If You Feel Poorer, You’re Right. Here’s How to Get Rich!
 |
| By Sean Brodrick |
Even if you’ve received a raise this year, there’s a good chance you’re still getting poorer.
That’s the ugly message buried in the latest wage and inflation numbers.
American workers are making more dollars. But those dollars aren’t keeping up with what things cost.
In September, average hourly earnings for private-sector workers rose 3% from a year earlier. Sounds pretty good.
Unfortunately, consumer prices rose 3.7%.
Do the math, and the average worker actually lost purchasing power.
Real average hourly earnings — wages adjusted for inflation — fell 0.7% year over year in September. They also dropped 0.5% in September alone.
And this isn’t a one-month fluke.
As the chart below shows, real wages have now declined year over year for six straight months.
For three years, American workers clawed their way back from the inflation shock of 2021 and 2022.
Wages rose faster than prices, slowly restoring some of the purchasing power inflation had destroyed.
Then the combination of Trump’s tariffs and the Iran War helped turn the tables.
The conflict in the Persian Gulf really lit a fire under energy costs.
In September, gasoline prices were up 34% from a year earlier.
Fuel oil was up a staggering 74%.
Overall inflation accelerated to 3.7%, compared with 3.4% in August.
And energy prices don’t stay neatly confined to your gas tank.
Higher diesel prices raise trucking costs.
Higher jet fuel prices raise the cost of air travel and shipping.
Higher energy costs work their way into food, manufactured goods and virtually everything else that has to be made somewhere and transported somewhere else.
Meanwhile, your paycheck is trying to catch up … and losing the race.
There Is Another Way
You can cut spending. You can skip the restaurant, postpone the vacation and drive your old car another year.
But there’s a limit to how much wealth you can build by cutting.
The better long-term solution is to own assets that can grow faster than inflation.
One of the greatest wealth-building machines ever created sits right in front of us: the U.S. stock market.
Consider what happened while workers were struggling with inflation.
The S&P 500 delivered a total return of 26.29% in 2023. It gained another 25.02% in 2024 and 17.88% in 2025. And through Oct. 15 of this year, it was up another 14.16%.
Compound those gains and the S&P 500 has more than doubled since the beginning of 2023.
While inflation ate away at the purchasing power of every dollar sitting in your wallet, investors who owned America’s biggest and best companies built wealth.
And that’s not some four-year aberration.
Through Oct. 15, the S&P 500 had delivered an average annual return of 11.15% over the previous 20 years, including reinvested dividends.
Over the past 10 years, that annualized return was an extraordinary 15.66%.
Sure, the market doesn’t go straight up. We get corrections, bear markets and occasional crashes.
But that volatility is the price of admission for access to one of history’s most powerful compounding machines.
Why Settle for “Average”?
Buying the S&P 500 is the simple solution. But there are 500 stocks in the S&P 500.
Some are terrific businesses with strong balance sheets, rising earnings and powerful price momentum.
Others are companies you wouldn’t want to touch with a 10-foot pole.
That’s where Weiss Ratings Plus comes in.
At its heart is America’s No. 1 Stock Rating System — Weiss Ratings.
It runs thousands of data-driven algorithms across more than 65,500 stocks, ETFs and mutual funds, performing millions of calculations every day.
Weiss Ratings Plus combines that enormous quantitative engine with premium analysis designed to help investors find opportunities — and spot trouble before it gets worse.
This isn’t about throwing darts at the market or chasing the latest social media trend.
It’s about putting data on your side.
And the track record is impressive.
Over the past 22 years, stocks carrying a Weiss “Buy” rating have gone on to deliver an average return of more than 303% — including the underperformers.
That matters more today because the market is becoming increasingly selective.
Even with major indexes near record territory, many stocks are struggling.
In fact, 62% of S&P 500 stocks were recently trading below their 50-day moving averages.
In other words, simply owning “stocks” isn’t necessarily enough. Owning the right stocks matters.
The Time to Act Is Now
Inflation can quietly make you poorer every year. Right now, it’s doing exactly that to millions of American workers.
You need something working on the other side of the equation.
Your paycheck puts money in your pocket once. Your investments can keep working — compounding, growing and building wealth year after year.
That’s how you stop running on inflation’s treadmill. And it’s how you start getting richer.
Check out Weiss Ratings Plus and see for yourself.
All the best,
Sean Brodrick
