Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the rich teach their children about money that the poor and middle class do not
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki is an outstanding piece of writing in the genre of self-help books. Robert Kiyosaki is a successful American businessman. The life of Robert Kiyosaki is an interesting and unique plot. Robert is the son of a teacher who holds a perspective of a typical middle-class man.
Robert in his book Rich Dad Poor Dad, explains his interesting real-life story in detail. Indeed there are several questions that people put forth regarding this book and its author Robert Kiyosaki. Read through to get yourself enlightened about a must-read book in the self-help genre of books.
Are you a person who wishes to achieve big in life? Do you wish to make a fortune like Robert? Wanna know Robert’s secret of money-making and success? If you are such a person, then you should make sure that you add Rich Dad Poor Dad to your shopping cart. Hope you read through patiently for achieving a better fortune.
WHO IS ROBERT T. KIYOSAKI?
Like said before, Robert is one of the American Businessmen who accumulated an excess of fortune and millions of money through smart work. You should take note of the fact here that I am using “smart” work and not hard work.
Wanna know why? That is indeed the difference that Robert cites between his two fathers- one his real dad (whom he refers to as the poor dad), and the other his best friend Mike’s dad (whom he calls his rich dad).
His poor dad wanted him to study well, graduate, get an MBA from a business school, and then find a job, and eventually work very HARD to earn money and get rich.
In simple terms, his poor dad wanted him to learn how to work HARD to work for money.
And, contrastingly, what his rich dad taught him was to gain financial literacy which no school taught in their classrooms. Robert’s rich dad always wanted him to get to the field and explore things himself. He never was interested in confining him to a classroom and being a teacher who would waste both the time of Robert as well as the time of him.
In simple terms, he wanted Robert to learn how to let money work for him. This is just the extreme opposite of what Robert’s dad wanted him to do.
Robert in Rich Dad Poor Dad, says that his favourite poet is Robert Frost. Also, he writes that Robert Frost’s famous poem “The Road Not Taken” is his most favourite among all others. The reason that Robert Kiyosaki cites for his liking of that poem is quite interesting. He writes about the confusion and dilemma that he had to go through when he had to decide which dad to listen to.
Both his dads being almost of the same economic situation at that time when Robert was nine years old, you might wonder why still Robert says that Mike’s father is his ‘rich’ dad. It is not because he was rich, indeed he wasn’t rich at all that time. There’s yet another story behind it which we shall discuss in the next section.
Coming back to the reason behind Robert’s liking of the poem “The Road Not Taken”, Robert Frost in this poem writes about himself as a traveller who stands in the middle of a road which diverges into two opposite going paths. Robert Frost describes how he chose to travel the path which was evidently less chosen and not the path which obviously appeared to be walked by most people. The choice that Robert Frost makes to travel the Road which was not taken by anybody, is what Robert Kiyosaki does.
With his rich dad and his poor dad having extremely contrasting thoughts and perceptions of money-making, Robert had to decide whom to listen to. That is where he stood on the road called his life, as a nine-year-old, in front of two diverging choices.
One is to obey his well-learned poor dad and graduate to work hard to make a middle-class life. The other, listen to his rich dad, gain financial literacy, and make a life full of fortune and earn a net worth in eight figures. And what did he choose to do? Robert chose the second option.
WHAT’S THE STORY BEHIND ROBERT’S CHOICE?
Robert and Mike did schooling together. In the school where they studied, these two boys were the only middle-class students. Indeed, the cool sports gear that other boys wore, the vehicles in which they were dropped to school, and the sophisticated lifestyle that they led made these two boys think of themselves as poor in spite of being from a middle-class family.
These two boys envied the other children. One fine day, Robert approached his father (the poor dad) and asked him how to make money and get rich. Poor dad indeed hardly knew the answer! He kept silent for a long while reading the newspaper and finally broke his silence and said that Robert has to make money in order to become rich. When Robert asked back of how to make money, yet another long silence.
And when he replied with a smile, the poor dad said that Robert had to use his head for that. He seldom knew how to make money, and finally, he admits that fact and tells Robert not to embarrass him with such questions. Of course, if he knew that he wouldn’t have been called a poor dad by his own son!
As the two boys agree upon a business partnership at the age of nine, yeah you read that right, at the age of nine, they thought of a business to run together. And as they begin their own business of casting nickels out of Lead prepared from thrown away toothpaste tubes, Robert’s dad grew anxious. Telling them that it was illegal, he ruins the boys’ plans to run a successful business. But the boys were too determined in getting rich.
This is where the plot takes a twist. Now Robert starts to think of the contrasting perspectives of his 2 fathers and starts to compare them both. Coinciding with such thoughts, his poor dad adds that he and Mike’s dad had the same banker. And that the banker often praises Mike’s father for his financial management skills and says that he is building his own empire of business and that he will soon be a rich man.
