Schools Teach People How to Be Poor
Think back to being in school. We all learned subjects like Biology, Geometry, English, History… Who the 23rd President was (by the way, it was Benjamin Harrison). Some of us may even have majored in Economics.
But did anyone teach us about how we could actually make money in our own lives? It’s no secret that I think it’s a huge problem that schools don’t teach financial literacy. Kids graduate from high school and even top universities without understanding the first thing about money and personal wealth.
But as bad as that is, it’s actually much worse.
I know this is a bold statement, but I believe schools are teaching people how to be poor.
Here’s the message schools are pumping into our kids’ heads:
- Get an Education
- Get a Good Job
- Get Promoted and
- Earn a Higher Salary
Then…
- They tell us to save part of our pay (the part that the IRS doesn’t raid first).
- They tell us to put that money into savings accounts (with interest rates that don’t even keep up with inflation).
- They tell us to invest into 401Ks (which are managed by someone else).
Here’s the problem: getting truly rich under this paradigm is mathematically impossible.
In fact, the system is designed to keep most people poor. Or at least working hard their entire lives just to keep their heads above water.
We’ve been so indoctrinated in this ideology, most people think this is “just the way it is” and there is no alternative.
We think a person has to be born rich to get richer. We’ve been taught “It takes money to make money.”
Maybe this was partially true once.
Today, it’s an outright lie.
Why?
Because the Internet has leveled the playing field. It’s no longer necessary to start off rich to finish that way.
What IS necessary, is to forget the wrong messaging we learned in school. We need to stop looking to a job to make us wealthy.
We can do it ourselves, online. We can make income for the work we put in as entrepreneurs.
Now, most people don’t know this yet. Or they don’t “get” it.
How could they? They went to the same schools we did!
So the key for us is to forget what we’ve been taught about making money in the past. We need to learn how to educate ourselves, create our own jobs, and make our own money moving forward.
Totally agree..
Nice post @fusu, I enjoyed reading it.
A lot of people say to save around 10% of your income, but if someone made $2,000 a month, that would only get you a little over $100,000 by the end of your working life. There are a lot of people owning earning in the $2,000 range.
That said, I would not say Americans have really had much trouble with getting wealthy due to starting out poor. Lots of incredibly successful businesses started out of people's living rooms or garages. Vanderbilt was a broke laborer that scrimped and bought a boat as his first venture into the transport business.
The real problem is that people over consume. Most poor people (this is unpopular to say) are poor because they do it to themselves. People will blow money on all kinds of junk, but they shake in their boots in fear of losing a penny on an uncertain venture.
The saying, you must spend money to make money... is tried-and-true. Far too many people will spend ever dollar of their paycheck on the hot new video game console, but fear losing any amount of money on an investment. As they say, no guts no glory.
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