“Children spend years in an antiquated educational system, studying subjects they will never use, preparing for a world that no longer exists.
“Today, the most dangerous advice you can give a child is `Go to school, get good grades and look for a safe secure job,’ ” he likes to say. That is old advice, and it’s bad advice. If you could see what is happening in Asia, Europe, South America, you would be as concerned as I am.”
It’s bad advice, he believes, “because if you want your child to have a financially secure future, they can’t play by the old set of rules. It’s just too risky.”
I asked him what he meant by “old rules?”
“People like me play by a different set of rules from what you play by,” he said. “What happens when a corporation announces a downsizing?”
“People get laid off,” I said. “Families are hurt. Unemployment goes up.”
“Yes, but what happens to the company, in particular a public company on the stock exchange?”
“The price of the stock usually goes up when the downsizing is announced,” I said.
“The market likes it when a company reduces its labor costs, either through automation or just consolidating the labor force in general.”
“That’s right,” he said. “And when stock prices go up, people like me, the shareholders, get richer. That is what I mean by a different set of rules. Employees lose; owners and investors win.”
Robert was describing not only the difference between an employee and employer, but also the difference between controlling your own destiny and giving up that control to someone else.
“But it’s hard for most people to understand why that happens,” I said. “They just think it’s not fair.”
“That’s why it is foolish to simply say to a child, `Get a good education.” he said. “It is foolish to assume that the education the school system provides will prepare your children for the world they will face upon graduation. Each child needs more education. Different education. And they need to know the rules. The different sets of rules.”
“There are rules of money that the rich play by, and there are the rules that the other 95 percent of the population plays by,” he said. “And the 95 percent learns those rules at home and in school. That is why it’s risky today to simply say to a child, `Study hard and look for a job.’ A child today needs a more sophisticated education, and the current system is not delivering the goods. I don’t care how many computers they put in the classroom or how much money schools spend. How can the education system teach a subject that it does not know?”
So how does a parent teach their children, what the school does not? How do you teach accounting to a child? Won’t they get bored? And how do you teach investing when as a parent you yourself are risk averse? Instead of teaching my children to simply play it safe, I decided it was best to teach them to play it smart.
“So how would you teach a child about money and all the things we’ve talked about?” I asked Robert. “How can we make it easy for parents especially when they don’t understand it themselves?”
“I wrote a book on the subject.” Robert said….
And that book, folks, can be bought at any National Bookstore, for a mere P300+ pesos. It’s called Rich Dad, Poor Dad
. It might not be obvious, but I don’t have any financial arrangements regarding the local sales of that book. So don’t worry, I’m not here to shill it.
