Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad poor Dad

[Willie the Duck]

As to the OP, I was lent Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad poor Dad" over 15 years ago right after leaving my MSc and entering the world of business, and it was instrumental in convincing me to branch into real estate. Cap rates in my home area at the time were really good, I bought a fixer upper mixed use 4-story downtown building, refinanced it after fixing it up, rinse and repeat, and had a nice portfolio in my Eastern Canadian hometown just in time for everything to rise up as interest rates fell sharply. Then around 2010-2012 I build a second portfolio in the U.S. Sunbelt where cap rates were great, and that one went up as well. (I'm conservative in what I choose to acquire; I demand good cap rates, among other things.)

Was there anything from his book that contributed to this success, other than getting you into real estate? I ask because the basic mantra of 'property is a good investment' has been a relatively constant drumbeat from economic gurus ever since the second World War, so I'm wondering if there was any Kiyosaki-specific advice that was life-changing.

[darkrose50]

Was there anything from his book that contributed to this success, other than getting you into real estate? I ask because the basic mantra of 'property is a good investment' has been a relatively constant drumbeat from economic gurus ever since the second World War, so I'm wondering if there was any Kiyosaki-specific advice that was life-changing.

Oh he says things that are 100% true! All good con-artists need to do that.

His central premise is to go find people who know about money and learn from them. The thing is that he then says "I know about money, pay me, and I'll school ya!" This is something that we don't see billionaires doing.

-----

I find it amazing that basically his book title reads: Learn carpentry from a carpenter, don't learn carpentry from a non-carpenter.

[Peelee]

Cultural capital is growing up around a skillset or idea. If 1/6 teachers are millionaires, and 46% of them inherited it, then teachers would be an excellent source of cultural capital surrounding wealth.

There's an old joke, you've probably heard it before: what do you call the person who graduated at the bottom of their class in medical school? "Doctor."

You're conflating a whole lot about generational money, ability to hold on to money, investing, and teaching. Not to mention that tactics that work for rich people may not work for poor people.

[Tvtyrant]

Oh he says things that are 100% true! All good con-artists need to do that.

His central premise is to go find people who know about money and learn from them. The thing is that he then says "I know about money, pay me, and I'll school ya!" This is something that we don't see billionaires doing.

-----

I find it amazing that basically his book title reads: Learn carpentry from a carpenter, don't learn carpentry from a non-carpenter.

Ben Franklin once said it took him a decade to save his first hundred pounds, five years the second, and a year the third. There is also the "you have to spend money to make money" phrase. Poor people lack any investment capital at all, middle class and upper class individuals aren't going to have great advice for them.

If you really want good financial advice to make it out of poverty you go to migrant families that accomplished it. The ones who open franchises staffed by their cousins and work 15 hour days.

[Peelee]

Ben Franklin once said it took him a decade to save his first hundred pounds, five years the second, and a year the third. There is also the "you have to spend money to make money" phrase. Poor people lack any investment capital at all, middle class and upper class individuals aren't going to have great advice for them.

If you really want good financial advice to make it out of poverty you go to migrant families that accomplished it. The ones who open franchises staffed by their cousins and work 15 hour days.

Nail on the head. A rich person loves debt because even though they have the money to pay it off, they can invest that money at a higher rate than the interest on the debt. A poor person hates debt because they don't have the money to pay it off so the interest rate means they owe more money they don't have.

Saving money works differently depending on how much you have.

[darkrose50]

Ben Franklin once said it took him a decade to save his first hundred pounds, five years the second, and a year the third. There is also the "you have to spend money to make money" phrase. Poor people lack any investment capital at all, middle class and upper class individuals aren't going to have great advice for them.

If you really want good financial advice to make it out of poverty you go to migrant families that accomplished it. The ones who open franchises staffed by their cousins and work 15 hour days.

Money wins on so many fronts. Money can buy the thing. Money can buy the thing in bulk. Money can buy the thing when you do not need it now, but will need it later. Poor people pay more for stuff then rich people.

If something like toilet paper or laundry soap goes on sale, then those with money can stock up. Those without money are trapped always having to pay the non-sale price, or the one-use price. If you have no money and you bought soap last week for full-price, then you likely don't have extra money to buy extra future soap because it is on-sale.

