Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad poor Dad

[Xyril]

1/7 white families in the US are millionaires (very similar to your 1/6 teachers statistic). Would you generalize that to say you could therefore ask any white person about money management?

I used to try that growing up, but I guess the white people couldn't hear me inside their invisible boxes.

Sure it is. If a population is predisposed to wealth, then gaining information about wealth from that population would be a good place to look.

To reiterate Pelee, no, it's not how statistics work. Also, you're moving the goalposts slightly. Earlier, you were talking about how to learn to manage your money and achieve wealth. Now you're talking about "gaining information about wealth." That slight distinction makes all the difference when it comes to correlation and causation. If a population is predisposed to being wealthy, then they are a good group to talk to about what it's like to be wealthy because, statistically speaking, you have to ask fewer people before you find a wealthy person who can speak from personal experience. Causation doesn't matter.

However, the whole discussion isn't predicated on learning what it's like to be rich, it's about learning how to best manage your own money and achieve wealth. In that respect, causation absolutely matters. If you notice that blacksmiths are mostly very wealthy by early adulthood, regardless of how humble their family background, and you have reason to believe that blacksmithing is the direct cause of their accumulation of wealth, then blacksmiths might be a great source of information on making and growing your money. However, if you notice that goblins are suddenly wealthy because they all looted a big city, and a few generations later, their descendants are fabulously wealthy because none of their ancestors blatantly squandered their family wealth, maybe their above average mean and median assets don't necessarily come with great financial acumen.

Now ask why that is.

I have fuzzy numbers on this. Teachers tend to be from upper-middle-class and upper-class backgrounds. ~46% of them attribute there wealth from inheritance. A recent survey concluded that $20,000 was a life-changing inheritance. I am betting that if this question was raised as "Have you inherited $20,000 or more?" that more than 46% of teachers would say yes.

Your phrasing could be a bit more clear. This isn't 46% of teachers. This is 46% of the teachers on whatever list of wealthy people you cite.

So perhaps ~1/2 of those teachers make it via pensions, and perhaps ~1/2 make it via inheritance.

So by your own optimistic numbers, if 1/6 of teachers are "millionaires" and about half of them earn it by inheritance, that means that 1/12 of teachers are millionaires via inherited with. This inheritance may have come with lessons in financial literacy, or maybe not, so at most about 1/12 of teachers have that knowledge to share, and most likely significantly less do. At this point, maybe Chen's idea of asking random white people for financial advice is looking a bit better than asking teachers.

This nut-job saying that one should not trust what teachers teach about money is full nutso-bananas tin-foil-hat keeping folks poor on purpose bull-crap crazy talk.

I'm sorry, I haven't been keeping track well enough, but who exactly is this directed at? I don't think anyone here is trying to keep people poor, nor is anyone arguing that public teachers aren't pretty great people or pretty great resources in general. The only issue I see is that you draw some very strong conclusions based on factual assertions that some people think are inaccurate, and reasoning that some people feel might be flawed or overstated.