Shadowing Practice: 15 Cheap Mistakes The Rich Never Make - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Every decision has a price, sometimes you pay it immediately.
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Other times it comes in three years down the line as a broken body, bad reputation, wasted decade or a life that feels painfully small.
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This video teaches you how to not buy a cheap life
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and the most timely piece of advice waits for you at number 1: Here are 15 Cheap Mistakes The Rich Never Make!
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Welcome to ALUX, the place where future billionaires come to get inspired.
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Number 15: Buying cheap versions of things they use every day.
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Poor people buy a lot of cheap things because they're cheap and they can get a lot of them.
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The middle class buys branded things because they want to feel rich.
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The rich buy the right thing once.
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Remember this: when buying something, don't make the decision according to price, but based on cost per use.
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A $40 pair of shoes worn twice is expensive.
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A good pair worn every day for two years is almost free.
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sense to pay more for something of higher quality that you use every day.
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Shoes, chairs, and mattresses are classic examples because you're either in one or the other.
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The phrase "if you buy cheap, you buy twice" is true.
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Not only do they break faster and perform worse than the higher quality version, they don't hold their value over time.
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Many higher quality items can be resold for half the original value, while cheap things get thrown away.
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The thing you replace 5 times was never the cheap option.
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And the most expensive thing you can waste isn't even money at all.
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#14.
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Saving Money by Wasting Time Poor people spend time to save money.
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Rich people spend money to save time.
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question: how much is an hour of your time worth?
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If you earn minimum wage, $7 .50, and you can save $10 by waiting for an hour in line, sure that makes sense, but most of your time is worth more than that.
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Did you ever take the time to calculate how much your time is worth?
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The great thing is that you can decide with your wallet.
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Let's say you believe that your time is worth $100 an hour.
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If returning a $50 item takes longer than 30 minutes, you're better off not returning it at all.
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The mistake most people make when they hear this is not having something to do with the time saved, because unless you can monetize it, you're wasting that time as well.
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Ask any rich person and they'll always have something they can check off their to -do list.
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Even leisure time is treated as something to add into the calendar.
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If the outcome is a billion dollars, it doesn't matter how quickly you burn through hundreds of thousands.
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Stop treating time like it's free because no invoice arrives.
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It gets worse the moment you buy something you didn't even need.
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Number 13.
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Buying something you don't need just because it was on sale.
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A discount is only valuable if you were going to buy that thing anyway.
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Otherwise, you did not save money, you spent money.
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We caught a lot of heat
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when we said the reason something is on sale is
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that rich people who could afford to pay the full price didn't think it was worth it.
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And there's a subtle difference here that has a big impact in the long term.
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Poor people love deals because deals feel like winning.
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You want the feeling of being clever.
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actually makes them win.
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As real estate investors, sometimes you don't get a good deal, but you get a great property.
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If you buy things, you end up with things and no money.
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That's how cheap people end up with full closets and empty bank accounts.
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A bad deal is when you buy something that doesn't move your life forward.
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Look at how much you spend on eating out, deliveries and coffees that leave almost no residual value in your life.
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It's easy to fall into this trap, but your life gets better when you invest, not when you spend.
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Number 12: Trying to do expert work themselves to avoid paying an expert.
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In the beginning, you do everything yourself because you have no other choice.
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You have more time than money, so you make that trade.
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But doing that beyond its scope is a bad trade.
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The rich pay experts for one reason: the expert already made the mistake you're about to make, and their fee is smaller than the mistake would cost you.
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Sure, you could save a couple thousand bucks doing your own accounting, but you haven't kept up with the opportunities and regulations in your space.
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For example, a good accountant isn't just supposed to keep your books in order, but actively find opportunities to save you more money than you pay them for.
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You aren't saving money when you do expert work badly.
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You're paying for it later on with interest, in a currency you don't get to choose.
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So pay the person who does this every day, go build the thing that only you can build, and if your accountant, your bank or any business partner is only a cost to you,
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maybe it's time you do something about it.
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Number 11: Staying loyal to bad associates The rich are ruthless about this.
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Turns out our emotions and our flawed sense of loyalty is what's keeping most people poor.
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A job you don't like, where you're not growing with people who don't really value you.
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A service you pay for that you consistently have to oversee and correct.
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The partner who cuts corners, the friend who shrinks every plan, the higher you've postponed letting go for 3 years.
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You keep all of them out of guilt.
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Cheap is staying in a bad partnership because leaving feels expensive.
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The exit fee is always smaller than the years.
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You can be kind to someone and still keep them far away from the thing you're building.
