Unless you are younger than 20, Robert Kiyosaki’s name should sound familiar. This Japanese-American man has become well-known in 1997 thanks to his book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which contained a series of parables and easy-to-read stories about wise capital management. The book has become a bestseller, been translated in numerous languages, and Kiyosaki has been milking his “rich dad” brand as much as he could by writing up to 15 “Rich Dad” books, producing a “Rich Dad” video game and co-writing two books with The Donald.
Now, Kiyosaki took an awful lot of criticism. He has been under fire for allegedly giving irresponsible advise, forcing book sales through multi-level marketing, making up stories he then told as if they had really taken place and so on. I didn’t bother much—before I found someone selling a volume of the original Rich Dad, Poor Dad book for $0.20 on a flea market. For such a low price, I had nothing to lose.
I’ve read Rich Dad, Poor Dad in a couple of days. Then some other texts from Kiyosaki. To be sure, his advice is sometimes simplistic and redundant, but overall I found it helpful and interesting.
1. Think like an entrepreneur
To a red-pilled individual, this could sound trite. In 1997, this was not—and still today the hip, trendy stuff branded as entrepreneur looks more like a surrogate than like true entrepreneurship.
Kiyosaki compares the entrepreneur with the employee: the second is told what to do, he went to college and got a job because he was told this was the road to a successful life, pays huge taxes on his wage and ducks his head when the HR fatties are out.
The entrepreneur, however, does not answer to a HR department. Whether he works off the books, goes freelance or owns a company, the entrepreneur is looking to make work instead of asking for a job, pays as little taxes as he can, and lives life according to his own terms. He is loyal to his own and opportunistic elsewhere instead of getting screwed like a beta cog.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad tells of how an entrepreneur who consciously focuses on what he wants—whether it is money, girls or anything else—feels no shame for wanting to thrive, looks for opportunities and creates them when he can. For example, Kiyosaki explains how, as a child, he allegedly picked up used comics to create a comics library and make other children pay to access it. While the story in itself may be doubtful, it is fun and a good example of the entrepreneur mindset.
2. Manage your expenses
According to Kiyosaki, accounting should be considered a basic life skill. Learn to count your income and expenses, make a balance sheet and see how the dollar keeps getting out of your pocket. Better yet: look at life through the dichotomy of assets and liabilities. Assets put money in your pocket, liabilities take it out.
While Kiyosaki goes a bit far by saying that “your home isn’t an asset”—at least being a home owner allows you not to get bled dry by the rent—thinking this way motivated me to stop drinking a beer or two almost every night, go for the cheapest meat cuts and replace the gym by calisthenics. The best mindset when you’re bulking on a budget.
3. Make money work for you
Under the guise of financial wisdom, this one is a bit cynical. On face value, when you invest money or capital in the right place, the money starts working for you. It makes income, and you’re getting richer without having to toil. Behind the words, Kiyosaki’s advice is to stop getting exploited and become an exploiter instead. Stop investing in mutual funds or other Wall Street-managed bullshit—invest in real estate and companies so that “the capital works for you.”
Having money working for you means creating your own system and making others join it so that they pay you. It can be a company, a piece of real estate, or anything people will inject money or work in. Money doesn’t produce anything by itself: the capital “makes money” because someone else is working or at least paying. Meh. The world being what it is, I’ll still take it.
4. Invest
You always have something you can invest. The trendy thing to do now is investing in Bitcoin. If you don’t have much money, you still have time and work ability. You can invest it in learning a skill, in getting knowledge, in tinkering or experimentating or networking. Anything that can turn into a well-paid skill, niche, or option. Anything that can become an asset. Everything which is a capital, time included, can be invested. Diversion is a way to waste time and money. The System made us addicted to useless crap so that we keep feeding it instead of feeding ourselves.
Here Kiyosaki doesn’t say much more than, say, Benjamin Franklin. He still says it with updated stories and more enthusiasm.
5. Temptation is good, for others
In his Republic, Greek philosopher Plato warned us of how aspiring oligarchs took advantage from young people’s foolishness to propel them into a lifestyle of debt-sustained partying whereas they worked hard to take as much of the city as they could. Kiyosaki’s advice is to behave like Plato’s aspiring oligarch.
Stay clear of useless expenses, but if someone else is willing to spend, then by all means offer him an opportunity to do so—at your benefit. Someone has to do the actual work after all, and you’re better off if someone else is doing it for you and if you’re doing it for your own instead of remaining a wagecuck.
