You Don’t Have To Be A Genius To Make Money

  • Posted by glen on August 13th, 2007

you don't have to be a genius to make moneyUS Today has an interesting piece that challenges a lot of traditional concepts about money and smarts. Apparently you don’t have to be a genius to be rich.

“Being more intelligent does not confer any advantage along two of the three key dimensions of financial success (income, net worth and financial distress),” Zagorsky finds, looking at the data with statistical tests. Income does weakly correspond to intelligence test scores, he finds, where “a one point increase in IQ test scores is related to an income increase of $346 per year. But at most, that same one-point increase in IQ leads to “a net worth increase of at most $83, but probably zero.”

You don’t have to be dumb to be poor, either.

And when it comes to financial distress, smarts are no help at all. People with 140 IQ scores (a score of 100 is average) missed payments and maxed-out their credit cards more often than their lower IQ counterparts. They went bankrupt at a rate, 14.1%, close to the rate of people with an IQ of 80, 15.2%. “Only among people slightly above-average does an increasing IQ score lead to a reduced chance of financial distress,” says the study.

Hrm. So is this good news, or bad news? :)

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    • Maxwell Barnes
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    • I have a genius level IQ. it has caused almost every problem in my life, because of the fact that I'm living in a society designed by dim-bulbs for dim-bulbs.

      I really love getting anti-intellect sentiment like this everywhere I go, as well.

      Carl, you fucker, you see your friend has emotional problems, and that he wastes money. does he have anyone to talk to that even bothers to understand what he's saying? do you even realize how defeating that is to a human spirit? do you think maybe he'd benefit from some emotional support?

      Could it possibly be that some smart people have more important things to worry about than money?
    • Yes, you're right. I was a genius in making good grades in schools and colleges -- but very idiot in making money and a good life.

      Until I met a mentor who helped me hack into my life matrix parameter set 20 years ago, it's clearly seen that IQ works in in sync with conventional cultural trajectories (of dependent scholars and philosophers who serves the modern taskmasters and economic Pharoahs) forms Vander Walls Effects (maybe synnonymous to ego) grid locks distorting, blocking, sqeezing the natural flows of of Trinity in Life (life force, intuitive intelligence, and communal hi-touch influence operating system -- EQ) in sync with the cosmos circulatory system.

      My practice, and common practice of the people in my co-innovative partnership and successorship community during the last 2 decades, is living on EQ, dealing with materials on IQ, but dealing with lives (ours and others) with EQ.

      Formular (Mantra): Blank the head (left brain) > empty the mind > optimize EQ
    • Well since you said this...there is an excellent book which highlights this fact conspicuously..."How to get rich?" by felix dennis...its a must read and for all those people out there who think you got to be the smartest to be the richest...
    • Steve
      I've always noticed that people who get good grades in school don't know how to do anything else BUT get good grades. Still remember the girl who had to get a new engine installed in her car. "You mean you're supposed to change the oil?"
    • glen
      Good points Carl.

      I know a couple of really brilliant people who are socially... stupid.
    • Good news! People are way too obsessed with academic evaluations.

      I like this post because falls directly in line with my own personal experience and beliefs.

      I know someone who is simply extraordinary in terms of solving complex math problems, but he is an emotional mess. He waste money like no other and can't keep anything going.

      On the other hand, I can see how being too smart can hurt you. People who are smart think too much and they end up thinking themselves out of opportunity. Dumber people grab opportunities when they come because they couldn't think of all the possibilities of how it could go wrong.

      The biggest problem is that academia falls into this IQ trap. Many "dumb" people can't make it through school. However, dropping out of school may be the best thing that ever happened.
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