It broke my heart to see students know the an- swers, yet lack the courage to act on the answer. Often in the real world, it's notthgsmartJJLaLgel-ahgad but the bold. In my personal experience, your financial genius re- quires both technical knowledge as well as courage. If fear is too strong, the genius is suppressed. In my classes I strongly urge students to learn to take risks, to be bold, to let their genius convert that fear into power and brilliance. It works for some and just terrifies others. I have come to realize that for most people, when it comes to the subject of money, they would rather play it safe. I have had to field questions such as: Why take risks? Why should I bother de- veloping my financial IQ? Why should I become financially literate? And I answer, "Just to have more options." There are huge changes up head. Just as I started with the story of the young inventor Alexander Graham Bell, in the coming years there will be more people just like him. There will be a hundred people like Bill Gates and hugely successful companies like Microsoft created every year, all over the world. And there also will be many more bankruptcies, layoffs and downsizing. So why bother developing your financial IQ? No one can answer that but you. Yet, I can tell you why I myself do it. I do it because it is the most exciting time to be alive. I'd rather be welcoming change than dreading change. I'd rather be excited about making millionslhan worrying about not getting a raise. This period we are in now is a most exciting time, unprecedented in our world's history. Generations from now, people will look back at this period of time and remark at what an exciting era it must have been. It was the death of the old and birth of the new. It was full of turmoil and it was exciting. So why bother developing your financial IQ? Because if you do, you will prosper greatly. And if you don't, this pe- riod of time will be a frightening one. It will be a time of watching people move boldly forward while others cling to decaying life rings. Land was wealth 300 years ago. So the person who owned the land owned the wealth. Then, it was factories and production, and_America rose to dominance, the in- dustrialist owned the wealth. Today, it is information. And the person who has the most timely information owns the wealth. The problem is, information flies allluound the world at the speed of light. The new wealth cannot be con- tained by boundaries and borders as land and factories were. The changes will be faster and more dramatic. There will be a dramatic increase in the number of new multi- millionaires. There also will be those who are left behind. Today, I find so many people struggling, often working harder, simply because they cling to old ideas. They want things to be the way they were; they resist change. I know people who are losing their jobs or theirT~>uses, and they bjanietechnology or the economy or their boss.