6. Work for yourself
Perhaps Kiyosaki’s best advice: work in a manner that does not force you into either paying taxes or putting your own skill in the service of someone else’s dream. Cut the middlemen. Start your own company. Get direct relationships with customers—no boss, no CEO. The world we live in was made complicated so that we would work for someone else and pay unknown people for everything.
To counter this, you must both secede from an exploitive, hostile system, and create a tribe or network solid enough so that you can work in synergy with trusted others instead of relying on Silicon Valley’s stuff.
7. Manage your emotions
All too often, we start feeling something and our choices are subtly determined by our emotion. This should not happen. Kiyosaki tells how he allegedly worked for free at his rich dad’s convenience store. After several weeks, young Robert was frustrated and angry with receiving nothing in exchange for his efforts. He asked his rich dad for a pay raise. “Sure”, rich dad answered, “how much do you want? $5 per hour? $10? $20? Hey, I can even pay you $50, what do you say?”
At first, young Robert was startled and excited. But when his rich dad mentioned a $50 per hour wage, he started to see the whole situation as absurd. Why would a convenience store owner pay a child clerk $50 per hour? This made no sense. Then, rich dad added that he had just told that to show young Robert how much power a boss could have, and to stop thinking like an employee hoping for a pay raise.
The inability to manage one’s emotions has another name: immaturity. If you are easily triggered, if emotions tend to overwhelm you and cloud your rational processes, you’re vulnerable and immature. The Ancients used to classify virtues and passions. I wrote some pieces on the latter so that they are easier to spot when they kick in.
Conversely, the soy boys promoted by the System have a high-pitched voice and all sorts of exaggerated mannerisms that denote the exact opposite of emotional stability. Kiyosaki chose patriarch Trump over these.
Conclusion
When Rich Dad, Poor Dad started selling well, Kiyosaki profited off his fame and wrote many books with lots of redundant advice. Still, some of his related stuff—for example, Garrett Sutton’s Start Your Own Corporation, officially endorsed by Rich Dad author—is rather interesting, and all of it has a good vibe which makes it both easy to read and enlightening when you didn’t have much financial education.
Something I liked much from Kiyosaki is, he’s not trying to make you a prisoner of his own world. Instead, he encouraged his reader to read from various sources, tinker with investments, learning skills and so on. He never asks to follow blindly anything he says or whatever. His demeanor is much less sectarian than your usual leftist’s, and he is much less pretentious, too, despite some grandiose or sugarcoated claims. I will gladly prefer some of his cynicism over the pseudo-good intentions of anyone defending the nightmarish brave new world we have been thrown into.
A word of caution. Kiyosaki was born in 1947. He thrived at a time when there was a lot of room to invest, low interest rates and a booming real estate market. He didn’t have to carry on in a world where the previous generation—to us, boomers—plus Big Corp keep most of the money, the young are cash-strapped and jaded, and SJWs lurk at the corner. Getting rich today seems way more difficult. Whatever: Kiyosaki’s mindset and some of his advice are solid, and who knows what hidden opportunities you can stumble upon when you’ve got it right.
Read Next: 9 Easy Ways To Save A Ton Of Money
7 pieces of financial advice from a known conman and scam artist…
RK is a BRAND, not a wellspring of financial wisdom.
Any young adult who’s hot his head out of his ass could figure this stuff out, as I did when I was a mere 17 years old… a very long time ago.
If you want true advice and wisdom, you have to find guys who are doing more than speaking, publishing books, selling info products, and the like.
Find the guys who are still on the playing field and in the game, making money, investing wisely, and, like myself, have achieved financial independence leading to freedom of time and lifestyle.
Guys who are making millions selling the same-‘ol-shit are reminiscent of the infomercial guys selling real estate flipping courses on TV.
Like Tom Vu
HAHAHA!
Tom Vu! That brings back some memories. He wasn’t as prominent as a Robert Allen or Carlton Sheets. No, he was more like an Ed Beckley 2nd tier infomercial guy.
I wonder if he traded those ho’s in for some younger ones by now?
It was probably a rent-a-yacht, that came with builtin rent-a-hos.
“7 pieces of financial advice from a known conman and scam artist…” ..And?
Is this the financial version of a Kratom post? This a-hole is nothing but con man.
A piece of advise for those stuck in the corporate world is save your money. Whatever the max amount your employer will match for 401k funds put in the max amount. This is free money, and do it as early in your career as you can so you aren’t working until you take your last breath.
