The hard truth, as a teacher, I’ve found over 20 years that there’s always an assumption that students are these wonderfully decorated baskets of intellectual yearning who are often cheated out of being filled with ample, colored info eggs. In truth most students find ways to not pay attention, to not engage, to disengage, from children to adults. Whether it’s notes, smartphones or laptops focused on other subject matter. So a teacher is working on a percentage scale of how much is taught and how much then is absorbed and at the same time trying to make it interesting enough to keep people’s attention.
About 80–90% of the American populace has the equivalent of a Middle School understanding of finance or lower. Scaling would be money/currency, cost, value, price, discount, interest, percentage, sale, checking/savings, budget, long-term savings, rent, own, lease, car ownership and costs, retirement, stock purchasing, pension, taxes. The last adding up to the majority of the Poor and Middle Class paying 72.4% in taxes from their total Gross including Federal, State, Local, Late Fees and Banking Costs.
This is both arbitrary and within your control but it requires time, patience, effort, reading (the Kryptonite of people) so people focus on TV and complaining and not engaging the miasma, and I will admit, that even having taken extensive Financial Planning courses, the Basic Level is a miasma because you have to consciously think about your life, your decisions, your future. Now if my parents didn’t, my grandparents, didn’t, then I I sure as hell am not pressing in basic school to learn these things.
In my classes, particularly with disenfranchised adults I work in Financial Management and a 20pg kit that goes from basic to insurance to retirement to taxes—-most have never sought this out but have a working DVD player, a TV, a cell phone.
Wealth and financial maturity are also about delaying gratification and planning for incrementally increasing steps of advancement. Most Americans who can’t afford new cars, rather than turn and question whether they truly need a car or get a basic car, lease a car. Leasing being somewhere up there with a prostitute to pimp in a business transactional relationship. Americans also need their cable.
A student in his early 60s, making $35k, no retirement, no pension, pay $250 a month for two cable boxes in his $1000 a month apartment. Another student pays $450 a month on a $45,000 car lease balance, $15,000 of it rolled over and a third pays $400 a month on a $20,000 car lease. They all make less than 35k-40k plus get hit with taxes, so their take-home is about $350-$400 a week. 20-25% of theirtake-home goes to TV and a car that sits in a drive way—-Time Warner/Spectrum Cable and Banks, Leasing Agents, Car Dealerships. Throw in another $50–100 a month for a cell phone. And at least 1/3 of their take-home pay is gone before you even get near food, shelter, necessities.
The range is supposed to be 25–33% of your Net is for shelter, food, and transportation. Which means that roughly $7000-$12000 depending on family size and additional contributions.
Because that number isn’t drilled into students when adults get the money they either imitate their parents bad spending choices, fear of financial management or think their “generation” is something different relative to the world and therefore should have “more opportunity. Who told you that? TV. The world market, balances and skill to earnings ratio will always fluctuate. One of the big reason why it’s going to massively fluctuate is because you can mail a cell phone, a laptop, even a car to a foreign country that isn’t at the same developmental level as America. But with those items, those people can now accelerate faster than previous generations could. More people are coming onto the world field through globalization. So my three student examples form above, their Financial IQ is competing with a hundred men their ages and younger who use the internet to understand America’s financial systems and budgeting. Then all they have to do is get here. Then when they get here it’s easier for them, having coming from much less to act within boundaries of limitation financially.
Here in NYC, there are many food carts—-you can get into one for less than $5000. Ostensibly you could work one 40 hour job and do your cart on the weekends and holidays. Americans have a delusion about a 40 hour work week being the absolute boundary of “work”. Most foreigners don’t. I personally don’t. So I see my foreign students absorb the Financial Management information I give them and question based upon comparative critical thinking. A leased car vs a used car? Which makes financial sense, not emotional desire?
The American/Western perception of self to money and control by a governmental/employer body is what upsets understanding and therefore progress.
I have operated as Kyle, Inc. since I started my first business at 6 and then went national at 14. I’ve worked for lots of big and great companies, MetLife, CitiBank, Williams, GMHC, Phoenix House, NYCDOE, Dreyfus, several law firms, Goldman Sachs, etc. and they’ve all paid me good money. And I made it a point to ask questions, to listen intently, to pick the brains of folks. Most Americans don’t. You must act like a company when dealing with the government, the IRS and your employers——because they’re not acting like an individual, buddy, pal, friend when dealing with you. Information and detachment.
My students? Go to work. Clock in, clock out, get check, money out, complain, commiserate. Try and find distractions, like TV, cars, shopping, speed, drugs, sex, to avoid delving into the complexity of financial management for one’s lifetime.
Ironically it’s much the same of what they did to avoid too much absorption in school.
I submit, financial education is absolutely needed. But it will only work for a small number of students that it’s intensively delivered to. That unfortunately means coming from enlightened teachers who make it part of their base curriculum like I have with games like Cashflow 101 by Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Poor Dad and the Playbook for Life. This goes directly, abstractly into Rich Dad Poor mentality differences by Robert Kiyosaki.
The rest? This will include minorities—-(87% of Mercedes, Lexus, Infiniti and Audi lessors are not millionaires and 50% are people of color); cable, cell phones, movie goers, clothing purchasers. Even as media becomes “less” expensive by being more accessible, people of color are gobbling up more of it so there is no price drop. Less than 50% of POC homes throughout America have computer/internet capability, while 87% of Whites do, and over 90% of Asians. Yes, we have smart phone connection but what a computer connection at home means, a work station, is that the family is computer literate, advanced, able to research and ask questions on everyday issues.
Their tax dollars, outrageous payments and out of control money habits keep prices relatively accessible for the rest of us who then pick and choose which thing should be our “expensive” indulgence.
We’re steadily moving towards a society of expensively dressed slaves and moderately dressed people who understand and know how to manage money.
Smile, Kyle
KylePhoenixShow@gmail.com
KylePhoenixShow@gmail.com
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