The theme this week on the Retirement Quick Tips Podcast is: 5 personality traits of self-made millionaires. These five traits when combined together can help predict those of us who will have a higher net worth

Today’s self-made millionaire trait is: Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness is one of the big 5 personality traits, and is the quality of wishing to do one's work or duty well and thoroughly. Conscientious people are hardworking, responsible and organized.

If you’re conscientious, you probably didn’t need to be told to do your homework as a child, you’re rarely late for an appointment, and you’re future oriented, with more impulse control than the average person. 

I would have assumed that conscientiousness is the most important trait that separated the millionaires from the rest of the population, but according to the German study findings, it was significantly less important as a distinguishing trait than risk tolerance, which is the most important differentiator, and somewhat less important than openness and extraversion in predicting millionaire status, which I talked about earlier in the week.

So why is conscientiousness an important trait that helps to distinguish the unique personality of the self-made millionaire? When someone is conscientious, they are able to exercise self-discipline and self-control to achieve what they want in the long-term. To build wealth or build a business that provides wealth in the future, requires sacrifice, diligence, and trade-offs. People with high conscientiousness are also organized, determined, and more likely to stick with their plans and goals over long periods of time. 

It seems obvious then why conscientious people are more likely to be millionaires. The vast majority of my clients are millionaires, and I would characterize most of them as conscientious people…whereas there is a lot more variation among them in terms of other personality traits like extraversion and openness, which again was surprising to me that conscientiousness was a lower predictor of millionaire status compared to the other traits. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening! My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the Retirement Quick Tips podcast.  

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