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Which is really just a bigger version of the next mistake.
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Life is filled with opportunities for asymmetric returns.
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The rich guard the big numbers and stop counting the small ones.
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the big ones leaving.
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You become rich when you're comfortable losing $10, if that means you might earn $100 back or at least learn something.
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Some people don't use AI tools because they think a $20 a month subscription to clode is expensive.
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They're the same people who don't buy bitcoin or invest in the stock market when there's a correction.
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You save a couple hundred bucks by not going to the event because you'll watch some podcasts for free, but you miss the opportunity to meet the person who will change your life.
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It's not expensive if you use it every day.
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It's not expensive if it has the potential to change your life.
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It's not expensive if it's making you better or leads to you making more money.
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That's why we built the Alux app as a board of
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advisors in your pocket with the sole purpose of measurably improving your life.
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next 7 days, you have access to the best coaches in the world helping you to get unstuck.
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That's alux .com /app.
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But the app is only a tool, the next mistake is the mindset that stops most people from ever picking one up.
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Number 9: Confusing cheap with being financially smart.
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Be careful of anyone who uses words like frugal, responsible, and savvy, because these words cater to the symptom, not the cause.
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It's often more that your problem will be solved rather than spending less.
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Financially smart people make money to make or protect more money.
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Cheap people just spend less and usually they get less in return.
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The clearest place this shows up is in the downside.
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Never underpay the person whose entire job is to stop the worst thing from happening.
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Some people get wrecked because they leave themselves exposed.
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Health and home insurance are classic examples.
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Being has a favorite excuse and it sounds reasonable every single time.
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Number 8: Doing low value work because it only takes 10 minutes
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"It only takes 10 minutes" is the most expensive sentence in your day.
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The trap is that it makes you feel productive.
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"Look how many things I got done !" when in reality these things didn't move the needle for you at all.
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Most people don't know there are two different types of moves you can make in a day: maintenance moves and growth moves.
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Taking out the trash is maintenance.
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Meeting a potential client is growth.
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Meetings are maintenance.
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Launching a new ad campaign is growth.
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Paying invoices is maintenance. is growth.
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Be careful of weeks when you haven't made any growth moves.
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You have growth moves on your to -do list sabotaged by things you're comfortable doing.
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Let's talk about those delays right now, number 7: Delaying Decisions To Avoid Being Wrong Not deciding?
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Feel safe.
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The problem is that delay has a cost and that cost isn't clear right away.
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People sit on a decision for months to avoid being wrong and never notice that waiting is a decision too.
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Not making a decision is a decision in and of itself.
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The illusion is that it feels like you're choosing to stay the same without realizing you're choosing erosion.
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not conservation.
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It's called the law of entropy or the second law of thermodynamics.
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Disorder always increases over time.
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The more you don't do something, the worse it gets.
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This applies to life, business and even your marriage and kids.
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The rich decide faster.
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Not always because they're certain, but because they know the cost of a slow yes
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and a slow no is almost higher than the cost of being wrong. for a year.
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You don't lose a decade in one mistake, no, you lose the decade of compounding by not seeing where the decision would have taken you.
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And the fastest way to guarantee those delays is in the company you keep.
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6. Staying around people who normalize small thinking You sink to the level of the room you spend the most time in.
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Small thinking is contagious, and it's polite.
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Most people won't tell you to aim lower, they just flinch when you aim high and after enough flinches you kind of stop doing it on instinct.
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It's how you are genetically programmed to survive in group environments.
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The people around you set the ceiling on what feels normal.
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If wealth is weird in your room, you'll correct yourself back to broke every time and call it being realistic.
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The rich are deliberate about proximity.
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It's actually quite simple: the closer you are to money, the more money you have.
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life spent agreeing with people who were afraid to live bigger.
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You can get used to anything, so you might as well get used to chasing your goals, dreaming bigger, moving often, and seeing what it could become, not what it is right now.
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Which leads us to our favorite mistake on this list: Number 5: Playing games where there is no prize.
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If you won the game you're playing right now, would it even matter?
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Would the prize be so incredibly life -changing that it ripples across generations?
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Would you be finally able to exhale and take pride in your accomplishment?
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Would the world be better off because you existed?
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These might sound like philosophical questions, but most people are playing games with no prize at the end.
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The worst position to be in is to look back on your past 30 years and realize you've played so many games, but none of them mattered.
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Be very careful of games that even if you win, you're still a loser.
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Anything that has long -term effects should be avoided.
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Not going to jail, no wrecking your body, no losing your family.
