Wealth Habits

CHAPTER 4The Compounding Dividends of Self-Education

“Higher education will give you a job and pay you a salary; self-education will give you freedom and pay you a fortune.”

My parents were 16 and 19 when they found out they were going to have me. I grew up in a small white trailer on a patch of ground that my grandfather rented to my parents to park the trailer on. Needless to say, they did not go to college. They were too busy working hard just to survive.

My dad had dropped out of school in 9th grade to work at the landfill, and my mom dropped out right after 10th grade to have me. We were on government assistance programs when I was first born. No one on either side of my entire family had ever gone to college—or had any money for that matter.

This is the point in the story where you might expect me to say, “And I ended that tradition by being the first one to go to college!”

No, I didn't go to college. Instead, I pursued a path of self-education in real-world life and business skills—a path you can walk as well, whether you've been to college or not.

In my self-education, I learned how to build a business, how to live on less than I earned, how to invest my money, and how to build real wealth—all self-taught, through self-education. You're going to learn these things too in this book.

Most people don't think that a chapter called self-education belongs in a book titled Wealth Habits. However, you'll see from my own story (and countless others), self-education was critical ...