Buying in bulk is a thing. Target sometimes has the buy a case of toilet paper and get a $5 gift card deal. If my wife would let me my basement would be full of on-sale toilet paper, and laundry soap (the ones that we WILL use). Why not buy enough to last until the next sale?

[Peelee]

Money wins on so many fronts. Money can buy the thing. Money can buy the thing in bulk.

Bulk, unsurprisingly, is bulky. Space costs money. I buy in bulk a ton. I have a Sam's Club and Costco card. I have a fridge/freezer and separate freezer in the garage in addition to the fridge/freezer in the kitchen. I can store a lot of food. The garage is also amazingly spacious, as well as the garage in the second house that came with my house. I can store a lot of stuff in general.

My friends who had a ~900 sq ft house with no garage? They can't store jack. Buying in bulk doesn't exist for them because they have nowhere to put it.

[darkrose50]

Bulk, unsurprisingly, is bulky. Space costs money. I buy in bulk a ton. I have a Sam's Club and Costco card. I have a fridge/freezer and separate freezer in the garage in addition to the fridge/freezer in the kitchen. I can store a lot of food. The garage is also amazingly spacious, as well as the garage in the second house that came with my house. I can store a lot of stuff in general.

My friends who had a ~900 sq ft house with no garage? They can't store jack. Buying in bulk doesn't exist for them because they have nowhere to put it.

We have a small 1950's brick house that has ~1150 square feet, but with an equal basement. We have an attic that is not used for storage, a basement that is used for storage, and a 2.5 car garage that has some storage in it. The neighborhood is old, and the houses are small by todays standards. The high-school is very highly rated. A 3000 square-foot house might cost you $500,000 to $600,000 and a house my size might cost you $230,000. Essentially in order to have a bigger house an older house would need to be torn down, had a fire, or otherwise be majorly renovated.

My wife wants a new house with one more bedroom, one more bathroom, and one more room to use as a dining room. The house also must be on 1/2 of the town so that the kids can stay in the same school with their friends, and in the same area as the high school.

We almost bought a house with a three car garage with a second floor. That would have been neat. However the house itself was about 80% to 90% of what we wanted, and she decided that she wanted to wait for a better one to come along (I am okay with her picking the house). I was somewhat relieved as the house had a staircase to the second floor that was quite narrow, the basement stare landing required you to duck, the upstairs rooms were angled, and every damned fool wall was a window or closet. I swear to god every damned fool wall seemed like it was a window, or a closet. I had mild concerns that I would not be able to have furniture, or center a TV on any wall. The yard was also quite small.

[Xyril]

When I was 16 my grandmother gave me $1,000 after she sold her house and moved in with her sister. I wanted to invest that money, but my mom told me that investing was a good way to loose money and forbade it. I instead went on a trip to Europe. That $1,000 would be worth ~$94,000 today if invested in the S&P 500. NO WORK ON MY PART . . . NO EFFORT ON MY PART . . . NONE! Cultural capital in money is a thing that could earn or loose you a bunch of money. My kids are going have that ~$94,000 equivalent, if I can help it happen.

Seriously money without work and without effort is a really cool thing. How people do not know this or believe this is beyond my understanding.

Much like you say about Mr. Kiyosaki, many of the things you say are true, but the whole narrative you're putting together seems flawed to me.

Cultural capital is certainly important. However, your thesis that teachers are naturally more inclined to have that particular cultural capital isn't actually supported by any obvious inferences from any facts you have claimed, and if your conclusion logically follows from your factual assertions through a somewhat more complicated path, you haven't actually done anything to articulate how you got there.

Your mom wasn't wrong about investing. Many, many people lose their shirts because they know enough to understand that investing is generally good, but they don't know anything beyond that. Was 16 year old you sophisticated enough know what index funds were, how to distribute risk, etc, or would you have put all your money into Circuit City and Radio Shack because electronics were the future? Was her position the best one? Obviously, it would have been better if she was aware of the dangers and had the knowledge and confidence to teach you how to avoid unacceptable risks and obvious swindles, but I can hardly fault her for trying to protect you within the scope of her ability.