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The rich pick their games by the size of the prize.
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They ask what does winning this actually unlock, and if the answer is a bigger house on the same dead -end street, they pass.
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They would rather play one game with a life -changing payoff than win 10 that leave them exactly where they started.
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Small games are comfortable because they are winnable.
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Look at the life of the people who have already won the game you're playing.
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If their life doesn't match your expectations, It's time to find a different game to play.
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Number 4: They never let bad tools,
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a bad start or other people's opinions slow down good ambition Starting does something important: it moves you from consumer to creator.
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We all start somewhere.
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The proper use of the bad tools is what allows you to get better tools down the road.
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Walking into a small room is what gets you into the bigger room later on.
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Start where you are and with what you have.
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A cheap mind treats every obstacle as a reason to stop or never start.
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Someone will always have an opinion about it, but this is your life, why would you care about what they think when they're not the ones living it?
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People who end up rich do two things extremely well: 1.
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Extract as much value as they can from anything they have at their disposal, or 2.
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Reinvest aggressively into anything that's working for them.
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The first one proves the model, and the second one creates the order of priorities into what to deploy the resources into.
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If something isn't working, move on to the next thing.
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Which brings us to the next cheap mistake that rich people never make: Number 3: Doubling Down on Sunk Cost
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This is how you go broke or stay broke.
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Pay attention because this is gold.
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Exiting a bad deal on unfavourable terms is less expensive than staying in it and trying to fix it.
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Pause the video and write that down somewhere because this might save you millions at some point.
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Those of you who've lived this, confirm it in the comments.
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The money is already gone, the only real question is whether you're going to keep paying to defend a decision that already failed.
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You're smart enough to not lose twice, you can't undo the past, grow from it and move on.
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And almost every mistake on this list traces back to the same blind spot.
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Number two.
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Make sure you always get paid.
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This has to do with the structure of each deal.
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The rich always make sure they get paid first irrespective of the outcome.
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Poor people get paid only when they work and get things done.
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Rich people find ways to get paid either way.
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Let me give you a real world example for this: Hedge funds manage other people's money.
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You give them your money and they invest it.
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They get paid using a structure called 2 in 20.
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The 2 % is a management fee and the 20 % is a performance fee.
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you give them every year plus 20 % of the profits they are able to generate for you.
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When things go well, the hedge funds get rich off the 20 % of profit they make.
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If things go poorly, they still charge you 2 % even if they lost you money that year.
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The lawyer bills whether you win the case or not.
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Casinos don't gamble themselves.
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The bank collects interest whether your business succeeds or fails.
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The landlord gets rent whether your month was good or terrible.
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regardless of if the market goes up or down.
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They all position themselves to get paid before the outcome is known and you can as well.
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Whatever you do, ask for a deposit before the work begins, get equity and cash, not only one of them.
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Ideally, you want to own the toll booth or the thing that charges rent, which leaves one mistake that decides whether any of this ever changes.
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Number 1 REFUSING TO CHANGE.
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Every other mistake on this list is limited by this one right here.
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Change with the times, change with the tech, change to survive.
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Everything valuable you were able to build has an expiration date.
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We all wish it wasn't so, but it is the truth.
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Every chapter of your life requires you to become someone else if you want to thrive.
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This applies to both your business and your personal life.
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Some of you have been coasting on the laurels of your good old days for too long
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and reality is leaving you behind.
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That's why you feel anxious.
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You feel like the world is changing and you're scared to admit it.
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The cheap mistake is trying to hold on to a sinking ship.
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The cheap mistake is not leveraging what you've learned to play an even bigger game.
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The cheap mistake is watching this video and not making any changes to your life.
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Something that we keep repeating to ourselves is this: If we don't change proactively, the world will change our life for us.
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So remember these cheap mistakes the rich never make.
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The rich never confuse being cheap with being smart, they buy quality once instead of cheap twice,
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spend money to save time rather than the reverse and chase value over the feeling of a deal.
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They pay experts, drop deadweight people and guard the big numbers instead of the pennies.
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They skip the busywork that only feels productive, decide fast because delays cost more than being wrong, and stay close to the people who think big instead of small.
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They only play games with a prize worth winning, start ugly instead of waiting for the perfect conditions, and cut their losses instead of defending a failed decision.
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a sinking ship.
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A cheap mistake is when you optimize the receipt, not the outcome.
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And since this is a Sunday motivational video, here's your well -deserved bonus: Just because it's hard to get, doesn't make it valuable.
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Now, we tend to assume that difficulty and worth are the same thing.
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That if a thing is hard to get, it must be worth having.
