How to Become a Rich Woman Like Abigail Johnson

Having just read “How to Become a Rich Woman Like Abigail Johnson“, I feel compelled to comment on the idea that Abigail Johnson owes her wealth to a “proper education” from the “best schools”. There are plenty of people who buy into the idea that a college degree obtained from an Ivy League or otherwise reputable university or from any university at all will be their ticket to wealth. The majority of these people end up spending the rest of their lives struggling just like everybody else to keep their bills paid. They live in  homes in the suburbs but they are no more secure financially than the people living on lower income levels and living in cheap apartments in inner cities. Furthermore their degrees can do nothing to help them become millionaires. Their degrees simply give them an advantage over their counterpart who has no degree and helps them command a higher salary; but it will do little if anything to help them become a rich woman like Abigail Johnson.

In all likelihood even Abigail Johnson would not have become a rich woman like Abigail Johnson without the benefit of being born into a family with billions. By all means her education helped to prepare her for the role she has played in the family business but experience has more than likely done a great deal more in getting lessons to stick than her time spent in the classrooms of her prestigious universities; and at the end of the day she is unlikely to look at her degree on the wall and thank it for all it did to help her get where she is. She’ll thank first and foremost her father and grandfather for giving her such an advantageous start, and then she’ll thank herself for all the hard work she has put in over the years.

Your ticket to wealth is you, not your degree. You can have a degree from an Ivy League university and never get rich at any point in your life, and you can have no degree at all become a billionaire. As for Abigail Johnson, she’s probably not the best rich woman to use as your success model. Maybe she would still have become one of the richest women in the world even without the advantage of being born into one of the richest family’s in the world, but the fact that she had such a huge advantage certainly makes her an  unsuitable example of a woman who has reached billionaire status on her hard work alone.