If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? Although money and mental muscles may seem a natural match, brains, alas, may be more hindrance than help when it comes to getting rich, concludes a new study in the journal Intelligence.
"It is still not well understood why some people are rich and others are poor," writes study author Jay Zagorsky of Ohio State University. "Luck, timing, parents, choice of spouse and many other factors play important roles in shaping an individual's circumstances," he acknowledges in his study, which looks for a link between intelligence scores, wages and wealth..................
But what good is it to be smart and have a better salary if you end up broke or spending it all on credit card bills? asks Zagorsky. Looking at the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979's latest round of survey answers from more than 7,000 randomly-selected participants, he tries to tackle the question of whether better IQs lead to bulging bank accounts and less bankruptcy. .................
The answer is no. "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,.......
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.
The slide from grace is really more like gliding
And I've found the trick is not to stop the sliding
But to find a graceful way of staying slid
