Industrial Age Education in the Information Age

Kiyosaki's Cash Flow Quadrant concludes with "Seven Steps to Finding Your Financial Fast Track." The first step he recommends is to "mind your own business." Kiyosaki's point is that most of us are minding everyone's business but our own. He points out that the typical "Employee" or "Self Employed" (Kiyosaki's "E" and "S" quadrants) who follows the conventional wisdowm of, "Go to school and get good grades, so you can find a safe, secure job with good pay and excellent benefits," ends up becoming:

1. Employees, making their bosses and owners rich.
2. Debtors, making the banks and money lenders rich.
3. Taxpayers, making the government rich.
4. Consumers, making other businesses rich.

This is actually very consistent with writings by John Taylor Gatto (Dumbing Us Down, The Undergorund History of American Education), who traces the rise of socialized education to the beginning of the Industrial Age, and the need to create a cadre of docile workers educated sufficiently to work in the factories, but not sufficently well educated to move beyond.

Kiyosaki is quick to point out that the models of the Industrial Age are not appropriate to the "Information Age." Those of us that continue to follow the advice and patterns of the Industrial Age will be left behind; those of us that are able to educate ourselves will prosper.

Kiyosaki recommends several action items to complete the first step of "minding your own business" The first is to complete a set of personal financial statements. I won't publish Amy's and mine here, but I will say they aren't pretty.

The second action item is to set financial goals for 5 years out, with milestones at twelve months.

Our twelve month goals:

1. To eliminate half of consumer debt, excluding our mortgage (liabilities) from our financial statement.
2. To generate $2,000 per month in passive income from our assets.

Our five year goals:

1. Generate $5,000/ month positive cash flow from assets (passive income)
2. To have online/brick-and-mortar businesses generating income from affilliate marketing and passive sales, 5 - 7 rental properties either occupied as rentals of under lease-option.

Stay tuned and see how it comes out.