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Most people were never taught how money truly works. Schools skipped over the subject entirely, leaving generations unprepared to manage debt, build assets, or create freedom. Instead, we were trained to think that working until 65, then hoping to retire on a pension or savings, was the best we could do. But here’s the truth: without financial education, you’ll never get ahead, and that’s exactly how the system was designed.
In this article, we’ll explore why financial education is missing, why it matters, and how you can reclaim control of your future by applying principles the wealthy have known all along.
Why Financial Education Is Missing From Schools
The public education system in the U.S. and much of the Western world was born out of the Industrial Revolution in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The goal wasn’t to create innovators, entrepreneurs, or wealth-builders, it was to create a disciplined workforce that could power factories and industries.
Think about the structure: fixed schedules, bells that mimic shift changes, standardized testing, and curricula focused on memorization and obedience. This wasn’t accidental, it was modeled on the Prussian education system, which was admired by industrialists and politicians for producing obedient citizens and reliable workers.
Industrial titans like John D. Rockefeller had a heavy hand in shaping education. Rockefeller’s General Education Board, founded in 1903, poured millions into American schools with the stated goal of “shaping character” and “developing the right habits.” But if you look closely, their mission wasn’t to teach financial independence, it was to produce workers who would support the economic machine. Rockefeller himself famously said, “I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.”
Meanwhile, subjects that could create true independence, like investing, wealth-building, asset protection, and entrepreneurial thinking, were deliberately absent from the curriculum. Instead, schools pushed the narrative of getting a job, earning a paycheck, and relying on banks and government programs for survival.
This lack of financial education created the perfect setup for dependency. With no knowledge of how money works, most people fell into the cycle of earning, spending, borrowing, and repeating, while the wealthy elite who did understand money built generational empires.
The numbers tell the story:
In the U.S., over 60% of adults live paycheck to paycheck despite record levels of productivity.
Consumer debt has ballooned to over $17 trillion, with credit cards charging average interest rates above 20%.
Yet at the same time, the top 1% of households hold more wealth than the entire middle class combined, because they’ve always had access to financial knowledge and strategies hidden from the average person.
This isn’t about intelligence. It’s about training. If you’re only taught to trade time for money, you’ll never learn how to make money work for you. That’s why financial education, learning about cash flow, assets, and leverage, isn’t just important, it’s essential for breaking free of the system’s design.
Why Waiting Until 65 To Retire Is A Trap
Traditional advice has always been the same: go to school, get a good job, save diligently, and one day, after 40 or more years of work, you’ll finally retire and enjoy life. Sounds nice on paper, right? But let’s be real: this model is broken, outdated, and designed to keep you stuck.
Pensions? Practically extinct. Your grandparents may have retired on one, but today, fewer than 15% of private-sector workers have access to a traditional pension. The rest are left to gamble their future on volatile 401(k)s or IRAs that rise and fall with the market.
Social Security? Under strain like never before. The Social Security Administration itself admits that unless changes are made, funds could be depleted by the mid-2030s. Translation: don’t count on it to save you.
Inflation? It’s the silent thief. Every year, it eats away at your purchasing power. That “safe” nest egg in the bank doesn’t stretch nearly as far as you think it will. A dollar saved today may only be worth 60 or 70 cents in 20 years.
So here’s the uncomfortable truth: if your plan is to grind away until 65 and hope the system takes care of you, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. By the time you finally “retire,” your body may be tired, your energy depleted, and the best decades of your life already behind you.
Do you really want to wait until you’re in your sixties to finally live life on your own terms? To travel, to spend time with family, to do the things that light you up? The traditional retirement model was never about freedom, it was about control. It was designed to keep people working, consuming, and feeding the system until the very end.
The wealthy don’t play that game. They don’t wait until 65. They focus on financial education, learning how money works, how to build cash-flowing assets, and how to make their money work for them instead of trading time for a paycheck. That’s how they buy freedom decades earlier, not just for themselves, but for their families.
