This post was most recently updated on December 21st, 2017

When and how do you measure the success of your education?

Did the education of senior citizens prepared them for the financial challenge at the end of their lives?

In the Industrial Age, the rules were to go to school, get good grades, find a safe, secure job with benefits, and stay there all your life. After 20 years or so you retire, and the company and the government take care of you for the rest of your life.

In the Information Age, the rules have changed. The rules now are to go to school, get good grades, find a job, and then retrain yourself for that job. Find a new company and a new job and retrain. Hope and pray you have enough money set aside to last you much longer than age 65.

But is this scenario still relevant today?

Out of all the kids going to school today, 9% kids will be doing a job which doesn’t exist today.

But is our education system adapting itself to this change?

Look at this era of cryptocurrency, blogging and online learning.

Did anyone taught us this in school?

And even if it is increasing day by day, no one is interested in teaching these things even today.

And this is the only reason most people struggle financially later in life.

No one teaches them real life lessons that are required.

We then keep running after money all our lives and still feel poor.

But there’s one important money lesson that very few people know.

It’s not a secret but the reason very few people know is because very few people actually make an effort to learn.

And that is the reason they never worry about money whether they earn very much or a bit less.

There’s a myth that the more we earn, the more we become rich which is not at all true.

Most of the people have poor money skills hence the moment they earn money, they spend on things which they don’t need.

A person having a salary of 25000 rupees has a mobile phone of 50000 in his hand. That’s equivalent to 60 days of his work’s earning.

Such people never become rich and have to work till they are 60 because of their impulsive spending habits.

In his book Rich Kid Smart Kid, Robert Kiyosaki tells us that most of us don’t become financially free is because we don’t do our homework.

By this, he means he removes a common misbelief that you don’t get rich at work. You get rich at home.

It’s not the how much money we earn but what we do with the money we earn that makes us rich.

If we keep spending the money we earn, we become poor inspire of earning a lot. And if we spend the required money and keep investing the remaining, we have a chance to be wealthy and retire early.

And that is absolutely true.

I am still stunned to see the wealth of one of my relative who was a primary school teacher throughout his lifetime with a meagre salary but fianancially free now because he invested and spent money wisely.

The author further explains that once he returned from Vietnam in 1973, he immediately signed up for
a real estate investment course worth $385, and has made his wife and him millionaires. The income from
the real estate they bought using the formula taught by that course bought them their freedom.

They never need to work again because of the passive income coming in from their real estate investments. So that $385 course has paid them back in something far more important than money.

The information gained from that course has bought them something far more important than job security.

Most of us complain about lack of time but when we have time, we spend it on TV, gossip and mindless internet surfing.

What if we invest our time on learning new things,practicing our skills or building a new business?

What if we spend 1 hour daily on developing ourselves?

Compare one year of consistent lernign and applying actions with that of watching TV.

Compare spending your extra money on useless furniture and expensive cars to that of required spending and investing the remaining.

It’s because of our impulsive spending that we have to work till we retire. Otherwise, most of us have that ability in us to invest smartly and retire early and earn passive income.

Are you still spending without tracking where your money is going?

Time to think.

Image credit: Pixabay.