Saving money is a mugs game. Give your money to the banks who wrecked the world economy 10 years ago? No thanks. Invest in yourself.
And start as early as possible. It is the magic of compounding. Rule of thumb 7% ROI doubles your money in 10 years and an ROI of 10% doubles your money in 7 years.
Save money for what? Negative interest? Higher taxes? A cashless society?The next global finacial meltdown? George Carlin got it right, the owners want it all, and they’ll get it!
I think you Need to read Richard dad poor dad..
Maverick is right, if, for only one reason: The point of acquiring a job from someone used to be a temporary situation. You would work for them long enough to save what you need to start your own business.
Now, I understand his post to be about saving for *retirement* which, is a joke. As mentioned above: NIRP, cashless society, Yuan becoming the next reserve currency, etc., will kill retirement for Gen X and later. It’s becoming increasingly impossible to do so comfortably.
When you have a continually depreciating currency, like the USD, in an inflationary environment with no interest-bearing options, it is wise to spend the money as soon as possible. We’re not Weimar, yet, but we will get there.
ROK articles have gone to shit recently
A house is not an asset. That’s a slave mentality. An asset has positive cash flows. A liability has negative cash flows. When you have paid your mortgage off you still have continued maintenance payments. And it loses value as it becomes obsolete. A house is an asset in the same way your car is an asset.
Bitcoin is not an investment. In this case there are no cash flows at all. And no business plan. If you buy bitcoins you are speculating on price. Nothing more.
Btw, there is a lot of room to invest today, interest rates are at their lowest in history and there is a booming real estate market. But honestly, it amazes me how people talk like real estate is some easy money making machine. It is not. Real estate is an extremely complex asset class. If you mess around in real estate and you don’t know what you’re doing you will lose money.
*Exactly*. However, as Kiyosaki pointed out in RDPD, a house is an asset. For the bank. So from a certain point of view, homes and cars are assets.
BUTCHER
That depends. The poor can wreck a neighborhood. They can end a city that was in economic decline.
My grandfather was a German immigrant who left my grandmother $1,000,000 in 1986 and she bought a $400,000 condo in Detroit in 1986. We sold it for $80,000 in 2006.
As for investing, if I had $1 for every guy I knew in 98 who lost his ass in the dot.com crash of 2001 I’d be rich.
I can remember in 98 a guy trying to talk me into investing in pagers. A huge thing then.
One guy I knew took a second mortgage.
Dude, real estate investment is all location, location and location. That it is the market conditions are highly localized. In some parts of the country like SillyCon Valley, So Cal, Seattle housing market is so hot, there are guys buy and flip the houses and make a tidy bundle in a matter of years and then bail. It is highly risky, but no more risky that bit-coin trading or options trading. You are talking about a $1,000,000 median price home! That appreciated 50% in 5 years. Hapens all the time. So you borrow the amount of money and viola you made 500 grand in 5 years. People are doing it boys.
My advise, continue bad mouthing these very liberal, SJW infested locations like California BUT MOVE there get a job and buy a house, If you can manage 10 years holding on to the property, you can go back to the sticks and boondocks and retire.
This scenario may not last or may all come crashing down (once again, it already happened in 2007 and the Feds bailed everyone out and we are stuck with a trillion dollars of debt, but that is another story)
Here is the kicker, the hordes of H1Bs that we all love to hate, there are doing this same shit and they are coming here all the way from shit hole countries. So what are you doing? A lot – not all, some of them are really smart – of those guys are not all that smart but get the tech jobs because there are so many of their kind already embedded all over the tech industry at the middle management level the shit and have contacts everywhere. This is all totally fucked up and anti-American. So it is time to displace them just like they displaced YOU. So, go get em fellows.
The only way a house can be an asset, unless you are a mortgage originator (bank), is to sublet to as many tenants as it will hold. Middle class and upscale neighborhoods are becoming havens for flophouses – places with 3+ tenants per house. You can always tell a flophouse: poor cosmetics, poor yard, multiple cars parked out front.
Cool name
The expanse books are great except the third book
Butcher, there are cryptocurrencies/tokens which do pay interest/dividends, or are planning to do so in the near future.
Look into Cloakcoin (CLOAK)
Populus (PPT)
Veritasium (VERI)
No Bitcoin is a new currency NOT an investment.
Great article, Robert Kiyosaki helped change my life with his books.
