The answer to that depends on what is wrong with the mental models of the individual in question.
But I will suggest these two ideas as a rebuttal for some things I see as common errors in thinking:
A college degree doesn't guarantee a real career with a good income and financial security.
Being "good with money" can help a whole lot, but only if you first have some money. It fixes nothing if there is no money to work with or if the money you have is wholly inadequate.
> Being "good with money" [...] fixes nothing if there is no money to work with
To expand upon that accurate point: Having little to no money can hone your money skills to a razor's edge, because staying on that edge is how you eat.
Money skills for survival and money skills for wealth accruement are completely and utterly different skill sets.
If you grow up with money and half decent parents, you learn the latter. Slowly, perhaps even imperceptively so: it probably starts young, opening a bank account, learning how to navigate the basics of the financial world. If you're middle class, you learn about investing and dealing with brokerage accounts. If you're rich, you learn how to deal with the people that handle that for you.
On the other hand, if you grow up without money, you don't learn those things. If your household is living paycheck to paycheck, you probably experience the basics of banking, but your exposure to the world of capital is greatly limited. If your family's struggling to put food on the table, then there's a solid chance you don't even get that. 22% of households in the US are unbanked. There's a reason why check-cashing services exist.
Beyond the simple knowledge gap, there's habits and thought-processes that get ingrained. It all culminates into a system that very effectively stifles class mobility.
That's completely accurate at that macro scale. At a smaller scale of paying bills and product selection, I know trust fund adults who can save thousands using tricks poor people know; don't spend money / pay bills until it's necessary, use credit cards to defer interest, avoid pushy extras/upgrades/insurance, buy during sales, buy resellable brands, sell your phone instead of trading it in, check for new deals annually, etc.
Because of the macro skills you mentioned, they don't need to do those things. But they also don't know how to.
My internal version that felt at least consistent with the article is: if you have a mental model of how things are or should be, and the way things turn out doesn’t match it, adjust your expectations to account for what does happen. My own adjustment to that is: keep an eye on what can be if it’s demonstrated, and how it was accomplished, for predictive and proactive purposes.
Well if you’re male and homeless, you learn a mental model pretty quickly that goes something like:
“Nobody cares about you. You are not entitled to comfort or nourishment. You are not worthy of compassion or empathy or courtesy. If you can’t live without it, you will die without it. But you don’t need it. You can endure far more than you ever would have believed. Nothing in this world is worth the sanctity of your mind. You will not succumb to pain or drugs or temptation or dishonesty or self-pity. Everybody around you is failing this test. You are different. Your soul is getting stronger. This is a test. This is only a test.”
