Richard Canfield argues that financial responsibility requires constant learning and doing. He emphasizes getting instruction before taking on a policy, and uses a pencil and eraser to show how trial and error builds better financial habits over time.
Chapters
The component of responsibility that is there, and that that's why we spend time on education. That's why a person needs that education first, rather than just, oh, give me a policy, and, you know, see you later. There's no value in that. The value is in the learning and then the doing, because the doing creates more learning, and then you have more learning, which creates a new type of doing, and then the new type of doing creates more learning. That's the loop that we go through as human beings in most areas of our life. It's just that a lot of people aren't really taking the time to do that financially, and this creates a tremendous opportunity for you to do that financially. If you use a pencil, sometimes you break the tip and you have to sharpen it, and eventually you'll go through a pencil and you happen to need a new one that identifies learning. You have to break some pencils and go through a few erasers along the road of life. And everyone's done it financially to some degree or another.