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That's a charming idea, but it's not true.
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The world is very generous with obstacles, but rather careless about what it places behind them.
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A worthless thing can be guarded by every difficulty imaginable, while something priceless sits unattended in plain view.
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What is valuable is not what is hard to obtain, it's what fulfills you once you have it.
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Attaining something worthwhile is most often difficult, but just because something is hard to obtain doesn't necessarily mean it's worthwhile.
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So, you're at a crossroads right now with a very important question to answer: The path that I'm on toward this summit.
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Is the climb worth it?
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Is what I'm about to build worth it?
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If yes, then everything from this day forward is about getting to the top.
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If not, stop climbing and build the right thing.
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Now, here's a message from the founder of ALOX: If you made it to the end of the video, you'll find the word in the comments.
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Thank you.
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you you Amen.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “15 Cheap Mistakes The Rich Never Make”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: cheap, rich, mistake. This video has 232 sentences and 3156 words to shadow. The speech runs for 18:00. The speaker talks at a natural 175 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 89% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| alux noun | A kind of sprite in the folklore of certain Maya peoples. | |
| flinch verb | /ˈflɪnt͡ʃ/ | To make a sudden, involuntary movement in response to a (usually negative) stimulus; to cringe; to blench. |
| invoice noun | /ˈɪnˌvɔɪs/ | A bill; a commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer indicating the products, quantities and agreed prices for products or services that the seller has… |
| obstacle noun | /ˈɑbstəkəl/ | Something that impedes, stands in the way of, or holds up progress, either physically or figuratively |
| worthwhile adjective | /ˌwɜː(ɹ)θˈwaɪl/ | Good and important enough to spend time, effort, or money on. |
| hedge noun | /ˈhɛd͡ʒ/ | A thicket of bushes or other shrubbery, especially one planted as a fence between two portions of land, or to separate the parts of a garden. |
| accountant noun | /əˈkaʊn.tənt/ | One who renders account; one accountable. |
| financially adverb | In terms of finance or money. | |
| buck noun | /ˈbʌk/ | A male deer, antelope, sheep, goat, rabbit, hare, and sometimes the male of other animals such as the hamster, ferret, salmonid, shad, skunk and kangaroo. |
| asymmetric adjective | /ˌeɪ.səˈmɛt.ɹɪk/ | Not symmetric. |
| crossroads noun | A place where one road crosses another; an intersection of two or more roads. | |
| entropy noun | /ˈɛntɹəpi/ | A measure of the disorder directly proportional to the natural logarithm of the number of microstates yielding an equivalent thermodynamic macrostate. |
| exhale verb | /ˌɛksˈheɪ̯l/ | To expel air from the lungs through the nose or mouth by action of the diaphragm, to breathe out. |
| expiration noun | /ˌɛk.spɚˈeɪ̯.ʃən/ | The act or process of breathing out, or forcing air from the lungs through the nose or mouth. |
| frugal adjective | /ˈfɹuːɡəl/ | Careful or wise in expenditure; avoiding waste. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| burn through verb | To use up in a hasty or destructive manner. |
| check off verb | To mark items on a list (with a checkmark or by crossing them out) that have been chosen for keeping or removal or that have been dealt with (for example… |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. |
| go up verb | To move upwards. |
| keep up with verb | To manage to remain beside or just behind someone or something that is moving away from one. |
| show up verb | To appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically. |
| slow down verb | To decelerate. |
| take out verb | To remove. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- It's not expensive if you use it every day.
- Would the world be better off because you existed?
- That's why you feel anxious.
- Is what I'm about to build worth it?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who could · person who does · people who don |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | haven't kept · you've postponed · haven't made |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is treated · is filled · will be solved |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 64 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: worthwhile /ˌwɜː(ɹ)θˈwaɪl/, ruthless /ˈɹuːθləs/, thrive /θɹajv/, worthless /ˈwɜːθ.ləs/, booth /buθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: expiration /ˌɛk.spɚˈeɪ̯.ʃən/, erosion /ɪˈɹəʊʒən/, accomplishment /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ.mənt/, ambition /æmˈbɪʃ.ən/, leisure /ˈlɛʒə(ɹ)/
- Long words — get the stress right: asymmetric /ˌeɪ.səˈmɛt.ɹɪk/, expiration /ˌɛk.spɚˈeɪ̯.ʃən/, imaginable /ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪnəbəl/, residual /ɹɪˈzɪd͡ʒ.u.əl/, genetically /d͡ʒəˈneɾɪkli/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like alux, flinch, invoice.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.