“Keep Them Poor” Rich Dad Poor Dad
The above title was from one of Robert Kiyosaki’s recent interviews. He was talking about the response from the rich people when he asked,
“Why don’t the schools teach us about money?”, and the response was
“Don’t teach them, keep them poor”
I always have a love-hate relationship with Robert Kiyosaki. He is afterall the person who inspired me to start investing with his famous book, “Rich Dad Poor Dad“. However, sometimes he can be very arrogant and snarky.
As I was figuring out why we are so bad with money in my previous post. I chanced upon this interview he did with LondonReal. As much as I don’t like his attitude, his words speaks to me.
Seek out Real Teachers and not Fake teachers
Robert talked about having real teachers in life, instead of fake teachers. To him, real teachers are those who “walk the talk”, meaning those who teaches real skills that is applicable in real life. Such as bookkeeper, accountant, lawyer, banker, real estate agent, etc.
These are real teachers because the skills that you learn from them has real life application. So who are the “fake teachers”?
He broadly refered to academic teachers in schools. For example, teachers who taught calculus which would almost never be used in real life.
Most teachers are out of ethics. They teach subjects which they don’t practice
Robert Kiyosaki
While I don’t agree that most teachers are out of ethics (most of my teachers are wonderful people), I do agree with his point that most of the subjects we learned in school will never be used in our life.
I graduated with a First Class Honours in Chemical Engineering (hint hint). Yet, almost 90% of my graduate subjects were never applicable in my real life. Of course, should I choose to be an engineer, it would be different but I would challenge that still less than 50% would be relevant in any real engineering job, given that it is mostly run by computers these days.
Even other less specialised subjects such as Mathematics, Geography, General Sciences are rarely applied in real life. Yes, we need a basic understanding of these subjects but frankly, I think I know too much about a butterfly’s life cycle.
What are “important subjects” in life?
I agree with Robert that if we want to learn life skills, we need to learn from real teachers in the society.
Learn from an experienced real estate agent on what are the Do and Don’t when come to buying a real estate.
Learn from an accountant or corporate secretary on how to start a company, file your taxes, and do bookkeeping, if you want to be an entrepreneur.
Learn from a lawyer on what are the business regulations, the “Do and Don’t” when you are running a business.
Learn from an experienced investor or money manager to learn how to manage your savings and invest it well, if you want to retire one day.
These are important life skills that school does not teach us, and we are left to fend for ourselves. I was fortunate that I met good mentors along the way but I believe many are not.
So What Are Schools For?
If schools don’t equip us with life skills, what are schools for?
In his interview, Robert says:
The school system will never teach you about money, the school system is designed to teach you to be an employee.
Robert Kiyosaki
“Ouch!”, this was my first reaction when I heard it. But upon deeper reflection, it is so true.
School is designed to make you a contributing member of the society, which is not a bad thing. However, their definition is to make you an employee.
The goal is make you deeply skilled in a certain area so you can be a good employee. For example, you learn maths so that you can eventually learn engineering, so that you can eventually work as an engineer. This is my personal example, but you can just change the underlying words to suit your own situation.
And it is for very good reasons, our society needs employees. Lots of them. Otherwise who will be building the roads, running the hotels. The society is a big factory that needs people to work on it.
Let me make this clear. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with being an employee. In fact, most of us will be an employee all our life. However, even employees need to learn life skills in order to lead a happy and prosperous life. This is where our schools fall short of expectations. They teach you how to be an employee but not how to live successfully in the real world.
This is perhaps the reason why high-income earners run into financial difficulties or “educated” people fell for simple financial frauds. We have learnt so much about our work but learnt so little about dealing with real life situations.
So Should I Send My Kids to School?
YES! You should still send your kids to school. Learning itself has value and most importantly it trains the rigor of thinking. However, you must be aware of the limitations of the subjects taught in school.
If you want to prepare your kid for the REAL world when they graduate from schools, you need to teach them life skills. These are skills which are vitally important but the schools will never teach them. Below is my list of skills which I think kids must know in the future. (Yes Laura, Daddy is preparing you too).
How to manage money – how to save and not overspend but knowing what are the important things to spend on. E.g. education, learning new skills, getting mentors etc. Learn about delayed gratification.
How to let money grow – how to invest your savings and have long term view on investing. Learn about compounding effect and investing psychology. Don’t succumb to FOMO and practise independent thinking.
How to be stand out – how to think and act differently from the crowd. This is the only way to stand out. If you behaving like the crowd, you will just be the average of the crowd.
How to run a business – Learn about accounting, taxes, business laws, logistics etc. These are vital to running a business. Even as an employee, learning to run a business will make you an more valuable employee. Think like business owners even when you are an employee. It is a skill that will distinguish you from the rest
How to advertise or market a business – No matter good your product or service is, the success of all businesses relies on marketing. You can even run a business doing marketing for other businesses.
How to write programmes – Learn coding. This will be the most important language to learn in the future as we become more technologically-inclined. Having the ability to talk to computers and make them work for you is one of the most powerful skills in my view
How to influence others – This is about human psychology. To keep it simple, humans are not 100% logical, we work on instincts and impulses. If you can master the skill of understanding human psychology, you will succeed anywhere.
This is not an exhaustive list but it should start you on a good footing!
See you soon!
Investing Always,
Pete
