Over the last few months I've been reading entrpreneurship books, small business books and "starting a nursery book" along side the normal seed and plant catalogues and the flower books esp. Dr Hessayons "Expert" guides.
The latest is Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki - "Why we want you to be rich" - a Father's day pressie - thanks Jackie.
They are both seriously rich - Robert Kiyosaki is the writer of Rich Dad Poor Dad in case you hadn't heard the name (I know I hadn't heard the name). The book is basically about mindset - self belief and financial education - if we can do it so can you.
What I found the most interesting so far is their belief that basically my dad's generation could rely on the state or their ex-employers to look after them when they retire. My generation will need to look after themselves (because the state and employers won't be able to afford it) and the next few generations are totally on their own. Don't even bother with the state and getting a good job etc is totally out - you need to look after yourselves because no-one is going to look after you.
This is very depressing - probably true - and they have the stats to back it up, but still depressing. Schools prepare you for employee status - or specialist status if you're fortunate to be brainy. While it is possible to get rich as both of these (our ex-CEO was on around $5 million (plus share options)) you now need to be seriously rich - seriously, seriously rich - to ever hope to retire nicely. Simple ecomnomics show that to be true - if interest rates are around 5% then you need 500,000 quid in your pension fund to get £25,000 a year in pension., Now I know that this is a good income - but it is less than the national average. And once you retire the value of your pension is going to go down not up - likely.
In other words I have to try to save half a mill if I'm going to retire on less than I earn now. Now my kids are going to have to save a million - a million pounds!!!! by the time they retire - so they are going to have to get seriously rich.
Fortunately I think they may do it. Maybe I will do it if Frary's Fresh Flowers ever takes off. They're smart, good-looking and I'm trying to instill in them - they need to work for themselves. verbascum and pots
I was raised with the previous generations mind set and it's only the last few years I even contemplated working for myself. It is not part of my (immediate) family's history. All of my brothers and sisters (and parents) were employees. My wife is an employee - in fact my kids are employees too at the moment. But I'm plugging away at them about the advantages of working for themselves and not being a wage slave so that, hopefully, they will not wait as long as I have before even thinking about striking out on their own.
Actually we did (me and my wife) have our own business for almost a year - a farm in Fiji - 7 acres - but a military cooup knocked that on the head - and I rack that up as the first failure. I'll write about this farm - with photos - in future posts.
But here comes the depressing part. They, or I, can only get that far ahead if the vast majority of the world's people are well below that level - there is only so much room for so many seriously rich people in the world. Most of the world - 99.999999% of the world are never going to be rich - hell, loads are never even going to be comfortable let alone rich. And that is depressing.
I always thought I was a socialist but maybe I was just poor - the politics of envy.
Anyhow the world has been running on permanent growth up to now - that is the delusion of win-win-win in that the size of the pie - the amount of money and things in the world - has been increasing each year - and maybe that can keep going for a few more years so that I, and the kids - can get rich while every one else gets more too - but that won't keep going indefinitely - of that I am sure.
Plus not everyone did have more - we in the UK and the West have had more and more each year by subsidizing ourselves with the wealth of others, mining the planet and - even worse - mining the soil. Others have less so that I can have more - I'm a consumerist not a socialist.
Seeing yourself as others see you - never a pretty sight.
So back to The Donald - there is an awful lot of back-slapping in the book each of the author telling us how good the other one is - but the basic tenet is kind of inspiring - We want you to be rich because, if you aren't, you're screwed.