Second Chance

Second Chance prepares you for the greatest evolutionary event in history, which we’re all living through right now: the shift from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, where jobs and traditional educations aren’t the right tools to build wealth anymore.

As I read this, I made a shocking realization: Education might not be the solution to eliminate poverty.

For years I’ve been angry at governments around the world for not investing into the education system. However, even if every country in the world had a proper education system, that might not solve the problem. Yes, people who finish high school and get degrees earn more on average, but that doesn’t make them good at handling finances.

Robert thinks 50, 100 years down the line and until then the old school-college-job-retirement model might not even remotely work out anymore – its demise has long begun.

By not actively being taught the basics of finance in school, and instead trying to push us into the employee-mindset of a hard-working, tax-paying consumer, schools teach us to handle our money poorly, no matter how much we eventually end up making.

Even the million dollar salary of a BMW board member starts to look a lot less attractive considering they have to pay 50% of it in taxes. But if a job’s not the way to go, then what should you do?

I’m glad you asked.

Robert has long been talking about the 4 categories of assets. Right after taking stock of your current financial situation with an income statement and a balance sheet, listing out all of your incomes, expenses, assets and liabilities, you should pick the asset category you’re most curious about and start learning. No one’s going to educate you about finance, you’ll have to do it yourself. Here are the 4 categories with examples: Businesses – you can own one or multiple, and they ideally don’t require your presence. This could mean leaving the CEO position of a company you’ve built and becoming an advisor or running one or more online businesses, which keep running even when you don’t actively work on them every day. Real estate – buy apartments, houses, condos, land to build on or warehouses. Learn everything you can about housing prices, survey an area near where you live for cheap deals and interview real estate agents to know all there is to know before pulling the trigger. Paper assets – stocks, IOUs, bonds, ETFs, index funds, options, derivatives, penny stocks. Basically anything you can buy via a broker. The options are vast, ranging from long-term investments to short-term deals. Commodities – agriculture, live stock, silver, gold, rare metals, oil, natural gas, even water is a commodity.…