and their lives as a balance sheet so that they can double down on the winners and leverage when they need to.
If you don't have that ability to focus, can you develop it? Can you learn to take more risk and think of the ways all your assets could work for you? My guess is that you probably can.
"If we thought more about our balance sheet, and managed our lives, and did that in strategic way, our odds for the financial success would better," said Compton.

The survey by the private bank, which has $378 billion in AUM, contained lots of interesting -- and mostly reassuring -- nuggets, if you look at the wealthy as a bellwether for the economy. The survey respondents were feeling more confident, less worried about taxes and more ready to invest. Though only 48% of the wealthy said they considered themselves wealthy, that was up from 40% in 2012. And the impact of taxes has fallen away. Among business owners, this year, 7% said they would consider moving to a lower-tax state, down from 15% last year. And this year 13% said they were considering limiting the number of employees in response to taxes, down from 26% last year.
I wrote about the rise of private equity last week: Fully 75% of Millennials in the survey said they owned or were interested in owning private equity; 65% of GenXers said the same.
But the more compelling ideas in the survey are about reading between the lines. What do the wealthy do differently that enables them to build wealth?