Do You Want to Be Rich? Be Prepared to Count the Cost

Do you want to be rich? Are you prepared for the sacrifices and challenges that come with pursuing wealth?

Getting rich isn’t easy. It requires passion, dedication, and a willingness to take risks. In his book How to Get Rich, Felix Dennis explores the realities of becoming wealthy, including potential costs to relationships and mental health.

Continue reading for a candid look at what it really takes to join the ranks of the wealthy.

The Realities of Being Rich

Do you want to be rich? Dennis begins his book in an unconventional way by warning you about just how hard it is to get rich: If you weren’t born into wealth, your odds of ever becoming wealthy are extremely low. The only way to overcome those odds is to have an overwhelming passion for making money, and to get lucky besides.

The author also says if you’re not sure that you want to dedicate your life to getting rich, then this endeavor will be a waste of time. Instead, he urges you to spend your time doing something you are passionate about.

(Shortform note: Research backs Dennis’s claim that it’s unlikely someone who was born poor will ever become rich. For instance, a 2006 study on economic mobility found that, in the US, a child born into a low-income family only had a 1% chance of becoming one of the country’s top earners.)

Dennis specifies that, for him, being rich means having a total personal value (counting both money and assets) of $30 million to $80 million. At around $80 million you would be somewhere near the bottom of the list of the 1,000 richest people in the UK, where Dennis lived.

(Shortform note: How to Get Rich was published in 2006, and the numbers Dennis gives here reflect that time period. For instance, in 2019, you’d have needed £120 million—about $154 million—to get onto the list of the UK’s 1,000 wealthiest people.)

First, we’ll discuss what you may have to sacrifice in order to get rich. We’ll then address several ways that people—even those who are fully dedicated to becoming wealthy—self-sabotage their already slim chances of getting rich.

What Wealth Could Cost You

Dennis warns that most people don’t have the necessary passion to devote their lives to earning money, nor the will to take the necessary risks. Getting rich requires the fearless mindset a soldier should have while marching to war: the willingness to go through great hardship and sacrifice everything in the name of your cause. While you’re not likely to lose your life by going into business, you run the risk of losing nearly everything else, like your relationships, your dignity, and your mental health. 

First of all, devoting so much time to making money can damage your relationships with family members, including your spouse and your children. Therefore, if you want to get rich in order to give your family better lives, recognize that they may not thank you for it—they probably won’t understand your motivations and will only remember all the times when you seemed to think your work was more important than them. 

(Shortform note: What Dennis describes here is how a workaholic parent can cause serious harm to their family, especially their children. Furthermore, the damage can persist well into adulthood; adult children of workaholics often struggle with feelings of confusion, guilt, and inadequacy. These feelings stem from growing up with at least one parent who was so obsessed with work that they treated their kids as an afterthought, or worse, as a nuisance. Research shows that these individuals tend to have higher levels of depression and anxiety, as well as lower self-esteem.) 

Second, the author adds that most people who become rich are the ones who are willing to ignore conventional wisdom and take chances that others consider foolish. Therefore, to get rich, you must be willing to fail catastrophically and publicly. He also advises cultivating the ability to shrug off mockery and envy from others, since you’ll inevitably face plenty of both. 

(Shortform note: This principle isn’t just about taking risks, but also about overcoming the fear of ridicule. In The Courage to Be Disliked, authors Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga—drawing on the teachings of psychologist Alfred Adler—say this is a common fear that holds many people back. They also say this fear comes from basing your self-esteem on the approval of others: If they like you then you feel like a good person, and if they dislike you then you feel like a bad person. To overcome this approval-seeking behavior, the authors advise finding ways to feel useful; Adler taught that people who truly believe they’re helping others and living good lives will feel happy no matter what people say about them. This is the titular courage to be disliked.) 

Finally, Dennis challenges the notion that wealth leads to independence and happiness. On the contrary, wealthy people often become paranoid, arrogant, and lonely. Many of them believe that everyone else is after their money and feel like they must constantly defend their fortune.

(Shortform note: Dennis says that wealthy people are often unhappy, but scientific research doesn’t support this claim. One study from 2010 famously concluded that higher incomes lead to increased happiness up to a point: For people earning $75,000 or more per year, additional income had little to no effect on their happiness. However, more recent research—including a reevaluation of that famous study—suggests there is no such cutoff. Simply put, this means that the more money you make, the happier you’ll be.) 

Beware of Self-Sabotage

If, after reading this far, you’re still sure that getting rich is what you want to do with your life, Dennis says you should start by recognizing and rejecting the urge to self-sabotage. To help you do this, he gives examples of common excuses people make at various stages of their lives—reasons why they tell themselves it’s not the right time to try to become rich. 

Many young people believe that their lack of experience and capital doom them to decades of working for others. This is especially true of people from low-income families. 

However, the author counters this notion by highlighting the advantages of youth, such as stamina, fearlessness, and a willingness to learn from mistakes. He argues that these qualities position the young and inexperienced as having the best chance of becoming wealthy, since they have nothing to lose and are unencumbered by conventional wisdom or preconceived ideas of what is possible.

For those who are slightly better off and on their way up the career ladder, Dennis recognizes their hesitation to risk what they’ve already achieved. He empathizes with this fear of failure but encourages them to seize the opportunity to strike out on their own, as their experience and industry knowledge could uncover untapped market niches. 

As for senior managers or professionals, Dennis acknowledges their extensive knowledge and understanding of their companies and industries. However, he notes that very few in this demographic actually take the leap and start their own ventures, often citing responsibilities such as mortgages, children’s education, and the comfort of their current positions as reasons. Dennis dismisses these as mere excuses, challenging them to confront the truth that they’ll likely never become truly wealthy if they do not take risks.