TEACH THEM ABOUT MONEY

Continuing the education theme of the last post, one observes that the education system in Ireland, up to completion of secondary level, actually delivers very little knowledge in the ways of life that students will encounter.

Sure, it teaches them the life science subjects but one aspect that is missing is financial education.

All education is designed to inform, first and foremost. After that, it is all about coaching students to pass exams in order to have a career where they earn money to provide them with the essentials of life. Money is the key word here. Money provides the basics, but it also provides the luxuries we all hanker after.

If you take the career graph of a university graduate in any discipline, it is noted that 94% end up in jobs working for somebody else. They move jobs as their career progresses but they still end up working for someone else. Their ability to earn is dictated by the constraints of the career or company they work for.

They have fallen into a trap. It may not be a poverty trap in the sense that they are not begging on the streets, but it is a trap nonetheless, that imposes limits as to what they can earn.

They get married or live with partners and start a family. They need a mortgage to buy a house or find the money to pay the rent. They need a car or maybe two depending on circumstances. They need holiday breaks from a demanding career that stresses them out. All of this costs money; for most ordinary people the career path does not provide enough of it.

From the outside, things may look rosy but scratch the surface and you find people who struggle to meet the bills every week of their life. They save to educate their kids, advise them on finding a safe career that actually sentences them to the very same lifestyle they have.

It is one of a grinding battle to find the money to live within a tight parameter impose by the salaries they earn. They will never be rich. At best they might achieve what is called being comfortable. It doesn’t matter if it is the university professor or a public servant. There is a ceiling on what they can do with their lives because of the income they have.

Avoidance of this could be addressed if money management and money creation was taught at secondary school, instead of what is in effect bookkeeping.

Teaching kids lessons on how be creative in making money will throw up entrepreneurial flair at young age. Some will say that this trait will show itself anyway, but that is only true of a limited number of people who have confidence at that age.

Others without this quality need to be taught that there is more to life than straitjacketed careers of enduring desperation. There is no money to be made in working nine-five for somebody else. You are merely a tool in another’s ambitions. You are deemed useful until you become useless. A grey suit in a faraway place will study a spreadsheet and make a decision that puts you on the dole. You do not have control of your own destiny.

If the education in Ireland had financial self-reliance as a subject on the syllabus for the five years of secondary education, there would emerge from our colleges a body of students with a an entirely different outlook on life and how to deal with the most important part of it.

In fairness, it is not just Ireland that is at fault. The entire western world lacks this facet of knowledge in their education systems.

There is a famous book written about achieving financial independence, called Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lecter. It should be compulsory reading on any secondary school syllabus. Secondary education should see their goal as one that sends out students equipped to deal with the world.

Failing that, every parent who cares about their kid’s future should buy it and make them read it! It is worth the price.