Have you ever assumed that smarter people are wealthier than the rest of us?
Well, I recently found this study that has been blowing my mind.
The first part of it confirmed that smarter people do actually earn more – an average of $425 per IQ point.
And I don’t think most of us are surprised by this.
Smarter people do have a financial advantage over the rest of us.
According to the data, someone with an IQ of 130 earns about $22k more per year than someone with an 80 IQ.
So they have $22k more to save, invest, and then on top of that they are smarter so they are probably more likely to know a lot about money and make smart investing decisions.
Right?
This is where it gets really interesting…
I would expect higher IQ people to have a way higher AUM (or Net Worth) than average people like us.
But here is the thing, an extensive study was done by Ohio State looking at IQ and Net Worth…
And they found NO correlation between IQ and Net Worth!!
So what this means is that even though higher IQ people earn more than the rest of us, they ultimately don’t have any more to show for it in their savings account!
The writer of the article I read was blown away by this as well:
“How could high-IQ people, on average, earn higher incomes but still not have more wealth than others? The research scientist said this data can’t provide an answer, but it suggests that high-IQ people are not saving as much as others.”
Or put another way, they simply are not following the ‘Never 100’ rule (never spend 100% of your income in a given month).
And it doesn’t matter how smart you are or how much money you make, we are all subject to Parkinson’s 2nd law…
Which states that by default our expenses will always rise to meet our income.
This isn’t about IQ or salary, because spending more than we earn is a human nature thing that affects us all.
So what is the answer?
The key is simply to create a system to help you follow the Never 100 rule.
And if you want our help doing that, that is the exact system that we teach in our book Simple Money, Rich Life and our True Financial Freedom class.
Because wealth isn’t just about take home pay or IQ points — it’s about wisdom.
As I always say…
It’s less about what you make, and more about what you do with it.
And the data is clear: simple beats clever more often than not.
Here’s to saving smart, not just earning smart!
Your friend and coach,