Then of course there is the matter of values, not to mention the time value of money. You certainly want to prepare for the future--in my case, probably overprepare in terms of saving enough to retire and to handle increasingly expensive and unlikely contingencies--but at some point, the marginal benefit to having that extra money in the future isn't worth the experiences you're sacrificing in the present. If that $94,000 dollars would have meant life-saving or life-changing medical treatment, or staying off the streets once social security runs out, then clearly the trip to Europe seems frivolous. If it means the difference between retiring to a beachfront condo and retiring to a condo with beach access, then I would argue that maybe a trip to Europe in your youth, or playing around with starting your own small business, taking a few courses at the community college, or buying an old car to fix up with your friends, or a number of also possible experiences may have had a bigger impact on your life, one that could also reverberate and compound itself (albeit far less predictably than a mutual fund) throughout the course of your life. Maybe that was one of the values that your mother was trying to impart.

My parents are a lot like how you wished your parents were: They taught me a lot about financial literacy, deferring gratification, preparing for the future, etc. That's why I went to a very pricey school and then went into a very lucrative job in a field that I found challenging and honestly incredibly fun on the day-to-day level, but not fulfilling on the long term. In a few years of working and living much more frugally than most of my friends and coworkers, I easily paid off all my debts and set up the core investments that will most likely afford me a very comfortable retirement, plus some padding for the unexpected. For that, I am very grateful to my parents. However, these weren't the only values they passed down to me. So when I decided that I wanted to leave my career and go back to school in order to (most likely) get paid less to do something more fulfilling, they supported my choice 100%. For that, I am even more grateful.


More relevantly to your original topic, maybe the kind of person who would pay for years of higher education and then forgo more materially rewarding jobs in the private sector in order to teach children whose parents weren't willing or weren't able to pay for private schooling is also the kind of person whose values don't necessarily focus on optimizing investments either.

I would also argue that the nature of public teacher compensation actually works against the sort of financial literacy you're promoting: Anyone with compensation that's heavily balanced towards a company-managed pension fund likely has far less excess direct income to invest as they please and little to no control over how their pension fund is invested. If you barely have any many left after necessities and a large portion of your retirement is taken care of automatically, then it's far less incentive to devote the time and effort necessary to develop a lot of financial sophistication. On the other hand, if you work somewhere that doesn't offer a pension, but instead offers 401k or similar matching plans (where you can control your investment) or simply pays you enough that you have substantial disposable income to save and invest, then the same amount of time devoted to financial literacy can yield much larger gains.

[darkrose50]

Sometimes I express an idea or opinion with the assumption that it is self-evident (or it underlying points are self evident). This is a flaw of mine.

Cultural capital is certainly important. However, your thesis that teachers are naturally more inclined to have that particular cultural capital isn't actually supported by any obvious inferences from any facts you have claimed, and if your conclusion logically follows from your factual assertions through a somewhat more complicated path, you haven't actually done anything to articulate how you got there.

Robert Kiyosaki claims that teachers teach the wrong economic skills. I assert that they are likely to be a good source of economic skills. The assumption being that teachers are predisposed to be (a) wealthy, (b) educated, (c) intelligent, and (d) skilled in explanation.

Inheriting wealth often comes with the cultural capital on how to manage that wealth. I would not assume that these people would be without money management skills. I would assume the opposite. Talking to them should bring light to their skill levels (via comparing and contrasting ideas and advice from multiple other sources). This appears to be a rich source of information gathering that is relatively easy to access for students. We all likely know many teachers.

I will reply to more later. It is time to go home from work.

Apparent paradoxes can be an either / or . . . even a both, embrace them. Some teachers could be an excellent source of information, and some teachers could be a horrible source of information. As a group this one is easy to access, and happens to have individuals highly likely to be from upper-middle-class or upper-class backgrounds with multi-generational wealth.

[Peelee]

Inheriting wealth often comes with the cultural capital on how to manage that wealth.

I disagree that this logically follows.

I would not assume that these people would be without money management skills. I would assume the opposite.

I wouldn't. In fact, I would assume those people would employ money management people who know how to manage said money.

[darkrose50]

"Cultural capital is the accumulation of knowledge, behaviors, and skills that one can tap into to demonstrate one's cultural competence, and thus one's social status or standing in society."

Certainly you are not arguing that cultural capital is not a thing.

You need money to have money management skills. People with money and money management skills have children. Having experience and grown up with money would bring understanding of money along with it. This is a major contributing factor as to why there is a stark multigenerational wealth divide in America. Just money alone is not the whole story.

