Ryan Pierse/Getty Images
To get rich, one should be financially literate and conscientious.
- Building wealth doesn't come down to how smart you are, according to a researcher who studied more than 600 millionaires in America.
- Instead, it's about financial literacy, which is related to better financial decisions and outcomes, she said.
- But financial literacy alone isn't enough - one must also be conscientious, one of the most important success factors for getting rich.
Intelligence may be helpful when it comes to success at work, but that's not always the case when it comes to getting rich.
So says Sarah Stanley Fallaw, the director of research for the Affluent Market Institute and coauthor of "The Next Millionaire Next Door: Enduring Strategies for Building Wealth," in which she surveyed more than 600 millionaires in America.
"Most research finds that the smarter we are the better we can perform," she wrote. "Should this be the case for financial management at home?"
Not necessarily. Research conducted by her father, Thomas J. Stanley, for his book, "The Millionaire Mind," found lack of support for the correlation between wealth and intelligence, as measured by his respondents' SAT scores. Dr. Jay Zagorsky, who analyzed the National Study of Youth 1979, which looked at 7,500 individuals, also found little support for the correlation between IQ and net worth, according to Stanley Fallaw.
Instead of using cognitive ability to indicate financial success, Stanley Fallaw suggests considering financial literacy, which she defines as "the knowledge of or ability to use personal financial management practices and methodologies."
"Financial literacy is related to a host of financial 'success' outcomes, leading to better decision making about a variety of investment-, debt-, and spending-related issues," she wrote.
Financial literacy has little influence if you're not conscientious
But that's not enough when it comes to building wealth, Stanley Fallaw said. Getting rich also requires conscientiousness; in fact, Stanley Fallaw calls it one of the most important success factors due to its proven relationship with net worth, regardless of age and income.
"Many of the behavioral components that impact net worth, regardless of how old we are or our income levels, including frugality, planning, and responsibility, tie into this personality characteristic, and help us understand why it is so critical in the creation and maintenance of wealth over time," she wrote.
According to a study she cited by the Journal of Consumer Affairs, which examined the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, researchers found that conscientiousness was related to net worth. They also found financial literacy has some influence, but only in relationship to self-control - a key component of conscientiousness, Stanley Fallaw wrote.
Industriousness, virtue, order, responsibility, and traditionalism are the other five components that comprise conscientiousness, according to Stanley Fallaw.
But she's not the only researcher to emphasize the importance of conscientiousness when it comes to building wealth. Self-made millionaire Dr. Jude Miller Burke studied 200 self-made millionaires for three years and found they all tended to be conscientious - and displayed the trait at a higher level than less successful people.
They "reap rewards because they are the least likely to let their lives spin out of control when a crisis happens," Burke wrote in her book, "The Millionaire Mystique." "They plan carefully, execute their plans, and reap the self-esteem that comes from keeping their promises and working at a high level."
Conscientiousness consistently leads to success - and marrying a conscientious partner can boost your salary by $4,000 a year, according to a study by Brittany C. Solomon and Joshua J. Jackson of Washington University in St. Louis.