I recently finished teaching my Basic Wealth Accumulation course. The attendance was about the same as usual. I offered the course to over 30 people, and 6 accepted the offer and 3 completed the whole course. The age mix was also normal, near senior to early 20s.
I always wonder why so few people attend. And really, the ones that do attend, all have some money put aside already. They come looking for new ideas, and new knowledge. It reminds me of the advice I got from Kevin O’Leary about teaching finance. “Even if you give the course away for free, the people who really need it, won’t take it.”
I doubt that Kevin or myself, at the time, knew he was paraphrasing the Bible. I didn’t know until I was reading Jordan Peterson’s book 12 rules for life. In the book he talks about the passage from the Bible, Matthew 13:12 that states “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
Explains why 20% of the people have 80% of the wealth and why that doesn’t seem to change. I couldn’t believe it, so I got out one of our Bibles, brushed off the dust and checked. There it was in black and white. If you have lots you will get more. If you have nothing, even that will be taken. Reminds you of Canadian Income tax system.
Sort of tells you that “Making the Rich Pay” doesn’t work and hasn’t worked for hundreds of years. Take a look at history and you will see this born out. The Russian peasants were not any richer after the fall of the Czar. Everybody just became equally poor. The same thing happened after the French Revolution.
I guess that is why most of the people who take the Wealth Accumulation course are people who have some money and not others. I make a big deal that “Getting More” is not always easy. Money does not roll in just because we want it. You have to DO something to make it happen. If you want to win a lottery, you at least have to buy a ticket. The same applies to Finances. You have to learn how money works, then do what works.
I will admit that getting some money saved in the first place, is the hardest part. But once you do; then you have to make that money work as hard as it can, making more money. That takes effort! But anybody can accomplish it. I will give you an example. One of my GIC’s matured a month ago. It was not a lot of money, it was about $2000.00. The bank wanted me to role it into another GIC. But they were only paying 2.25% a year interest and I had to put it in for 28 months. So how much would doing that have made?? $2000 times .0225% equals $45.00 a year. The second year it would have made $46.01 because the first year’s interest would have been in there.
That will hardly take a family of 4 out to Harvey’s for supper. Forget Swiss Chalet. Can this money work harder? Yes, it can. But I had to do some work as well. I have been monitoring Canadian Dividend paying stocks for a few years now. (Takes about 6 hours a month). I have a list of stocks that pay between 8% and 14% a year. I chose one of those stocks, and, bought it. It pays $0.10 a share each month. I was able to buy 290 shares. Each month I get $29.00. In a year, that amounts to $348.00. That is over 7.7 times the return of the GIC. I did the same amount of work as I would have done, putting it into the GIC. But I got over 7 times the return. If I had not taken the time and effort to study the stocks, learn about dividends, and online trading, that option would not have been there. So the extra work paid off.
The bible quote, by it’s self was a little out of context. Matthew was talking about knowledge of the mysteries of heaven, not strictly money. But maybe it would apply to having as much knowledge as you can about money and finance as well.
Can anyone make use of financial knowledge, or just the rich? Anybody can do it. So, the question is, are you? If given the chance to gain more knowledge, will you take it?