Book excerpt: Obi offers a simple-to-follow guide on how to plan for advanced education, retirement, debt elimination, and personal investments. He also lays out a reasoned view on how to strengthen America's leadership in higher education and fiscal discipline. Globalization is the reality of how economic integration among nations has heightened the pace of international competition; the collapse of the U.S. housing market in 2007, and the financial crisis that followed it, exposed the fragility of our financial system. Obi articulates how we can advance our competencies to meet the rising challenges of the highly competitive and ever changing global economy.