If You Want to be Rich and Happy, Don’t Go to School Summary - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Where Is My Paycheck?

1.      Despite the fact that money has taken such an important place in our society, our educational system still fails to address it directly.

2.      Our social system continues to promote the ethic that everything will turn out okay if you just study hard and word hard, if you will just do as you are told, don’t make mistakes and memorize what you are told. It encourages us to specialize, and to then go out and find a good and secure job.

3.      However, there is no such thing as a secure job today. Similarly, the idea of working your way to the top is obsolete. Too many times, we find ourselves climbing career ladders and getting almost to the top, before we discover that we’ve lean them against the wrong walls and those walls are coming down. 

4.      Co-dependency is a term psychologists use to describe a person who is attracted to people who are addicted to a substance or some kind of destructive behaviors. For most people, the employer-employee relationship is a co-dependent one. In this case, the paycheck is the addiction. In other words, the employees are attracted to the employers – for the paycheck.

5.      Unfortunately, most hard working, promising students have been turned into co-dependent wimps by the time they graduate from high school or college. All they know is how to work hard and do as they are told, in spite of the fact that the job is no longer secure or doesn’t pay enough to keep up with the wildly escalating cost of living. They are still poor and struggling because they haven’t made enough mistakes in their lives – because they were taught in school and that you should avoid making mistakes at all costs. They become paycheck-addicts.

6.      Most of the employees don’t want to learn about business. They only want their paychecks. They only want to do the job they are qualified to do. The last thing they want is more work and responsibility.

7.      The only way to break away the co-dependency relationship is through knowledge – about what money is really all about.

8.      Until our educational system stops punishing people for making mistakes, and until the creation of money is made a part of the school curriculum, people will continue to live lives as co-dependent wimps. They stop growing and stop thinking until the only question they know how to ask is: “Where is my paycheck?” 

Chapter 6: If I Have All The Right Answers, Why Can’t I Think?