While I readily give business advice these days to those who explicitly ask for it, oftentimes I don’t like to use my own success story as a case study. This is because for the most part whoever realises some serious success in any area of life doesn’t really have the full scope of just exactly what it is which made them successful. I mean that’s why even professional athletes need coaching and management, even in the case of those who play individual sports like golf.
What I always do is study the success stories of other people who are in business, particularly those with runaway success stories. It has grown into an entire business and as you know, that’s one of the many factors which contributed to the existence of this blog.
When you study the success stories of businesses which you aren’t emotionally invested in you tend to pick up the elements of success a lot more accurately, something which I recently drew upon when solicited for my opinion on whether or not financial education needed to be implemented at school level.
I think everybody knows the answer to that question, but why isn’t anything really being done about it?
Anyway, I presented my case in what could amount to an entire book which I shall perhaps self-publish soon, but the major take-away from that would be that there isn’t quite an urgent need for the implementation of better financial education at school level. If the need was as urgent as it clearly is in other parts of the world, something would be done about it.
Of course I’m talking about the likes of Southeast Asia when I say “other parts of the world,” in particular Indonesia. In some of the smaller coastal villages surrounding big cities like Jakarta, the village kids attend about one or two compulsory classes per day, which constitutes their formal education. After the mandatory class they often have a choice to keep studying or learning in an environment that is monitored by an authoritative figure – an authoritative figure we can’t really call a teacher in the traditional sense.
Anyway, in these informal classes the kids are taught essential skills which they’ll perhaps need as a matter of survival, such as how to handle real money in real situations. Okay yes, it is a bit of a sad situation in that they’re taught how to handle money because they work at a very young age and so
Bringing things back closer to home, why do you think people who come to our shores from yet ‘other parts of the world’ to start their own businesses go on to thrive? They don’t have all the advantages we have as UK citizens, such as having access to short-term and long-term credit to start their businesses, they have no credit record to speak of and no job to ensure they’ll be able to repay a loan. Many forms of short term credit, such as a loan from Mrlender.com, require customers to be a UK resident with a minimum monthly income, which means a foreign national may have trouble being accepted for credit. However, because of their practical financial education they simply go on to make it work by way of bettering their financial situations.
In short, a financial education should be mandatory across the world if we want to thrive as a global population. If a child from Indonesia received the same financial education as a child in Australia for example, who knows what could happen?