I know for certain that I have money skills that I was brought up with. I can buy and sell things for profit rather consistently. I learned this from my father. This was just part of my upbringing. My father needed money to buy things to sell. Without my father having extra money I would not have learned how to make money buying and selling things. I have made trips to Disneyland profits rather consistently buying Kickstarter board games and selling them. Nothing to live on, but plenty to afford wiggle-room to splurge, and invest in buying more stock. An equal man from a different background would not be able to do the same, or would need more time to learn what to do and what not to do (perhaps being soured to the idea by having a loss that cultural capital would have prevented this other man into giving up on the idea entirely).

Even employing money management people would bring cultural capital on how to manage money. If I hired the best, then I would likely learn a thing or two. Heck the notion of asking an expert for advice could be that cultural capital.

Case in point . . . people who come into a lot of money without money skills tend to do quite poorly. Lottery winners, professional sports players, entertainers from poor backgrounds without money skills often do poorly with their money. Never having money, they simply do not know what to do with it.

[Willie the Duck]

"Cultural capital is the accumulation of knowledge, behaviors, and skills that one can tap into to demonstrate one's cultural competence, and thus one's social status or standing in society."

Certainly you are not arguing that cultural capital is not a thing.

You're right, that's literally not what is being argued.

[darkrose50]

You're right, that's literally not what is being argued.

Is item of contention that over teachers being a good source of this cultural capital . . . in either quality or the probability of possessing cultural capital surrounding wealth?

[Peelee]

People with money and money management skills have children. Having experience and grown up with money would bring understanding of money along with it.

Skills are not gained by osmosis, and even when taught, different people's proficiency in any given skill are different. How many NBA players have children who also played professional basketball? They were all brought up in households where the parent was a top athlete in basketball, with the knowledge and skills of how to get in and compete at that level. By your logic, professional sports should be dominated by dynasties, but it's actually uncommon.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

You're right, that's literally not what is being argued.

I'm honestly unsure what is being argued. It feels like a correlation not causation issue: "rich people like to go into teaching" being used to argue that "going into teaching makes you rich".

ETA:

Bulk, unsurprisingly, is bulky.

My BA teacher at Uni kept using this simple fact to stress how important was to strive for "0-inventory" (aka "just-in-time") business models. Warehouses are surprisingly expensive... until you realise they cannot possibly be anything other than money sinks (i.e. they cannot produce revenue, so long as they are warehouses and not, say, manufacturing facilities), at which point they become unsurprisingly expensive.

Grey Wolf

[darkrose50]

Skills are not gained by osmosis, and even when taught, different people's proficiency in any given skill are different. How many NBA players have children who also played professional basketball? They were all brought up in households where the parent was a top athlete in basketball, with the knowledge and skills of how to get in and compete at that level. By your logic, professional sports should be dominated by dynasties, but it's actually uncommon.

It is not osmosis, it is life experience. Children observe and soak up surrounding information and behaviors. They learn what money is and how their parents feel about money, how they use money, their relationship with money, and if money is something to be feared or embraced. It is not a guaranteed thing to take after your parents or understand things that they understand, but being exposed to things helps . . . it helps a lot. It is just a common thing that occurs.

One raised believing X tradition, can reject the X tradition, and join a Y tradition . . . but most do not. The son of a carpenter could be a horrible carpenter. The son of a carpenter who grew up around carpeting, and became a carpenter would have an advantage.

My wife and I are not athletes. When I hear sportsball talk I hear "We needed to sportsball more, the other sportsball team sportsballed better than we sportsballed, and that is why they won at sportsball. Next time our offensive sportsball players will need to do better against their defensive sportsball players by looking for the sportsball moves and reacting to them in time to win at sportsball."

My older daughter takes to athletics like a duck to water. Now if I was also an athlete, then that would most definitely be beneficial. She would have a wealth of information about what to do, and what not to do. It would definitely would benefit her to be able to tap into this knowledge bank. She will be at a disadvantage against an equally athletic daughter of athletes.

I'm honestly unsure what is being argued. It feels like a correlation not causation issue: "rich people like to go into teaching" being used to argue that "going into teaching makes you rich".

I think that they are both true. Wealth and IQ and education are correlated. Teachers have wealth and IQ and education. Some is because they come from families with wealth and IQ and education. Some is because they simply have higher IQs and education than other professions with pensions . . . and that IQ and education helps do smart educated things with money and that brings wealth.

