How the rich get richer
By Peter Diekmeyer • Bankrate.com

Earlier this month Pauline Marois, leader of the Parti Québécois, a Quebec-based separatist party, made headlines because of the reported sale of her Ile Bizzard home for just under $7 million.

Buried in one article was an interesting fact: that Marois' property had been on the market since July 2009 -- almost two-and-a-half years, which is far longer than the Canadian average of about three months. Yet while seven figure homes tend to take longer to sell because fewer people can afford them, according to one industry professional, another factor was at play.

"When someone doesn't need the money, they can afford to hang on longer to get a better price," said Liza Kaufman, a Montreal-based partner with Sotheby's International Realty, the real estate firm credited with selling the property. "They can ignore lowball offers and wait until the market catches up with their demands."

Kaufman is right. The rich do things differently than the rest of us. And while much of the recent wealth-related media coverage has focused on how unfair all of this is, we thought that it might pay to look at some of the strategies the rich use to get richer.

Use time to their advantage. The rich, (who we will define as anyone in the top quintile of assets or income earners) never rush a deal. "Me and time as my ally against any two men," is their philosophy. They wait (as Pauline Marois did) until the moment is right and then they strike. This applies not only to buying and selling real estate, but to business and career moves, too.

Marry each other. Remember when doctors used to marry nurses and lawyers used to marry legal assistants? Those days are coming to an end. With so many women now pursuing advanced degrees, doctors are now marrying doctors -- presumably leaving the nurses stuck with marrying legal assistants. This trend naturally increases family incomes at the higher end of the scale and reduces class mobility.

According to an article in "Demography" journal, the odds of someone with a high school degree marrying someone with a college degree fell by 43 per cent between the 1940s and the 1970s. Another study found a high degree of correlation between a woman's earnings before marriage and the future earnings prospects of her mate.