Rich Dad Poor Dad
- Jan 21, 2018
- 3 min read
How I came across this book: Recommendation from a friend
Favorite quotes from the book: The love of money is the root of all evil and the lack of money is root of all evil.
Life is the best teacher of all. Most of the time, life does not talk to you. It just sort of pushes you around. Each push is saying, ‘Wake up. There is something I want you to learn’.
Great opportunities are not seen with your eyes. They are seen with your brain. There is gold everywhere. Most people are not trained to see it.
The book had strongly influenced one of my close friends in his outlook towards the society. My main reason to read this book was to understand what my friend was feeling. However, after reading the book, I thought my own views about the society, and the finance system transformed as well. This book enlightened me by showing the science behind the art of money making. Do you want to work for money or let money work for you?
The concept of money and the financial system always seemed very deceptive to me. I have always been told that I need to work hard if I need to make money. If I sought advice from people who are from my parental generation, one common theme echoed many times: ‘focus on your career and money would follow.’ If I tried to discuss the concept of making money with some of my academic colleagues then every discussion reverberated with lines such as ‘I am an academician, and I am not interested in money,’ or ‘I would rather be poor and morally correct than rich and morally corrupt.’ It is so interesting that our society puts a taboo on the concept of becoming very rich. People who do not want to develop their financial intelligence reflect on rich as being crooks. Who has signed the document to say that poor or middle class are morally correct and vice-versa? Which code of ethics says academicians can’t become super rich or dream to become one. Of course, it is very easy to write all these statements in my blog when no is challenging me, but the mercury in the room takes a different turn when I start to have a debate about it with most people. Interestingly, the book discusses very similar concepts.
SHOW ME THE MONEY!
Robert Kiyosaki lays out some basic principles of money management and challenges some old dogmas such as ‘your house is not an asset’ or ‘savers are losers.’ In the book, he looks at life from two viewpoints - Rich Dad (arguably a person with capitalistic views who believes in complete financial independence) and Poor Dad (arguably a socialist who strongly believes in working hard towards a profession and specialization, towards government aides and retirement funds). I loved the fact that instead of getting into the nitty gritty of money management, the book discusses the attitude of people from different backgrounds, and how our thinking can make the difference between winners and losers. If you want to win big, then you should be ready to lose big. Along the line of quotes about money and success, I have another favorite one from Bill Gates, ‘Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.’
Some of the financial principles discussed in the book can be easily applied in our day to day life such as controlling spending habits and pushing to improve our financial intelligence. If tomorrow your saved money does not hold any value because the state system has collapsed or currency crashed then what will you do (think about Venezuela)? I have always valued education over anything else. The whole goal of doing this 'readathon' was to raise awareness about global education and to help children around the world with their primary education. I strongly believe that the best investment anyone can do in their lifetime is to invest in their education. Robert Kiyosaki is trying to spread the same message. Invest in yourself and develop multiple skills including financial intelligence. In fact, he learned the importance of education from both his rich dad and poor dad.
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