How Reading BEFORE Kindergarten Increases Wealth Likelihood

On this week’s episode of the Raising Black Millionaires Podcast, we discussed the value of starting children to read at an early age and how doing so positions them for a financial advantage in their lives.  This happens, because the sooner a child is able to read, the sooner they’re able to experience advanced cognition.  In other words, having the ability to read earlier, enables them to have the vocabulary, thinking, and reasoning skills to process more complex ideas at a far earlier stage than others who start reading in kindergarten or first grade (ages 5 & 6).  Giving them this head start not only gives them the intellectual advantage, but it also equips them with higher degrees of self-confidence and far healthier beliefs about their own capacity to problem solve and manage matters that many others may find difficult.

The question becomes, “what’s the age we should be shooting for our children to begin reading?”  My simple yet somewhat indirect answer is, “as soon as they get here.”

Now, I won’t get into the methods of teaching a brand new child how to read.  You can check out YouTube and Google for that.  But allow me to say that putting letters, sounds, colors, and numbers in front of infants regularly truly works.  One of my good friends used the simple little phonics books, and her daughter was reading for real at the age of two.  My youngest daughter began recognizing words at two but started reading complete sentences at the age of three.

My point is, that it works.  But how does this relate to #RaisingBlackMillionaires?

Doing this expands their scopes and increases their ability to comprehend matters of finances and economics far earlier, enabling them to conduct business, on their own, during childhood.  What do you mean, Thiah?

Think about the impact you experienced when you read the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad or CashFlow Quadrant, both by Robert Kiyosaki.  My guess is that when you read either of them, at some point you thought, “I wish I had known this when I was younger.” Or “why don’t they teach us this stuff in school?”  Even though you may have been thinking that knowing this type of information when you were in your twenties would have been awesome, just imagine if you had grown up throughout grades 1-12 learning the core concepts in those books how much sooner in life you would have experienced a higher quality of life.

Just imagine if The Mark Zuckerbergs, Evan Spiegels, or Farrah Grays of the world were the norm.  They’re all grown men now, but if you can remember, they were exceptionally young when they began their fortunes.

The reality is that empowering our children with the ability to read as early as possible, empowers us to put books in their hands like Think & Grow Rich: A Black Choice and watch them take those core concepts to the next level.  We would be able to do as millionaire Wendy Muhammad’s mom did and put the Kiplinger in front of our children and see them take interest in investing and business as children.

I know what some of you are thinking.  “Thiah, my children are waaaay beyond three years old, but they can read.” Fantastic!

We do want them to read books like those I mentioned above, but we also want to engage them into expanding their vocabularies with words that successful businessmen and women use.  In the coming weeks, we’re going to post words and their definitions that you will be able to learn with your children.  We’ll all be able to do better financially, once our knowledge base about business and finances expands and improves.  That will happen, naturally, as our financial vocabulary increases.

If you’d like to get a head-start, just Google basic business terms, and keep me posted on your progress throughout the week.

Until next time,

PEACE!