When I look into the society of ours today, I wonder where the glory and joy of "Working hard, and get a good job" has gone. Why are so many certificated educated people poor even after so many degrees, they still live on loans and cooperatives. Where has the dream of financial liberation that the educational system promised gone to?
These are questions that linger in my mind, which made me took action on finding the cause and probably the solution.
Let's dive into some of the reasons why most of the certificated people are finding it hard to live the life of luxury
they crave for:
- Lack of financial education.
- Many people end their education in school
- They lack skills needed to create wealth
- They keep buying liabilities.
- Job insecurity
Many educated and gainfully employed people are poor today because they lack financial education, basically the plan is to learn, get a certificate, apply for a good job, and save against retirement.
You might be vast and very skilled in your field of expertise, you might have acquired a reasonable number of degrees and certificates and a high paying job, and still know nothing about money, that's because financial education isn't taught in school, and only few people manage to acquire it.
Our educational system isn't designed to equip us with that knowledge, therefore people that acquire it do so outside of the school curriculum. What then is the way out?
Get financial education by reading books like Rich dad_poor dad, listen to audio books or enroll in programs that aim to teach financial education.
Bill Gates once said "Learning doesn't end in the walls of the classroom, it's a lifetime course". Many believe that education is the degree and certificate they got from school, the truth is that education is far more than that.
Education is what you get through out your life, its like food and necessary as water, it's what you should get everyday. Many people don't believe this, they feel they don't need that hard work, if you are one of them, then forget about being financially liberated because like Warren Buffet noted this is the information age, information is power.
Unfortunately, information gets outdated so if you are not up to date about what's going on in this society in which competition increases everyday, and you don't take your time to learn new things, you are not likely to come across knowledge necessary to create wealth. Start seeing it as food, it is what you should take everyday of you life.
In school, we are taught how to be an employee, we are taught specialization, how to work alone. If we look at the society today, those that are hitting milestone don't do it singlehandedly, they do it with the help of others. People who stick with what they learn in school lack basic survival and manipulative skills needed to thrive in times of hardship, they depend on jobs, all they seek is to be gainfully employed, this way wealth can't be created and what it results to is complain just like we have in our society today.
Since many educated people lack financial education, they buy every new thing in the market, they mismanage money, they buy liabilities, things that increases their expenses day by day, and at the end of the day they end up in debt. If you are asking what I mean by liability, according to Robert Kiyosaki, a liability is something that you buy and it keeps taking away your money, while an asset is something you buy and it ends up creating income for you. If you want to create a positive cashflow and create wealth, stop wasting money on things you don't really need, use that money to buy assets that will create another source of income for you.
An employee's job depends on the decision of others while entrepreneurs are in control of their jobs. Many graduates spend years doing temporary jobs that can hardly take care of their expenses before being gainfully employed, this constitute more reason why many are unable to break free of their financial problems.
At times, when unexpected disaster and situation happens, employed people lose their jobs, and in order to take care of expenses they go into debt which sometimes takes years before they can recover from it.
These are few ideas on some of the reasons why some educated people are poor. Feel free to add your own ideas.