Has anyone read “The Richest Man in Babylon?” It’s this … poorly written book full of short stories about making and saving money … As near as I’ve been able to tell it’s geared towards 17-20 year olds but, I didn’t know about it except for the alternative high school. And we didn’t read it, the teacher just gave us summaries of it. I’ve listened to the audiobook about a dozen times but, not until the last few years.
School doesn’t teach much about money at all. Like, still training factory workers even though there are no factories that require workers. Play and Creativity are a school board expense, rather than a priority.
and, I kinda want to incorporate ideas from “Principles” by Ray Dalio. And shit, there might even be some of the best ideas from religious texts.
The idea kind of springs from the thought of Lucas, and asking how to make money this summer like the money he did a few years ago … and what to do with it. Kids often only have the summers to be productive and, school doesn’t give them many skills to do meaningful work but, they have something that most adults don’t and that’s creativity. They have plenty of skills that none of their parents have.
Not that they can do more, or make more than an adult ( though they very well could) but … children in that particular age group are curious enough, stupid enough, and they have the opportunity to plant the seeds to be happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise adults. Instead of worrying about it when they’re mid-twenties – fourties realizing that they fucked up half their life.
It seems silly, that I would write a little book like that… because I’ve made all of the mistakes but, maybe that’s exactly why I should … Like, the book that I want my family’s kids to have, and the one that I should have had as a preteen. I think … I could have maybe caught a little me at that time and changed a lot. Not that there’s a bunch that I would have changed but, there are so many things that I could have definitely done better… Especially concidering that as a preteen I had a few hundred bucks piled up.
Together, the book will hopefully just work up to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs but, in a way that a 13 your old can … grasp. Not anything extreme but, health, belonging, and achievement … at a very small level, not scientific. Not weird.