Same here. When I was ready to learn, the teacher appeared and that was Kiyosaki. Rich Dad, Poor Dad is still his first and best book and I recommend it to anybody who wants to improve their financial situation.
I often get him confused with Mr Miyagi
The “apparent lesbian at the strip club” picture made me laugh.
The man who “feels no shame for wanting to thrive” is a great frame. I’ll be keeping that in mind if anybody tries to nag me for approaching.
Crypto is probably about the only way out for most (if it holds up) not everyone can start a business, you run into problems like the left coast where there 1 food truck for every 100 people.
Erudite
Corporations have all nut wiped out the little guy. Its why Asia has a middle-class and the US has a load of empty down towns.
Trading *can* be a career. I do it for most of my living (consult for the other 1/3). Crypto is new, so the market is finding its legs. If it survives and isn’t the next Dutch tulip, it might be an interesting alternative to government fiat currency.
– Never tell your woman how much money you have.
unless she has more than you, knife cuts both ways
#1.
Come on, everyone cannot be entrepreneurs. Besides it is ridiculously simplistic to say that entrepreneurs and free men who can do whatever they want. They can sometimes become rich men but they have to answer to the investors, VCs, the Board, co-founders, clients, customers, the IRS, OSHA, government regulatory bureaucracies, State and local government assholes and then the SEC if they go public. Have you heard of the adage “customer is king”?
You can have more control by having a closely held 100% ownership small business in a niche market with loyal customers and perhaps you will have some freedom if and only if the business is successful and only after the business is successful. When you are starting up – I have done a couple of startups – it is hard work all the time, uncertainty and stress. It all depends on the kind of business, if your love doing it, the timing of it, the idea, the business model and the execution etc. etc.
Also, it is stupid to say that getting a job is “asking/begging for a job”. If you are skilled, talented or a highly qualified person in some area and a corporation wants to hire you. It is a business transaction. You have a skill that the company needs and you are providing that skill as a service to the corp in return for compensation. So it is not all that bad. It all depends on what sort of job, at what level of skill, doing what and what kind of working conditions and what sort of employer.
Being a corporate slave, doing stuff you hate with no control over your choices and work environment, and doing work that involves no skill or gives produces nothing of value or satisfaction, being underpaid or over worked or being constantly insecure is hell and should be avoided like the plague. Then you might as well roll the dice and slog for yourself as an entrepreneur.
A mortgage is slavery and there are a million ways for the government and assholes to try to put a lien on it as ransom, most lose them in divorces though. I don’t get people who say renting is “throwing money away” how? You have your own space and peace of mind for a price a lot of people I know can’t even afford that and live with roommates, gf’s or their parents.
Exactly! I’ll just say, as I have before here — EVERYONE RENTS—whether you “own” your home, or not. Even if you own the property outright, you rent the land from the state, in the form of property taxes. Don’t pay your taxes, you’ll see who really owns it.
You know, one of these days, when I have nothing better to do, I’m going to write a financial piece for ROK.
Since I haven’t written it yet:
Those of you who have never, and I mean NEVER made more than $100,000 in any class of investment need to shut the hell up. Men can make money in stocks (like I did), real estate, bit coin, commodities, your own business, ebay, whatever.
But if you haven’t made any money yet – kindly leave the floor to people who have. So you can learn something. If you have an opinion about something, based on your zero experience, or only what you have read – you are not helping by sharing it.
I am not saying that you aren’t allowed to share it. I’m saying DON’T.
Markets can be timed. Not with perfection, but with experience.
The book “Rich dad, poor dad” is OKAY. As an extremely simplified introductory book. But still, a good start. The challenge is to KEEP reading books about investing and finance, and save for investing purposes – but DON’T invest until you understand what you are trying to do.
Thank you for the article by the way.
It is appreciated that you are sharing something of value to you.
Preach it, brother!! The pissing and moaning in the comments section here is almost on par with the usual socialist whining about how the system is unfair, oppression by systemic race/sex-ism, cronyism, corporate greed, corrupt politicians, etc. Excuses, excuses. Here’s an innovative idea: Instead of impotently shaking your fist at the sky and bitching about the corporations, be a shareholder and profit along with the corporations or start your own business. The tools (investing, entrepreneurship, real estate, P2P lending, etc) to get ahead are available to everybody, even if you’re limited to operating at a small scale when starting out.
