I keep hearing people say they are too broke to do things because they have not gotten paid or because they don’t make enough money. I just shake my head silently because I think they have the definition of broke totally wrong.

I think you can have a low income and still NOT be broke because being broke is a state of mind and not necessarily the state of your finances.

To me being broke means a few things.

  • It means you do not plan your budget well.
  • It means you live paycheck to paycheck not because you have low income but because you have high overspending habits.
  • It means you blame outside forces for not having enough instead of making the best with what you have at hand.
  • It means focusing your energy on the things that you do not have instead of finding ways to work on getting the things you can have.
  • It means lusting after the things you want instead of taking care of what you need first.

I think that you can live on a small amount of money and not be BROKE. I have lived on a very small income and then a slightly larger one and there are less than 5 times when I would have considered myself to be really broke.

Instead of just looking in your wallet and saying you are down to your last dollar and you can’t do anything with it you need to be thinking of  how you can make that dollar work for you…and I don’t mean running out and buying a lottery ticket!

If you can set up a budget and stick to spending less than you bring in then even if you only make minimum wage you are not broke….You are POOR…and that is a different story.

If you can cover your basic necessities but do not have extra to go out and party…again you are poor, not broke.

So please stop saying you are broke when you are really just poor. And if you are broke then you have a deeper issue that just having more money will not fix.

Header image taken from a-college-entrepreneur.com.