Would you say that a teacher or a policeman would have a higher education and IQ?

Would you say that a teacher or a firefighter would have a higher education and IQ?

Would you say that a teacher or a postal worker would have a higher education and IQ?

Teachers likely have more education and more IQ than others in the pension world.

ETA:
My BA teacher at Uni kept using this simple fact to stress how important was to strive for "0-inventory" business models. Warehouses are surprisingly expensive... until you realise they cannot possibly be anything other than money sinks (i.e. they cannot produce revenue, so long as they are warehouses and not, say, manufacturing facilities), at which point they become unsurprisingly expensive.

That's funny NPR (Marketplace?) wont shut up about that company making gobbs of money off of renting warehouse space.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Wealth and IQ and education are correlated.

No, they are not.

ETA: oh, and the logical implication that therefore, lack of wealth correlates to lower IQs is making my skin crawl, so you may want to revise your logic there.

That's funny NPR wont shut up about that company making gobbs of money off of renting warehouse space.

So you are admitting that the company is not in fact using warehouse space for warehousing. They are, in fact, a realtor company. They don't have warehouses at all. They have land, which they rent to companies who are not following my professor's advice, and thus sinking money into warehouses which is collected by "that company".

Grey Wolf

[Peelee]

No, they are not.

ETA: oh, and the logical implication that therefore, lack of wealth correlates to lower IQs is making my skin crawl, so you may want to revise your logic there.

Seconded, and that's even ignoring that IQ tests is a largely discredited way to measure intelligence.

[darkrose50]

No, they are not.

ETA: oh, and the logical implication that therefore, lack of wealth correlates to lower IQs is making my skin crawl, so you may want to revise your logic there.

They are, but they are not. There are other factors other than IQ. Discrimination being a primary source, and wealth being another.

If we have two individuals with an IQ of 140, then they both have the roundabout prerequisite IQ to become a doctor. Social discrimination and/or lack of wealth needed to go to school for 12-years are definitely things that would harm this goal.

Two equal men with an IQ of 140 interested in being a doctor could very commonly not result in the two of them becoming a doctor.

Doctors can make good money. The one that has the right social-economic background to make it to become a doctor will earn a good living. The one who did not have the right socio-economic background to make it to the finish line . . . still has a 140 IQ, and will likely do better than your average 100 IQ guy.

It makes me want to cry that we lost out on so many scientists and doctors due to discrimination, and misuse of resources. Seriously this boils my blood, and makes me wonder what all those geniuses could have accomplished if not for bigotry, and/or poor planning.

So you are admitting that the company is not in fact using warehouse space for warehousing. They are, in fact, a realtor company. They don't have warehouses at all. They have land, which they rent to companies who are not following my professor's advice, and thus sinking money into warehouses which is collected by "that company".

I am not sure, likely they are pooling resources in order to save money. Like a bunch of bakers renting a kitchen as a co-op. They are likely are more like room-mates sharing expenses.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Seconded, and that's even ignoring that IQ tests is a largely discredited way to measure intelligence.

From my own experience, they are only good at measuring one thing: how well you do at thinking like the guy that designed them. And since said guy thinks himself intelligent, he brands you also intelligent if you think like him, on a sliding scale of how fast you are at thinking like him.

From there, it seems that anyone who thinks differently is labelled "savant" or "intuitive" or some other cop-out word to "explain" why someone can figure out, say, the mathematical structure of music even without mathematical knowledge but can't figure out which of the four vaguely-fitting, vaguely-not-fitting answer is the one the guy that designed the test thinks is the most appropriate.

Grey Wolf

[darkrose50]

IQ is the in-vogue measure of intelligence. Pre 1960's-ish vocabulary was in-vogue. We can blame the US Army for IQ being the standard. We can blame computers for IQ being so highly in demand. Computer programmers do not need a huge vocabulary . . . they need huge problem-solving skills. No one is making a killing on their huge vocabulary, and most folks no longer care about a vast vocabulary . . . they care about the money IQ brings with computer stuff.

All the crazy wealthy folks seem to be high IQ nerdy computer guys . . . they did not get there by talking pretty . . . I am sure talking pretty helps, but you need the nerdy IQ as well.

[Peelee]

IQ is the in-vogue measure of intelligence.

If you admit that it's simply en vogue and doesn't have any actual worth, why are you propping it up as a worthwhile metric?

