The biggest mistake people make is confusing spending with wealth. Most people never see anyone's savings account, investment portfolio or debt balance. They only see the visible parts of someone's life and then assume the invisible parts look just as good.

A nice apartment, a new car, designer clothes and regular holidays can create the appearance of wealth. What they don't tell you is how those things were paid for. Someone can look financially successful while quietly carrying debt, financing purchases or living pay cheque to pay cheque.

The reality is that visible spending tells you very little about someone's financial position. A person with £100000 invested may look completely average. A person with almost nothing saved may look rich. From the outside, both can appear exactly the same.

One of the reasons so many people feel financially behind is because London has a unique ability to make expensive behaviour feel normal. When everyone around you is buying £6 coffees, travelling abroad and eating out regularly, those things stop feeling expensive. They start feeling standard.

The problem is that your brain doesn't compare your spending to your income. It compares your spending to the people around you. If everyone in your environment is spending more, you'll slowly feel pressure to do the same whether you realise it or not.

Nobody wakes up and decides to waste their money. Instead, they gradually upgrade everything. Slightly better holidays become normal, then slightly better restaurants, then slightly better clothes and eventually a more expensive lifestyle becomes part of everyday life.

Five years later they might be earning far more than they were before. Yet they don't feel wealthier because their spending increased alongside their income. The lifestyle improved, but their financial security barely moved.

The uncomfortable truth is that real wealth creation usually looks boring. The people quietly building wealth rarely look impressive from the outside. They aren't trying to signal success to strangers because they're focused on building something much more valuable.

Instead of constantly upgrading their lifestyle, they focus on ownership. Ownership of investments, businesses and assets that can grow over time. They understand that every pound spent maintaining an image is a pound that can't be invested in their future.

That doesn't mean never enjoying life. It simply means understanding the difference between spending money because something genuinely improves your life and spending money because you want other people to notice it. One creates value while the other often creates expenses.

The older I get, the less interested I become in looking successful. When I was younger, I assumed wealthy people had a certain look. I thought expensive cars, luxury brands and high-end lifestyles were reliable signs of financial success.

Now I pay much more attention to behaviour than appearances. I'd rather own investments than status symbols and I'd rather build assets than collect things designed to impress strangers. Those decisions aren't always visible, but they matter far more over the long term.

The funny thing is that most people aren't paying nearly as much attention to you as you think. They're usually too busy worrying about their own finances, careers and problems. Once you realise that, spending money to create an image becomes much less appealing.

Imagine two people earning £50000 per year in London. The first spends almost every pay rise as soon as it arrives. Better restaurants, better holidays and better clothes gradually become part of their lifestyle.

The second person increases their investments whenever their income rises. They build an emergency fund, contribute to an ISA and slowly accumulate assets year after year. From the outside, they might appear less successful because their lifestyle changes more slowly.

Fast forward 10 years and the picture often looks very different. The first person probably looked richer throughout most of the journey. The second person is much more likely to actually be richer

Don't assume everyone around you is financially comfortable just because they look comfortable. Don't mistake expensive lifestyles for financial success. And don't allow social media to become your benchmark for progress.

Most importantly, don't let other people's spending habits dictate your own decisions. Some of the people you're trying to keep up with are struggling far more than you realise. Comparing your finances to appearances is usually a losing game.