This is something that I have given a lot of thought to. I see it everywhere. Some people do it all the time, some would never do it and some fall right in between. Investing your money in depreciating assets is a crippling mistake that can set you down the path towards being poor.

Each person and situation is unique so this is not a universal rule. One of the biggest obstacles to people trying to climb out of debt or stop living paycheck to paycheck is there struggle with putting their money into things that go down in value. One of the most widely demonstrated examples of this is seeing people dump thousands of dollars into their cars. New seats, dodads, rims – you name it, people are spending their money on it. And unless it’s your hobby then really it’s all for nothing.

The way to climb the latter to wealth is to start investing your time and money into things that increase in value or pay out cash. Things like your home, your education and your financial investments.

Take a look at what you are spending your time and money on. How much of it goes into things that lose value verses things that gain value? All of us have room to improve, but the smaller the gap the better off we will be.

If you are spending your time and money on assets that increase in value then you are probably debt free. You probably have less financial stress in your life. You are probably very optimistic about being wealthy in the future if you aren’t already there. If you are wasting your energy on depreciating assets you are going to find yourself at the bottom looking up. You can change the way you spend your money today.