Millionaire manners to teach your kids

Financial planner Tom Corley wondered why some of his clients failed even though it seemed on paper as if they were doing everything right. While counseling one such client, he asked, ‘Well, what do you do after work?’ to change the subject. As the client opened up about his bad habits, something clicked for Corley.

“Our daily habits are the cause of our wealth or poverty. That shocked me. I thought your circumstances in life dictated whether you were going to be rich or poor,” he says.

Corley spent five years interviewing more than 350 people whom he categorized as ‘rich’ or ‘poor’ to find out how a person’s daily habits, activities and mindset correlated with economic status.

In his book, “Rich Kids,” Corley explains the positive habits wealthy parents practice and teach their kids.

“Success-minded parents were teaching their kids these rich habits, even if they weren’t wealthy at the time,” he says. “These parents knew that these habits were going to help transform their kids' lives.”

Communication
Corley says the most important thing wealthy-mind parents teach their kids is how to make introductions and communicate with people.

“When you’re talking to someone, you should be looking into their eyes, 3 to 5 seconds, then you divert your look to somewhere around their face,” he says. “You never turn your head, you never look down, you are staying in a particular area around the face.”

Many job interviewers he’s spoken with say that the current generation doesn’t maintain solid eye contact, instead, looking down as they speak because they’re used to staring at their electronic devices. Corley calls this a ‘poverty habit.’

Speak More Than You Listen
Another manner Corley says the wealthy have mastered is listening. He’s identified what he calls the ‘5:1 Rule of Speaking and Listening,’ in which a person listens for five minutes and speaks for just one minute.

He says gathering information about the other person is critical to forming a strong relationship that could serve you in the future.

“The reason that wealthy people follow the 5-1 rule is because they are thinking about relationships a little bit differently than everybody else. To them, relationships are like gold. They understand that those relationships are going to help them open up doors,” Corley says.

Make People Feel Important
Corley says another rich behavior children should be taught is how to make others feel important. The easiest way to do this is by learning and remembering people’s names.

“Our names are the most important things to us,” says Corley. “When you remember somebody’s name, it elevates you in their mind, because you thought it was important to know their name.”

To help him learn someone’s name, he uses it several times during the first conversation, and then he uses a grouping strategy to add the person to his contacts. If the individual is someone he met playing tennis, he adds the person to his tennis contacts.

“You can have a volleyball group, you can have a reading group, whatever group you can think of to help you remember names,” he says.