Ten years ago, I started investing for dividend income. The first year I made $251.63. In 2017 I made $9588.70. If necessary, I could use dividend income to pay my minimum monthly mortgage payment, plus a small utility bill. If necessary, I could cash out my dividend investment portfolio which is now worth over $110K. I now have more options available to me than if a paycheck was my sole source of income.
It’s your choice: take action and use the system or do nothing and let the system use you.
Agree with both of you. I left the corporate world last year, with almost 20 years in, when trading became more profitable than working. It can be done! Thanks for the wonderful comments!
“A word of caution. Kiyosaki was born in 1947. He thrived at a time when there was a lot of room to invest, low interest rates and a booming real estate market. He didn’t have to carry on in a world where the previous generation—to us, boomers—plus Big Corp keep most of the money, the young are cash-strapped and jaded, and SJWs lurk at the corner. ”
This is the best piece of advice.
Robert Kiyosaki MADE my financial life.
I discovered him when I was 16 in 2002. Finished RDPD, in one afternoon. Then I read every single book he’s written and also his advisors, particularly his lawyers, accountants, and Mike Maloney, his precious metals expert.
Fast forward to life now as a 31 year old. Currently, I do marketing at a small tech startup. Before that, I learned to manage multi-unit housing portfolios professionally for section 8 projects to luxury apartments in the SF Bay Area. From Apple’s backyard to the most ghetto trash in West Oakland, I’ve seen it all. I self-manage a paper asset portfolio geared mostly around covered calls and credit spreads. I built and sold a successful candy vending machine route I started at 18. I did inside sales for a few years to learn to sell well. I built a DJ hobby into a nice side business. I also enjoy horse trading ammo and arms in the exciting landscape of Kalifornia. In my spare time, I play jenga with 100oz blocks of silver. I’m not out of the race race yet, but soon.
Oh man, his boardgame too. Worth its weight in gold.
As I type this, I have two rows of books behind me all black and purple of Kiyosaki’s books in two languages.
I’ve had the honor to shake his hand as a teenager. Now as a man, I am invaluable grateful that this man dropped enough breadcrumbs for a young kid like me to have forever transformed his mental paradigm well beyond just mere finances. He’s saved my family tree from the endless waves of misery and poverty.
For that, I cannot be grateful enough. I highly recommend his works, in fact, all my friends get a copy of RDPD for their birthday.
You sound like his PR, or one of these spam comments ‘I made $50,000 a month working from h… you know what? I just wasted twenty minutes writing a lengthy rant about this shit and realised at the end of it, I just dont give a fuck anymore. Go ahead buy his books, invest in whatever BS you think is going to make you rich and able to say FU to the NWO. Me, I’ll be pissing my pants laughing when it all goes tits up!
This dude is only there to promote the multi-level marketing scam.
He worked for Amyway (cult like « MLM »).
Some good advice though. Just don’t fall into the mlm trap!
It’s not that financial and self-help gurus have no valuable advice but most of them are boomercucks who made the bulk of their fortune selling dreams to young men ponying up big bucks for seminars, books, and tapes. You have to know how to take the kernel of truth and adapt it to modern times.
Most of these guys were originally inspired and motivated by Think and Grow Rich. The works of Napoleon Hill are second to none in this field so for god’s sake read that classic if you have not. Brian Tracy also produces a lot of excellent material. Listen to the audiobooks while you are doing other things. Listen day in day out. Listen over and over until the principles are drilled into your subconscious. But whatever you do, keep taking action in the real world the entire way. Trying, making mistakes, and failing, will always be the best teachers in the world. Oh and stay away from Charlatans like the lisping gorilla or (((Altucher))) or most of these YouTube e-celeb jerkoffs.
Are you fucking kidding me? This guy is a fool. The most embarrassing part about Trump was that he once teamed up with Kiyosaki on a book project.
Read all about Kiyosaki’s lies – and stay away. He’s totally full of crap!
https://johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-s-real-estate-investment-blog/61651011-john-t-reeds-analysis-of-robert-t-kiyosakis-book-rich-dad-poor-dad-part-1
Uhhh…”room to invest, booming real estate market, low interest rates”….sounds like right now to me.
Don’t make claims it was “easier” then if you haven’t walked it. It sounds like an excuse from a pussy which I am sure wasn’t your intention.
Not only do Americans have to worry about getting older, getting wrinkles, have their teeth rot, hair fall out, hair turn gray, and their eyes fail, Americans now get to enjoy watching their economy implode, the government go bankrupt, the USA turn into a hardcore police state, a civil war start, and WWIII break out.
Isn’t life great?