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Comment by Reedx | Hacker News Reader

Even if it was an insane amount of cash, it'd quickly disappear and end up in the same position or worse. Look at the outcomes of lottery winners and others who come into a sudden windfall. Even when it's not sudden, you have clogs to clogs in 3 generations.

I think one of the biggest impacts we could make is to teach financial literacy in school, to everyone. Form and reinforce good habits early on. Demonstrate the danger of credit card interest. Demonstrate the power of compounding all throughout 1st to 12th grade. Taken seriously, it could have a huge effect on outcomes. It'd also make something like the Freedom Dividend (UBI) more effective when/if it happens.

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This is the only lesson I really took away from Robert Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad, Poor Dad."

People will say what they will about the man, and his kin, that he's a peddler and just another business man out for himself. I'm sure much of that is true, and personally I can't reconcile the fact that he is personal friends with DJT...

However his strongest point throughout that book is that it is essential that people who want to 'make money' rather than taking it, need to be educated on the subject. He juxtaposes this with his view of the situation present: that people are only educated to become good workers, and to depend on one institution or another for their income.

I am still trying to internalise a lot of the sentiment from that book and my financial self-education will continue (I hope) for many more years.

This book is hot garbage. His analysis of real estate (apperently not an asset) is so bad that I cannot imagine that anyone who read this book made money. Even if the author wasn't shady I'd throw it away

Here’s a summary of the book:

“”” The Five Big Ideas

The poor and the middle-class work for money. The rich have money work for them.

It’s not how much money you make that matters. It’s how much money you keep.

Rich people acquire assets. The poor and middle class acquire liabilities that they think are assets.

Financial aptitude is what you do with money once you make it, how you keep people from taking it from you, how to keep it longer, and how you make money work hard for you.

The single most powerful asset we all have is our mind. “””

Some of the book might be “garbage”, but some of the central concepts most certainly are not, and popularising the above is worthwhile IMHO. Not saying you are wrong, but I do believe it is wrong to so strongly denounce the book without recalling its virtues.

The summary above is from the 1st link I looked at: https://www.samuelthomasdavies.com/book-summaries/business/r...

I have shown my children my bank account quite early (which is not very usual on France where we are very secretive about money) so that

- they know they are financially safe (everyone is taking about money disasters, I wanted to lower their stress)

- they realize that money comes from somewhere (salary) and goes to many places (tax, food, internet,...).

This made them think about spending and fortunately we live in a place where there is no peer pressure on fashionable items.

I think that getting our of poverty requires either a zillion generations (you made the case of teaching the right things at school), or having a determined parent to explain how to get money (education, employment) and keep it (having a lifestyle adapted to what you have).

Unfortunately this is much much easier when you are wealthy.

I think this is exactly the right approach. The taboo of talking about income and money has got to end, if even just within families. It's probably one of the most harmful cultural hangovers still in common practice.

If we had UBI or something equivalent, financial literacy would probably help. But found it the other way around is simply insulting. Most poor people do not have any money to 'manage', they can only try to keep up with all expenses and hope no unexpected expenses happen. If unexpected expenses do happen, there is simply nothing good they can do about it - they must choose where to go into debt, and hope they will happen to find some way to repay that debt from an unexpected windfall.

Sure, there is a minority of cases where people squander a windfall, like in GP's example. It is such a small minority that it's barely worth mentioning.

I'd also note that people who have been toiling away for years on minimum wage may be forgiven and understood if they decide to use a small windfall on buying a small luxury like a pretty dress or trip to Disneyland for their children, instead of investing it in some stock or whatever would be the 'rational' thing to do. Humans beings are not robots, and we need more than food and a roof to live even a half-way acceptable life.

> use a small windfall on buying a small luxury like a pretty dress or trip to Disneyland

It's still a pretty bad idea if they have literally zero precautionary savings and are one unexpected expense away from disaster. Keeping that windfall in the piggy bank would make them a lot happier and less stressed out in the long term than reminiscing about that crazy trip to Disneyland. But I can see where being severely socially marginalized all the time might make it really hard to think properly about these things. That's often a way bigger issue than the actual money problems, really.

This was the first thing that came to my mind as well. You can't keep what you can't earn.

Financial literacy doesn't matter when you don't have the money to put it to use.

Whenever my parents tried to save up money, it was quickly drained that same month for medical issues, food, bills and more. I think when you're thinking of poverty you're thinking of someone in the middle class spending above their means.

When I think of poverty, I think of the time spent wondering if we could afford to pay for trash this month, eating one meal a day because that's all we could afford and hoping we don't get sick or injured.

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