1
Education for This Era
Why This Book Is For You
while back, I was spending a long weekend in the Hamptons with some friends-a cute little couples getaway, one of those day-drinking, sunbathing, very chill kind of mini vacations. One afternoon, before heading to the beach, we swung by the local CVS to pick up some snacks, and on the way out my girlfriend stopped dead in her tracks.
"Oh my God," she said. "I have to have that."
It was a Monopoly game. Not just any Monopoly game, but a Hamptons-themed Monopoly game.
Not gonna lie, I definitely rolled my eyes as I took our M&M's and gummy bears to the self-checkout. But Lauren was so excited, and inevitably her enthusiasm rubbed off on me. If my bestie was so excited about this novelty tourist trap of a board game, then who was I to rain on her parade?
By the time we got back to the car, Lauren had sold me on game night and we were fully stoked. We were ready to play this game. We slid back into our seats, handing out the goods, and when Adam, Lauren's boyfriend, asked what we were so amped about, I told him, "Oh, Lauren just bought this cheesy Hamptons Monopoly game for us to play tonight."
No response. It was like the summer air had gone chilly all of a sudden. And then, from the front seat, Adam turned around. Not smiling. Super intense.
And he said, "You guys do not want to play Monopoly with me."
Naturally, we were like, "Uh . . . why not?"
Another pause.
"Because," he said. "There's a secret. Most people have never actually read the full instruction brochure for Monopoly. But I have. And when I play the way I know how to play, there's no way I lose."
"So what's the big secret?!" I asked.
But he just shook his head. Wouldn't tell us. Lauren and I brushed off the conversation and headed out to the beach.
Later that night, we broke out Hamptons Monopoly. It was corny, with little lighthouses and windmills all over, but the wine was flowing and we were fully invested. After we each picked our little pieces and divvied up our fake money, we rolled the dice.
Adam proceeded to dominate.
Personally, I think I'm okay at Monopoly, like above average to actually decent, but I never stood a chance. This was a bloodbath. Tensions ran really high, really fast. Voices were raised, words were exchanged, arguments broke out over the exorbitant rent for the hotel on Shelter Island (the Hamptons version of Boardwalk).
Now, if you've ever played Monopoly with a competitive friend group, none of this comes as a surprise. It is probably the quickest and most devastating way to push friendships (and any relationship, really) to the brink. But this particular session was different, and not just because we were playing Hamptons Monopoly instead of the regular version.
It was because of Adam's secret strategy.
The secret was basically a weird loophole in the rules that allows you to use money you don't have to buy property. It turns out that if you do read the rule book the whole way through, and understand how the lending system works, the rules actually allow you to get leverage with the Monopoly bank (pretty much the same way you get rich in real life, TBH), which makes piling up those pink and orange bills go so much faster.
Lauren and I did not know that, of course. We'd laughed about this "big secret" earlier, but now that we'd been absolutely beaten down, we were mad about it.
"That's not fair," we said. "You didn't tell us that we could do that!"
Adam shrugged. "You guys had the same rule book as I did. You just chose not to read it."
Aside from guilt over almost starting World War III on our fun little couples trip (pour one out for our other friends who were innocent bystanders in this mess over tiny fake money), what I take away from this story is that the way Adam was able to win (and the rest of us . . . didn't) is basically the same way our financial system works in real life.
In theory, we all have access to the same information about money. We all have some version of the rule book. Everyone has a smartphone. Or a laptop. Or a library. It isn't Downton Abbey times anymore, when nothing was publicly accessible and only people rich enough to afford daily telegram delivery knew what was up. You can pull up any number of books, articles, websites, Wikis, whatever, right at your fingertips, all for the low, low cost of zero dollars, and learn everything there is to know about getting rich for real.
In theory, anyway.
Because no one really does that, right?
No one reads the rule book all the way through. Not when playing Monopoly, and not when managing our actual, authentic, cold, hard US dollars.
I'm willing to bet you probably learned to play Monopoly the same way I learned to play Monopoly: you sat down for your first game with someone else who had already played, and they talked you through it. It's quicker, it's less boring than squinting at all that tiny type, and it just gets you in the game faster and makes it more fun.
But then there are some people like Adam. He'd read the rule book all the way through. He found the loopholes and technicalities that could make him a winner without cheating and without a ton of effort.
Was there anything stopping me and Lauren from reading the entire little pamphlet front to back too?
Nope.
But did we?
Also nope.
We all had the same information available to us. But only one person really dug in and learned how to take advantage of it.
The reality is, just because we can all read up on the rules, that doesn't mean that we all have the same access to a good strategy. Some people go through life leveraging the bank, and some of us play Monopoly the traditional way that we learned from our dad or our aunt or our big brother or our babysitter.
In other words, just having access to the rules alone is not enough. If you'd never played Monopoly before, you'd probably be confused just opening up the box: There's a thimble and a Scottie dog in here? Why are all these streets named after states? What is this game even about? You'd have to spend at least fifteen minutes reading the pamphlet, and you'd probably forget half of what you read once you start playing and have to go back and check all the time. The game would generally be slow, annoying, and not that fun, let alone easy to win.
Whereas if you play with someone who's played before, who has a strategy, they can teach you not only the rules, but which rules matter-and how to use them to your advantage. They can walk you through buying the deeds and how you have to build four houses before you can build a hotel, but also advise you on which color properties to snap up first, when to offer other players a trade, and whether or not it's actually worth buying utilities and railroads.
