The One Habit That Will Make You Poor Forever

Adam Del Duca
6 min readNov 29, 2021
Photo by Travis Essinger on Unsplash

What if I told you that there was one habit you have that is keeping your poor? Well, in this article, I am going to share with you the one habit that you must avoid at all costs.

Many years ago, my financials were a mess. I spent money on frivolous items, got myself into debt and failed to save any substantial amount of money despite earning a modest income. Fortunately, I had the realization that these issues were only going to get worse unless I changed my ways and so soon after I developed a strange but effective habit that has allowed me to amass a sizeable amount of wealth in the past few years. The habit I formed was to write myself a check every month. Now, I know this sounds strange so let me explain further.

Many of us, on our pursuit to a life full of riches, have read the book the Richest Man in the Babylon and while this book is packed with valuable money lessons, the majority of us have a hard time implementing them into our own lives.

If you’ve read the book, then you know that one of the key principles is to pay yourself first. It doesn’t matter how much money you make; your goal should be to put away 10% of your income from each paycheck in order to start building your personal wealth. However, for most people, this is easier said than done. You see, most people pay the big companies first, succumbing to their expertly marketed products and services which drains all their money leaving them with nothing to save at month’s end. These marketing tactics we are constantly exposed to is why more than 80% of Americans are in debt and why by not forming the habit of paying yourself first, you will almost certainly find yourself living a financially mediocre lifestyle.

Now, maybe you want to turn around your situation. If so, the first thing you need to do is start seeing your income as a tool. You can either use this tool to help yourself (by paying yourself first and building your savings) or to help others (by spending and lining the pockets of companies). While it seems obvious that we should be helping ourselves, as I shared earlier in this video, it can be easy to fall victim to our desire for material goods. Luckily in my own case, when I started writing cheques to myself as a way of paying myself first, I began to find that I had much less money to…

Adam Del Duca