I don't agree with the test questions or the conclusions. After all, it was sponsored by a bank whose goal is to lend money. That is not a path to wealth.
I've done pretty well. I am retired from a blue collar civil service job with a fair pension. What has been a foundation of my spending habits are some revelations I learned at an early age at a community college where I studied for an AAS in Marketing. Some of those revelations have led to prudent spending on private rather than national brands. Another, the realization that I will likely not earn as much as people a lot smarter than myself, and that if i want to live well and be financially at peace, I need to be a prudent consumer, never get caught by consumer debt, except for a home mortgage. I learned that a new car is the second largest purchase the average person makes. I have always owned a used car.
I figure I have cut my spending by at least 15% overall by prudent spending. Another way of looking at that is to say that I gave myself a 15% raise for a lifetime.
I started to invest as a novice about 15 years ago when I retired, collected a good pension and started work part time. I started to read the financial magazines and found conflicting ideas, so called "principles" of investing and followed the advice of some market "gurus". That was a bad idea. I got caught by a crooked investment broker and lost a few thousand. After seeing the biased claims of some of the legitimate brokerage firms and comparing their long term results with some of the benchmark stock market indexes, I came to realize the unmanaged index funds did better! I now have a huge chunk of savings in the S&P 500 Index fund, through a legitimate mutual fund company , doing well and very small expense ratio. I own no stocks and I no longer anxiously follow the financial markets on a daily basis. Doing so causes you to make very human decisions based on anxiety and lousy timing.
I am very content in my modest retirement lifestyle. I don't need to pay life insurance premiums to assure my "final expenses". My children will inherit a nice fund. My creditors don't harass me as they are paid promptly. All credit cards are paid in full monthly, so there are no exorbitant fees. In fact, no fees at all.
It has not been difficult to do this. I am reinforced in my beliefs when I read or hear of others, good people who find themselves in financial trouble. Growing up, my family was very poor. I remember my mother humiliated by a social worker who, coming into our housing project home for an "inspection", lecturing her in a condescending manner about dishes in a kitchen sink. My mother stayed quiet, but cursed the woman when she left. She worked hard every day, cleaning other people's houses, while my father was out of work with an injured spine, the result of an accident in the A&P store where he worked. He only recieved a small amount from Workmen's Compensation.
So, yes, I think rich. I am not, really. But I am comfortable and I never worry about money. Life has better things to offer. | 