[darkrose50]

If you admit that it's simply en vogue and doesn't have any actual worth, why are you propping it up as a worthwhile metric?

It is en vogue (en, good to know) because computers are en vogue and money is en vogue and computers equal money.

Talking pretty will not make you near the money that IQ will now-a-days because of computers.

Talking pretty still equates to intelligence . . . just not the kind that is nearly as profitable as IQ. This could change, and likely will change, over time.

[Peelee]

It is en vogue (en, good to know) because computers are en vogue and money is en vogue and computers equal money.

Actually, both "in vogue" and "en vogue" are correct. The "e" version is just the original French term.

Anyway, computers and money are not "en vogue," they are both objectively useful tools used by virtually every metric. IQ tests are not.

[Willie the Duck]

IQ is the in-vogue measure of intelligence. Pre 1960's-ish vocabulary was in-vogue. We can blame the US Army for IQ being the standard. We can blame computers for IQ being so highly in demand. Computer programmers do not need a huge vocabulary . . . they need huge problem-solving skills. No one is making a killing on their huge vocabulary, and most folks no longer care about a vast vocabulary . . . they care about the money IQ brings with computer stuff.

All the crazy wealthy folks seem to be high IQ nerdy computer guys . . . they did not get there by talking pretty . . . I am sure talking pretty helps, but you need the nerdy IQ as well.

This is actually a pretty good post to highlight the problem. There is a seed of an idea in here (multiple, actually). However, there isn't an actual A to B to C that brings it from premise to supporting points to conclusion. Ignoring whether all the points are accurate (plenty of non-US Army sources started using IQ tests in their hiring practices in the 1960s, and if they did so due to the army doing so, a supporting-evidence link would be useful), there are a number of steps that have not been actually laid out. The first is that IQ is a good measurement of something. Next that what it measures is problem solving skills. Next that computer programmers have this quality*. Also that the crazy wealth folks are computer guys**. And then that this IQ-measured problem solving ability is a quality that the rise of computers allowed the people who ended up being computer programmers to become the crazy wealthy people of the modern economy.
*I manage computer people. There is a lower boundary on smarts (which is not necessarily IQ), but there are plenty of middling minds in programming.
**If by crazy rich, you mean the people in the 90th-95th percentile slots, certainly. Most of the top 5% are not.

It is the failure to actually follow through on these arguments, DR, that make your arguments seem pretty nebulous. Add to that what others have said about treating IQ as a positive when you need it for your case, and acknowledging its' limitations when it isn't, or treating correlation and causation as the same thing when convenient, and... well, even if you have a point and it is correct, you just haven't done the heavy lifting of actually making that case.

[darkrose50]

Mostly IQ measures whether or not you can learn. An IQ under 70, basically means that it is a lot of trouble to teach you, and that it is likely not worth the time (according to the army). This is what we use in America to determine this for school at least.

IQ nerds like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and his ilk. Lesser IQ nerds as well, I guess.

This looks ligit: https://www.verywellmind.com/history...esting-2795581

I have some very smart friends. Some are wildly successful, and some live in the equivalent of living in their parents basements. My babysitter has an IQ of 167 or something super crazy nuts-o high, has 3-4 English degrees, and cannot hold down a job to save her life. I know a guy (a friend of a friend) who's job is to tell other engineers why their ideas suck . . . he makes bank.

[lio45]

My BA teacher at Uni kept using this simple fact to stress how important was to strive for "0-inventory" (aka "just-in-time") business models. Warehouses are surprisingly expensive... until you realise they cannot possibly be anything other than money sinks (i.e. they cannot produce revenue, so long as they are warehouses and not, say, manufacturing facilities), at which point they become unsurprisingly expensive.

I agree with you in the case of a rented warehouse, but in many cases if you own it it can be a good business model due to the real estate component of it. My company has a sizable warehouse that we use to store various things (mostly surplus and leftovers from jobs), on commercially zoned downtown land next to a multifamily rental building we already owned, and while I would agree with you that paying anything to store that crapload of free stuff that may be useful someday or not would not be worth it (financially, I'd be better off getting rid of it even if it does have some value), doing it the way I'm doing it is perfectly justifiable and profitable.