Finance theory is most useful when it's actually articulated as actionable advice. Instead of reading about things that could happen to you at some point, you're getting step-by-step info and instructions for what to do right now, given your circumstances. You have insights into which information is crucial and which you can kind of disregard.
That's the difference between knowing the rules and having a strategy.
And financial strategy is what we actually need to be teaching.
Because guess who learns financial strategy early on? Rich people.
And the rest of us? Well . . .
We Don't Learn About
This Stuff in School
When was the last time you busted out the Pythagorean theorem?
Or wrote a five-paragraph essay?
Or played dodgeball?
It's probably been a loooong time.
And you're probably not going to do any of those things more than a handful of times for the rest of your life.
But when was the last time you bought something?
When was the last time you paid rent, or budgeted for groceries, or looked at your student loan balance and thought, WTF do all these words mean and why are there still so many zeroes?
We are not taught how to balance a checkbook . . . or even what "balance a checkbook" means. We are not taught how to file our taxes. We are not taught how to budget, how to save, how to invest wisely, or even what most of these words and terms mean. Personal finance for far too long has been this big gatekept secret-if you know, you know, and if you don't, you never will.
Every single person reading this book can likely tell me that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, but very few of you can confidently define what the stock market is or does.
And in my mind, that's a failure of our educational system.
Good News: It's Never Too Late to Learn
First off, it really isn't too late to learn. The best day to get financially literate was yesterday, but the second best day is today. Hopefully you get that by now, since you're already here and into chapter 1. (Stick with me, besties.) You still have plenty of time to harness the power of time to make you money (we'll get to that). Even if you're in debt and worth negative half a million bucks. Even if you're constantly getting slapped with overdraft fees. Even if you grew up broke and bullied and ashamed and deep down still feel like that dorky kid in secondhand clothes.
Better News: It's Not Your Fault
Second off, there's a very real reason you don't know this stuff, and it is basically beyond your control: you were not taught this in school. (I'm gonna say that until it sinks in.) But why not, exactly? If this information is so important to succeeding in life and eventually getting Rich AF, and the information is very much out there and not some big gold-plated secret, then why doesn't our education system make it a priority?
Because a lack of basic financial literacy keeps our working class working.
Look, I'm not trying to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I do think a big part of why some of these basics of good financial strategy haven't "trickled down" (lol) to the middle class and beyond is because rich people want the rest of us to stay working. There is always a need for people to do the "dirty jobs," to pump gas and drive trucks and earn subminimum wages bartending and waitressing. Most people aren't stupid: if they know how to make more money, to establish a nest egg and a financial cushion, they will. And do you think they'll want to keep their shitty $7.25-an-hour job once they're no longer living hand to mouth? You think they'll sign up to work the third shift and never see their kids for the eighteen years it takes for them to grow up?
Of course not. People always want the best life their money can buy.
Back in the day, people actually aspired to be blue-collar professionals-because, once upon a time, a steady middle-class paycheck was enough to build wealth over time. That's no longer the case (and we'll get to why later in this chapter). For now, the point is just that our current system depends on blue-collar workers not having that upward mobility, not having the luxury to leave sucky jobs, to keep a consistent labor force hungry for whatever work they can get. You can look no further than the COVID-19 pandemic for proof: while white-collar corporate desk employees were sent to work from home, "essential workers" in construction, food service, and sanitation were still forced to show up day in and day out. By making financial literacy feel inaccessible and confusing, we've been able to keep our working class working-and carrying all of us on their backs.
But let's take off the tinfoil hats and get to the third and final, most important point here, which is . . .
Best News: You're Not a Bad Person
If You Don't Know This Stuff
I mean it: not knowing the rules, not having a strategy, does not make you a bad person.
Which, like, okay, sounds fine on the face of it. We love ourselves, we respect our worthiness, all that good stuff.
But at the same time . . . how many times have you thought something like:
I'm so bad with money.
I'm just irresponsible.
I don't have the kind of discipline to save.
I'm a chronic overspender.
I'm a shopaholic.
I have a serious Amazon Prime problem.
I'm just resigned to being in debt until I die lol fml.
You see what all these thoughts have in common? They're making you the problem. Not even your choices or your mistakes. You. Your character. Your self.
And I'm sorry, but that's fucked up.
For one thing, we've already established that you didn't learn this shit in school. So you're probably unfamiliar with the rules. If you weren't lucky enough to get financial strategy advice from your rich parents and uncles and grandparents, you don't know how to do stuff even if you vaguely know you "should" save or "should" budget.
For another, the media and our culture in general love to lean into this character-assassination kind of money narrative. I strongly suspect that before you had any of those negative thoughts for yourself, you heard them somewhere else-on a TV show, in a movie, online.
Unfortunately, this blame game is particularly bad when it comes to anyone who isn't a straight white dude. Everything from dumb "women be shoppin'" memes to sitcom-level jokes about those gay guys and their wacky extravagances to harmful and false stereotypes about "welfare queens" and "job-stealing immigrants" hammers home the same message: you, and people like you, are inherently unable to handle money well. Your personal shortcomings are why you're broke. And there's nothing you can do to fix it, it's an essential part of who you are, so go cry about it, poors.
Nope. Not today. You're here and you're going to learn to think the way rich people do. You're going to get the lowdown on the rules and the inside scoop on how to make those rules work for you. You're going to learn how to make more money without working any harder, without giving up all the stuff you love, without being miserable and stingy and eating ramen for the rest of your life.
Copyright © 2023 by Vivian Tu. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
