Financial education: The best investment you can make.

By Money on F.I.R.E in Uncategorized on April 30, 2020

“You will never find a wealthy person who didn’t study wealth.” The Wealthy Gardener

Over the past few weeks I have been diving into some new financial books such as Rich dad Poor dad and the Wealthy Gardener, both of which I highly recommend. While reading both of these books and listening to a number of podcasts one concept has really stuck out to me and it is the idea of educating yourself. Personal enrichment and education on various topics could be argued to be the single most important thing you can do to improve your life, it opens you up to so many new things that you previously may have never thought was possible.

In my case, educating myself about personal finances has been life changing. It completely changed the direction of my life from being comfortable working 30 years in my career as a police officer to realizing that didn’t make any sense for me. At a young age I am already getting bogged down by the idea of mandatory work and spending such a great amount of my time working. By cutting down my time in my career from 30 years to 10 years I am saving 42,000 hours of my time that I can now spend on things I want to be doing. But there is no way I could possibly do this without educating myself about finances first.

For the last 7 or 8 years I have been digging into content about investing, early retirement, living a simple life, financial education, and most currently real estate. As I am embarking on becoming a real estate investor I am realizing that there is so much to learn about this topic that I just simply don’t know. I’ve come to the realization that I can either be scared about it and back away because it’s just too risky, or I can learn about it and find out how I can master it to assist in my dream of financial independence. In a short few weeks I have already learned a ton about real estate which has led to meetings with real estate lawyers, the formation of an LLC, and multiple tips and lessons on how to manage rental properties that I never would have known if I hadn’t taken the time to educate myself.

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best dividends.” Benjamin Franklin

One thing I have become very passionate about is spreading the ideas of financial education. It is the reason this blog was started and also the reason I began to volunteer at a local middle school to teach kids about personal finance. For some reason our society has thought that it is a good idea to teach our kids multiple years of algebra during their school years versus teaching them real life tools of how to handle their finances. I run into adults on a daily basis who simply have no clue how to handle their money. This is partially their fault as they have all the information available that they could ever need to learn how to handle their personal finances, but it is also the fault of our education system as it rarely gets implemented into a students curriculum. Currently over 65% of the U.S population is living paycheck to paycheck, this isn’t because wages are too low for our population to support themselves, it is simply because a majority of that 65% is not educated on how to handle their money. They don’t understand the simple concepts to generate wealth and therefore they will always be stuck in a position where they will never get ahead.

I often wonder how different this world would be if we started making financial education a priority. What if those algebra classes were replaced with personal finance classes? What if every household had a stack of finance books sitting on their bookshelf allowing parents to pass on knowledge of financial success to their children? I personally think it would be life changing for so many people. Stress levels would be reduced, more people would be pursuing their passions instead of being stuck in a job they don’t enjoy, and the levels of entrepreneurship would rise creating more businesses and positive contributions to the economy. Crises like the one we are experiencing right now would not hit as hard, as many more people would have emergency funds set up and be prepared for the unexpected things that come up in life. Overall it would make for a better quality of life for everyone and make our communities much more stable. In my opinion making financial education more of a priority is one of the simplest things we can do that will have the most profound effects on human life.

“If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you”. Brian Tracy

My urge to you is that you simply educate yourself. No matter what it is that you are interested in, become obsessed with it, read about it, and find people who know more about it than you do. Use that knowledge that you have learned and put it to use to make yourself the best person you can be.

When it comes to finances do these things to set yourself up for financial freedom.

Educate yourself- read books, listen to podcasts, etc…
Start investing now- index funds and real estate.
Eliminate your debt
Don’t let other people manage your money, this results in unnecessary fees.
Spend less – Don’t let consumerism control you.
Educate yourself some more and continue to learn throughout your life.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. Nelson Mandela

Below I’d like to share with you the many tools I have used in building up my knowledge base, I highly recommend all of these resources and look forward to your feedback on them.

Books-

The Wealthy Gardener – John Soforic

Rich Dad Poor Dad- Robert Kiyosaki

The simple path to wealth- J.L Collins

Financial Freedom- Grant Sabatier

Your money or your life- Vicki Robin

The four hour workweek- Tim Ferris

The new frugality- Chris Farrell

Blogs-

Mr. Money Mustache https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

My money wizard https://mymoneywizard.com/

JL Collins https://jlcollinsnh.com/