Rich Dad Poor Dad is a 1997 book written by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter. It is one of the best selling self-help books. To this date it has sold over 32 million copies.
The book is a sort of guide to the financial freedom and is worth reading. The also book is available on Amazon.
Most of us have heard the saying, “You are what you eat.” I have a different slant. I say, “You become what you study.” In other words, be careful what you learn, because your mind is so powerful that you become what you pur in your head. For example, if you study cooking, you then tend to cook.
If you don’t want to be a cook anymore, then you need to study something else. When it comes to money, the masses generally have one basic formula they learned in school and it’s this: Work or money. The predominant formula I see in the world is that every day millions of people get up, go to work, earn money, pay bills, balance checkbooks, buy some mutual funds, and go back to work. That is the basic formula, or recipe.
If you’re tired of what you’re doing, or you’re not making enough, it’s simply a case of changing the formula via which you make money.
The next trick was to have the discipline to actually put into action what I had learned. That is where
most people stop. For three years, while working for Xerox, I spent my spare time learning to master the art of buying foreclosures. I’ve made several million dollars using that formula. So after I mastered that formula, I went in search of other formulas.
For many of the classes, I did not directly use the information I learned, but I always learned something new. I have attended classes designed for derivative traders, commodity option traders, and chaologists.
Risk comes from not knowing what you are doing. Money is only an idea. If you want more money, simply change your thinking. Every self-made person started small with an idea, and then turned it into something big. The same applies to investing. It takes only a few dollars to start and grow it into something big.
I meet so many people who spend their lives chasing the big deal, or trying to amass a lot of money to get into a big deal, but to me that is foolish. Too often I have seen unsophisticated investors put their large nest egg into one deal and lose most of it rapidly.
The most important specialized skills are sales and marketing. The ability to sell–to communicate to another human being, be it a customer, employee, boss, spouse, or child-is the base skill of personal success. Communication skills such as writing, speaking, and negotiating are crucial to a life of success.
Sales = Income
Your ability to sell–to communicate and position your strengths-directly impacts your success.
As I have mentioned, my educated dad worked harder and harder the more competent he became. He also became more trapped the more specialized he got. Although his salary went up, his choices diminished. Soon after he was locked out of government work, he found out how vulnerable he really was professionally.
Rich dad encouraged Mike and me to know a little about a lot. He encouraged us to work with people smarter than we were and to bring smart people together to work as a team. Today it would be called a synergy of professional specialities.
Most people only know one solution: Work hard, save, and borrow. So why would you want to increase your financial intelligence? Because you want to be the kind of person who creates your own luck. You take whatever happens and make it better.
Few people realize that luck is created, just as money is. And if you want to be luckier and create money instead of working hard, then your financial intelligence is important.
If you are the kind of person who is waiting for the right thing to happen, you might wait for a long time. It’s like waiting for all the traffic lights to be green for five miles before you’ll start your trip.
Which one sounds harder to you?
- Work hard. Pay 50% in taxes. Save what is left.
Your savings then earn 5%, which is also taxed.
OR - Take the time to develop your financial
intelligence. Harness the power of your brain
and the asset column.
When you learn the rules and the vocabulary of investing and begin to build your asset column, I think you’ll find that it’s as fun a game as you’ve ever played. Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. But have fun. Most people never win because they’re more afraid of losing.
That is why I found school so silly. In school we learn that mistakes are bad, and we are punished for making them. Yet if you look at the way humans are designed to learn, we learn by making mistakes. We learn to walk by falling down.
If we never fell down, we would never walk. The same is true for learning to ride a bike. I still have scars on my knees, but today I can ride a bike without thinking. The same is true for getting rich. Unfortunately, the main reason most people are not rich is because they are terrified of losing. Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are.
Failure is part of the process of success,. ‘people who avoid failure also avoid success. I look at money much like my game of tennis. I play hard,’ make mistakes, correct, make more mistakes, correct, and get better. If I lose the game, I reach across the net, shake my opponent’s hand, smile, and say, “See you next Saturday.
Unfortunately;, there is some truth to the old statement, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Unless a person is used to changing, it’s hard to change. But for those of you who might be on the fence when it comes to the idea of working to learn something new, I offer this word of encouragement: Life is much like going to the gym.
The most painful part is deciding to go. Once you get past that, it’s easy. There have been many days I have dreaded going to the gym, but once I am there and in motion, it is a pleasure. After the workout is over, I am always glad I talked myself into going.
He constantly told myself that the greatest reason for lack of financial success was because most people played it too safe. “People are so afraid of losing that they lose” were his words. Fran Tarkenton, a one-time great NFL quarterback, says it still another way: “Winning means being unafraid to lose. In my own life, I’ve noticed that winning usually follows losing.
Before I finally learned to ride a bike, I first fell down many times. I’ve never met a golfer who has never lost a golf ball. I’ve never met people who have fallen in love who have never had their heart broken. And I’ve never met someone rich who has never lost money.
Life pushes all of us around. Some people give up and others fight. A few learn the lesson and move on. They welcome life pushing them around. To these few people, it means they need and want to learn something. They learn and move on. Most quit, and a few like you fight.”
