FINANCIAL LITERACY -THE FIRST STEPON THE ROAD TO BECOMING WEALTHY
Most would wonder why so many are not making money, finding financial freedom, or even getting wealthy in the midst of all the opportunities and examples of millionaires that abound – especially in industrialized places like USA, UK, Canada, Japan, Western Europe, Australia, etc. These places and such similar countries harbor the wealthiest people on the planet – at least for the past 150 years or so. The curiosity stretches further: why do their wealth not rub off on the larger society; why can’t others be as lucky as they are and join the league of millionaires, etc.?
There is only one answer to these questions: self-made millionaires are educated in financial literacy. It doesn’t matter if they have a college degree or not; whether they are in manufacturing or entertainment; it all boils down to what they know about money and finance, nothing else.
In effect, while the vast majority of the people remain poor, chasing shadows, and wishing for luck to become wealthy, the rich is getting more sophisticated with numbers, more interested in the politics and economics of the world, more refined with investments and risks, etc. Is it an unfair start, one would ask? No it isn’t. Remember they too started from somewhere.
In other words, it is almost certain that your ability to achieve wealth and financial success is directly proportional to how much interest and zeal you show in matters of money and money-making now that you are not yet rich and successful. Poor people are scared of numbers, easily fatigued with high-level money talk and get drowned in the analysis of how business and governments operate. Whereas, wealth-minded people find interest in these types of matters, pay close attention, and utilize the information they get to harness the innate potentials in them.
This is the bottom linein the difference between those who would make it in future, and those who would not; it is the level of understanding they have in respect to money that counts. This explains why many find great wealth and lose it rapidly. People in sports, entertainment, and some family heirs who have lost millions of dollars and gone bankrupt in recent times buttress this point perfectly. To inherit or achieve great wealth in a very short period of time is one thing, having a good grasp of financial numbers to manage it is another.
Chapter two explains more.