If you want to break free, you have to stop following the rules that were written to keep you broke. Financial education is the exit strategy.
Robert Kiyosaki’s Principles: Financial Education In Action
Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad is one of the most influential books on financial education and for good reason. It challenges everything that traditional advice tells us about money, careers, and retirement.
Assets vs. Liabilities: Most people are taught to believe their house, their car, or their possessions are assets. But unless those things generate income, they’re actually liabilities. Kiyosaki teaches that assets are what put money in your pocket: rental properties, businesses, dividends, royalties, silver, gold, or other investments that produce cash flow. Liabilities, on the other hand, drain you and the average person spends their entire life working to service liabilities instead of building true wealth.
Cash Flow Is King: Here’s the harsh truth: a paycheck is not financial freedom. The moment you stop working, your paycheck disappears. The wealthy don’t just focus on earning income; they focus on building streams of recurring cash flow. Assets that pay you over and over again are what create independence.
Entrepreneurial Mindset: Instead of spending a lifetime working for money, Kiyosaki emphasizes learning to make money work for you. That means developing systems, businesses, and investments that continue to generate income even when you’re not physically working. This shift in mindset, from employee to entrepreneur, from consumer to creator, is what separates those who are trapped from those who are free.
Financial Literacy Is Freedom: Taxes, debt, inflation, and leverage, these aren’t just financial buzzwords, they’re the real rules of the game. The wealthy understand how these forces work and use them to their advantage, while most people are blind to them and pay the price. Financial education isn’t about getting rich quick, it’s about learning the rules so you can finally stop playing a rigged game.
My Personal Journey With These Principles
I can speak on this with authority because I’ve lived it. I first picked up Rich Dad Poor Dad in 1999. Unlike most people who read a book and forget about it, I took Robert’s advice seriously and applied it to my life.
That decision changed everything.
Because I studied and acted on these principles, today I’m free. Free from a boss. Free from debt. Free from the trap of working my entire life to build someone else’s dream. Instead of just earning a paycheck, I’ve built multiple streams of income, preserved my wealth in real assets, and created the freedom to live life on my terms.
And here’s the truth: if I could do it, so can you. The difference is, most people never get financial education and without it, they’re stuck in a system that was designed to keep them there.
That’s why I write, coach, and share this knowledge: to show you that there is another path. You don’t have to wait until you’re 65 to finally live. You can build financial independence now if you’re willing to learn and apply the principles of financial education.
How To Start Building Financial Education Today
Here’s the empowering truth: financial education is something you can learn at any age. You don’t need permission from a school or government program. You don’t need a degree in finance. You can begin right now by taking small, practical steps that build over time.
One of the fastest ways to shift your financial reality is to study wealth principles every single day. Books like Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki give you the foundation, but don’t stop there. Follow it with The Cashflow Quadrant or classics like Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. These aren’t just books, they’re roadmaps that challenge the traditional advice of working for a paycheck and teach you to think like an investor. The more you expose yourself to this kind of thinking, the more your perspective on money begins to shift.
But reading alone isn’t enough. You need to immerse yourself in conversations that reinforce these ideas. Swap out some of your entertainment time with podcasts and audiobooks that sharpen your financial mindset. Shows like The Rich Dad Radio Show or BiggerPockets Money Podcast provide real-life strategies and stories from people building wealth today. And whenever possible, seek mentors. Whether it’s a local investor, an online coach, or a mastermind group, learning directly from those who’ve already done what you want to do accelerates your growth. Immersion is the key, the more you surround yourself with wealth-focused knowledge and people, the faster your own transformation begins.
👉 Example: Instead of scrolling social media before bed, read 10 pages of a financial education book. In a year, that’s 3–5 books that could completely rewire how you think about money.
Every dollar you earn is a worker. If you send it out to buy liabilities (cars, clothes, gadgets), that worker doesn’t come back. If you send it to buy assets, that worker recruits more workers.