WHAT WAS THE RICH DAD’S PERSPECTIVE OF MONEY?
Of course, the fact that Mike’s father was an eighth-grade dropout makes it obvious to us that he has a ‘smart’ perspective of money and money-related matters. Like stated in the beginning of the article, we should clearly be able to differentiate between ‘smart’ and ‘hard’ work.
Often times, indeed almost every time, people find hard work and smart work to be two synonymous terms. Reason? People think that both result in the same magnitude of the outcome. Indeed it is a misunderstanding. It is no less than thinking that a saint and a saintess are same. I mean, how could you? Both are almost contrasting.
Okay, agreed both are different. But how are they different? If such a question prevails in your mind right now, let me answer you. Smart work is like hydrogen, and hard work is like petrol. Our aim? Let’s assume that our aim is to take a long drive. Now nobody denied that petrol does the work of riding. But hydrogen as a fuel has better efficiency. With the same amount of hydrogen and petrol, you can ride a longer distance with hydrogen with a faster speed. Now, do you understand?
Smart work takes you to a better destination in a shorter period of time. The only disadvantage with hydrogen as a fuel? You need a good container to keep it preserved and condensed. So you just have to build a good environment around you in order to achieve using smart work.
How to create that environment? Be with like-minded people. Maybe in physics, it is fine to say that opposite poles attract and like poles repel. But are we dealing with magnets? We are talking about money and success dude, for god’s sake!! For a common mission, if people who share common goals and aims work together, they can be guaranteed of succeeding in their mission. But here you should note that you are not to confuse perspective with thought.
Defining perspective and thought clearly is yet another essential thing that you need to focus on, before choosing your companion. Of course, Robert Kiyosaki and his wife Kim Kiyosaki stand as the best real-life example for this.
In order to help you be more clear about smart work and hard work, I would like to quote yet another example. The difference between a person who works smart and another person who works hard is that little.
A hard worker fears to invest in things that could potentially give a profitable outcome thinking that investment is a gamble. The fact that any investment has 50-50 probability of either returning a profit or could render you with a loss, prevents a hard worker from investing his hard earned money. But a smart worker knows where to invest, upon which to invest to make the success probability as 51% and failure probability as 49%. For a person who works smart, investment is not a gamble, rather an opportunity which goes hand in hand with risk.
These are a few life-lessons that I tend to take to you from Rich Dad Poor Dad which the two boys learned from Mike’s dad, in my own words, which might make you get interested in buying it and reading it with pleasure. Indeed, I wish that my readers get the benefit of being a visitor to my website. That is exactly why I would highly recommend this book to anybody who wants to know a different perspective of life. For anybody who wants to achieve greatness in their life, this is a must-read book.
OKAY! IT’S BEEN A LONG READ. LET’S WRAP UP:
We have to admit that Robert Kiyosaki is fortunate. Okay! Not just fortunate, too much fortunate. But the reason that he himself cites is that it is because of the fact that he had two fathers. His smart work, his persistence, his effort since the age of 9 has taken him to such a status where his net worth is in eight figures.
Of course, most of you who are reading this would have crossed that age yeard before. But it is not too late to begin right now. It is never a wrong time to do the right thing. So, where to start from? What to start with? Simple. Just buy this book right away, read it, learn all that you need to know about financial management and money-making.
All the experience that Kiyosaki gained in his 38 years of being an active businessman is enshrined in Rich Dad Poor Dad. Yeah, he started at the age of nine, and you wanna know at what age he retired? Forty-seven. At the age of 47, Robert Kiyosaki retired with a net worth of about $80 million. Don’t you too wanna retire before your golden jubilee?
And what’s more interesting is that Robert Kiyosaki, after his retirement, did not stop. He started an organization named Rich Dad and started publishing self-help books which help its readers gain financial literacy and ultimately pave their own path towards financial freedom.
Rich Dad Poor Dad, which can be called an autobiography of Robert Kiyosaki, is the first book in the Rich Dad series of publishings. Robert Kiyosaki stands unique in this regard too. Most self-made millionaires and billionaires never share their secret of money-making to anybody. But Robert Kiyosaki wishes that everybody gains financial freedom out of their own effort, and lends a helping hand to those people who are willing to work towards success.
The genre of self-help in the arena of books is flooded with books coming from people of varied standards and backgrounds. But there are a few books which we can call the gems of the self-help genre of books. This book is one such gem which is a holy-grail for anybody looking to achieve in life. Gotten your copy yet???
Rich Dad Poor Dad:
Book: Rich Dad Poor Dad
Author: Robert Kiyosaki
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