7 Money Mistakes That Prevent Smart People Getting Rich

Trying too hard

I recently read about a study in MIT Technology Review that looked into the relationship between intelligence and success. The researchers tried to learn the connection between being smart and being rich.

They concluded: “The most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest.”

I think this is true. There’s no correlation between knowledge and wealth. As Warren Buffett once said:

“If past history was all that is needed to play the game of money, the richest people would be librarians.”

The truth is that smart people have all the tools and ideas at their disposal to get rich. And yet, they often don’t use them. They tend to make the same mistakes over and over again.

Here are some of those mistakes. Can you relate to these? If you can stop making them, wealth is an inevitable outcome.

1. Over-optimizing financial decisions

In my own journey, I’ve noticed a tendency among highly intelligent individuals to fall into the trap of over-optimization.