[darkrose50]

Your mom wasn't wrong about investing. Many, many people lose their shirts because they know enough to understand that investing is generally good, but they don't know anything beyond that. Was 16 year old you sophisticated enough know what index funds were, how to distribute risk, etc, or would you have put all your money into Circuit City and Radio Shack because electronics were the future? Was her position the best one? Obviously, it would have been better if she was aware of the dangers and had the knowledge and confidence to teach you how to avoid unacceptable risks and obvious swindles, but I can hardly fault her for trying to protect you within the scope of her ability.

I have never lost more money than I have gained. Like never. With money I am in the “good enough” category.

Now I could have lost that $1,000 . . . but perhaps I could have done the average. I would like to think that I would have asked the dean at school who taught us about compound interest what to do. Basically he was more-or-less in charge of the school-districts investment money . . . apparently he did quite well with it.

Then again I was an idiot teenager . . ..

Then of course there is the matter of values, not to mention the time value of money. You certainly want to prepare for the future--in my case, probably overprepare in terms of saving enough to retire and to handle increasingly expensive and unlikely contingencies--but at some point, the marginal benefit to having that extra money in the future isn't worth the experiences you're sacrificing in the present. If that $94,000 dollars would have meant life-saving or life-changing medical treatment, or staying off the streets once social security runs out, then clearly the trip to Europe seems frivolous. If it means the difference between retiring to a beachfront condo and retiring to a condo with beach access, then I would argue that maybe a trip to Europe in your youth, or playing around with starting your own small business, taking a few courses at the community college, or buying an old car to fix up with your friends, or a number of also possible experiences may have had a bigger impact on your life, one that could also reverberate and compound itself (albeit far less predictably than a mutual fund) throughout the course of your life. Maybe that was one of the values that your mother was trying to impart.

My parents taught me a lot. Investing in the stock market was not one of them. I somehow managed to average a return of 13.3% between 2004 and now-ish. I am actually quite shocked at how well I have done.

I do not think that I could measure up to my father, but I will try.

I do not think that I would ever be as good at cleaning or organizing as my mother . . . those professional organizers on TV are a pale impression of her level of skill.

My parents are a lot like how you wished your parents were: They taught me a lot about financial literacy, deferring gratification, preparing for the future, etc. That's why I went to a very pricey school and then went into a very lucrative job in a field that I found challenging and honestly incredibly fun on the day-to-day level, but not fulfilling on the long term. In a few years of working and living much more frugally than most of my friends and coworkers, I easily paid off all my debts and set up the core investments that will most likely afford me a very comfortable retirement, plus some padding for the unexpected. For that, I am very grateful to my parents. However, these weren't the only values they passed down to me. So when I decided that I wanted to leave my career and go back to school in order to (most likely) get paid less to do something more fulfilling, they supported my choice 100%. For that, I am even more grateful.

More relevantly to your original topic, maybe the kind of person who would pay for years of higher education and then forgo more materially rewarding jobs in the private sector in order to teach children whose parents weren't willing or weren't able to pay for private schooling is also the kind of person whose values don't necessarily focus on optimizing investments either.

I would also argue that the nature of public teacher compensation actually works against the sort of financial literacy you're promoting: Anyone with compensation that's heavily balanced towards a company-managed pension fund likely has far less excess direct income to invest as they please and little to no control over how their pension fund is invested. If you barely have any many left after necessities and a large portion of your retirement is taken care of automatically, then it's far less incentive to devote the time and effort necessary to develop a lot of financial sophistication. On the other hand, if you work somewhere that doesn't offer a pension, but instead offers 401k or similar matching plans (where you can control your investment) or simply pays you enough that you have substantial disposable income to save and invest, then the same amount of time devoted to financial literacy can yield much larger gains.

Well here is my point. They are an easy source that is accessible. I do not think that they are a source of misinformation, or that they are a source to be ignored. Just the fact that 1/6 of them are millionaires means that they, as a population, would be a good source to learn about money from. I certainly did. 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.

[Peelee]

I have never lost more money than I have gained. Like never. With money I am in the “good enough” category.

Or "lucky enough" category. I'm happy for you, that's great, but your experiences are not necessarily typical and things beyond your control can easily turn things upside down at any time.

Oh, also:

Well here is my point. They are an easy source that is accessible. I do not think that they are a source of misinformation, or that they are a source to be ignored. Just the fact that 1/6 of them are millionaires means that they, as a population, would be a good source to learn about money from.

That's not how statistics works, though.