Invest in Assets, Not Toys: One of the biggest mindset shifts in financial education is learning the difference between assets and liabilities. Most people think their house, car, or the latest gadget is an “asset,” but if it doesn’t generate income, it’s actually draining your pocket. True assets, rental properties, dividend-paying stocks, businesses, royalties, silver, or gold, put money into your pocket whether you work that day or not. The problem is, society trains us to consume rather than invest. Every dollar that goes toward toys and lifestyle inflation is a dollar that could have been building your financial foundation. Start small if you need to, but make it a rule: whenever money comes in, ask yourself, “Will this purchase grow my wealth or shrink it?”
👉 Example: Instead of buying a $400 new phone upgrade you don’t need, put that $400 into an S&P 500 index fund. Left alone for 20 years at 8% growth, that one decision could be worth nearly $2,000.
Depending on one paycheck is like standing on one leg, unstable and risky. Diversify your income so that if one source dries up, others still support you.
Create Multiple Streams of Income: Relying on a single paycheck is one of the riskiest financial decisions you can make. Jobs can vanish overnight, industries can collapse, and companies can downsize. Financial education teaches you that wealth is built on diversification, not dependence. Side businesses, affiliate programs, online coaching, real estate, or investments — each one is another stream flowing into your river of financial security. Even if one dries up, the others keep the river flowing. I’ve built my freedom on this principle, creating income streams that work together instead of relying on just one. That’s how you gain control, not just over your money, but over your time and your future.
👉 Example: If you earn $100 a month from a side hustle, reinvest that money into assets. Over time, that stream compounds, and eventually, your “side” income can surpass your main paycheck.
Your mindset is the foundation of financial freedom. If you believe money is evil, or that wealth is unattainable for “people like you,” you’ll sabotage your own progress. Shift your relationship with money.
Rewire Your Money Mindset: At the core of all financial education is a mindset shift. If you’ve been taught that money is scarce, evil, or something only “other people” figure out, you’ll keep pushing it away. Instead, start seeing money for what it really is: a tool. A tool for freedom, a tool for impact, a tool for creating a legacy. When you change how you think about money, your decisions change. You stop avoiding opportunities, you stop settling for debt as “normal,” and you start using every dollar to work toward your bigger goals. Remember: your mindset creates your reality. Rewire it to see money as an ally, and it will begin working with you instead of against you.
👉 Example: Write down one money belief you grew up with (like “money is hard to come by”). Then reframe it daily with a new belief (“money flows to me because I create value”). Over time, this reprograms your subconscious.
Here’s The Bottom Line
At the end of the day, financial education is the dividing line between living life on someone else’s terms or designing it on your own. Without it, you’ll stay trapped in the cycle of trading hours for dollars, hoping that someday, maybe at 65, retirement will finally save you. But with financial education, you can build assets, create cash flow, and achieve freedom long before traditional retirement age.
The truth is, the system was never built to make you wealthy. It was built to keep you working. Public schools and mainstream advice trained you to follow the rules, collect a paycheck, pay your bills, and pray that what’s left is enough. But here’s the reality: if you keep playing by their rules, you’ll keep getting their results. Financial education is how you break free from the cycle and start playing your own game.
And this is where I can help you. I’ve been studying wealth creation, business systems, and financial literacy for over 17 years. I’ve applied what I’ve learned from some of the greatest thinkers in the world and used it to build freedom for myself, freedom from a boss, freedom from debt, and freedom from living someone else’s dream. Now, I help others do the same.
That’s why I’m offering a FREE 20-minute coaching session (valued at $175) where I’ll personally walk you through identifying where your financial mindset and strategies are holding you back, learning how to build assets and multiple income streams, step by step, and creating a plan that puts you in control of your money, instead of letting the system control you.
You don’t need to wait decades to live life on your own terms. Financial education gives you the tools to do it now. Let me help you get there.
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