My answers to those two questions troubled me so much that I didn't sleep well for a couple of nights.

How would you answer those two questions?

If you are not happy about your answers to those questions, then this may be one of the most important messages you will read in a long time.

Now, my answer to the first question was: “Just a couple of days.”

That’s not the reality that I wanted for my family’s welfare.

My answer to the second question was that I did have an “exit strategy.”

I was one of the few people in our society who had a retirement program built into my career. Every month the school district took part of my salary and gave it to the Californian State Teachers Retirement Program.

If I could teach for 40 years without killing a student or going insane during that time, I would be paid about 20% less than the salary I was making as a teacher.

In other words, my standard of living would go down!

To be completely honest with you...

At this time, I was living paycheck to paycheck and had credit cards that I only made the minimum payment on each month.

My assets (what I owned) were worth less than my liabilities (what I owed).

My net worth was a negative number.

The reality was, after several years of working, I was worse than broke.

Those two questions got me to do some serious thinking about my life and where I was going. I have a Bachelor of Science Degree in mathematics and a Master’s Degree in Education, and I thought I was “pretty intelligent.”

But why wasn’t I really getting ahead in life?!

Well, whether I wanted to admit it, or not... and whether I liked it, or not...

So, I decided that I wanted to change my answers to those two questions my friend had asked me.

I wanted to be able to say that “I could stop working and my lifestyle would not change or it would even be better.”

I wanted to be able to say “I have an exit strategy that will provide my wife and me with enough income to live comfortably for the rest of our lives, without us having to worry about running out of money.”

​It is a fact that today an overwhelming majority of people are facing many economic challenges that are affecting their lifestyle in many negative ways. 

We are seeing:

• The reduction of the average income of the middle class – a loss of over $5,000 in the last 5 years;
• The decline of our buying power as consumers because of rising prices due to inflation;
• The increasing loss of our income to higher taxes;
• Rising health care costs;
• The increase of personal debt by a majority of the population;
• The greater dependence of more and more people on the government to provide basic needs;
• Our vulnerability to lay-offs, termination, reduction to part-time employment, or replacement;
• The difficulty of saving, investing and creating financial security or the erosion of what we have already accumulated;
• The tremendous growth of the government deficit that will affect not only us, but also our children and grandchildren...

...and many other negative events that have been the result of our troubled economy.

You have probably heard the statistic that 95% of the wealth of our country is controlled by 5% of the population.

During the last several years of the recession it is a fact that the rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer, and the middle class continues to struggle.

Let me tell you why...

1. The wealthy know things that the rest of the population doesn’t know
2. The wealthy think differently than the rest of the population.
3. The wealthy take actions that the rest of the population doesn’t. 

And, because of this, the wealthy continue to prosper while the poor and the middle class continue to fight a losing battle.

Because of those three things:

• The wealthy don’t stress about debt as most people do;
• The wealthy are able to earn a lot more money than the rest;
• The wealthy provide their loved ones with access to better health and medical care, better education, a better nutrition and diet, and more opportunities to develop as a person;
• The wealthy are able to give themselves better quality vacations;
• The wealthy can have more peace of mind about their financial stability after retirement;
• The wealthy are able to contribute more to charities and worthwhile causes than the rest of the population.

And I can go on and on with that list. But I know you get my point.

Let me share a life-changing concept with you that I found in a magazine article that became worth millions of dollars to me.

I guarantee that if you really understand the power of the next ideas, you will be able to make some extraordinary changes to your life.

I finally discovered the reason I was struggling so much:

I didn’t know how to set goals. I was performing too many stupid acts such as spending more money than I made and not saving and investing for the future.

So I decided to get serious...

I finally discovered the reason I was struggling so much:

I came to the realization that the first and most important investment I could make was in myself. I had to spend time, money, and effort on personal growth and development and financial intelligence.

Through my studying...

I discovered that there are three types of education and, up until that time, I had only received instruction in two of them:

1. Academic or Scholastic Education: Education that teaches you how to read, write and do arithmetic.
2. Professional Education:  Education that teaches you the skills to work for money, such as learning to be a doctor, lawyer, plumber, secretary, electrician, teacher or real estate agent.

But you and I were never taught the third type of education in any of our formal school classes:

3. Financial Education: Education with words such as cash flow, wealth, net worth, goals, assets, entrepreneur, leverage, or financial independence included.

The education that teaches us how to invest in assets and how to build businesses.  Education that teaches us how to develop an exit strategy from our job or profession so that we have both time and money to enjoy life. Education that increases our self-esteem, self-image, self-confidence, self-discipline and self-reliance.

When it came to financial intelligence, I had a kindergarten education.

As the following quote states, I finally realized that: