Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
by Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter
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Book Summary Information
Author: Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. LechterEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-04-01
ISBN: 0446677450
Number of pages: 207
Publisher: Business Plus
Book Reviews of Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
Book Review: excellent advice on how to think about money
Summary: 5 Stars
In this book, the first of many in a highly successful best-selling series, Robert Kiyosaki introduces the parable of the 'rich dad' and the 'poor dad'. Kiyosaki's 'poor dad' was his actual biological father--a man with a good, stable job, highly educated, able to provide for his family, seemingly upwardly mobile--but never quite able to break free from surviving paycheck to paycheck. The 'rich dad' was the father of Kiyosaki's best friend--an eighth grade dropout, successful businessman, and multimillionaire.
The poor dad's advice to young Robert was essentially to get a good education and to get a good job and benefit from a stable life. By contrast, the rich dad advised Robert to always take much greater risks--but calculated, educated risks based not on the kind of education one gets in schools, but instead based on detailed, real-world, knowledge of the specific investment one is considering making.
What seems to have happened is that, for about the first couple of decades of Kiyosaki's adult life, he more or less followed--with varying levels of success--the advice of Poor Dad. Being his biological father, Poor Dad probably had more influence at least initially. Kiyosaki got a formal education--albeit sometimes being kicked out of school--a military career, and a good stable job with Xerox for a period of time. After awhile, though, it apparently stopped working for Kiyosaki. He began to remember the advice of Rich Dad and realized that he wanted much more than what he had--and resolved to change his life in the ways that Rich Dad would have recommended. Kiyosaki and his wife went through a very difficult period for awhile in his late thirties, for a time living in a car and in a friend's basement--yet eventually they succeeded.
What Kiyosaki shows is that different people have very different ways of thinking about money. Some people think primarily in terms of the security of a paycheck--others aspire to higher goals financially and develop a good plan for getting there, even though they may suffer serious setbacks along the way. What I think Kiyosaki's central argument is in this book is that financially successful people think--and think hard--directly about how to make money, whereas financially unsuccessful people tend to acquire skills in other areas in the hope it will somehow translate into financial success. It usually doesn't.
This book needs to be understood and appreciated for what it is--and what it is not. Kiyosaki isn't going to give you a list of step by step instruction--do this in step 1, this in step 2, and so on and you'll be rich within a year. No such book could possibly exist because if it did, everyone would be doing it--or if it does exist, it is likely not to be a best seller. Kiyosaki instead shows you--through examples that may not be directly applicable in your own life, but still are thought provoking--that you have to work hard directly at the process of making money. But you still have to put in the hard work. Kiyosaki isn't going to do it for you, and your journey will surely be unique and different from Kiyosaki's.
It is important to understand that Kiyosaki is speaking in terms of examples, and not everything should be taken literally. Some of his advice is clearly timeless--and some is not--and it is up to the reader to discern what to take literally. For example, Kiyosaki was born in 1947, meaning that Rich Dad and Poor Dad--if they exist(ed) as real men at all--were probably born around 1920. They belong to a very different generation from those just starting out today. Rich Dad had only an 8th grade education but at a time when an 8th grade education was fairly typical. Someone today with only an 8th grade education (at least in the world's wealthier countries) would stick out like a sore thumb in a way that Rich Dad probably did not.
Some have criticized Kiyosaki on the grounds that Rich Dad may never have literally existed. However, the concept of expressing ideas in the form of dialog, involving possibly fictional characters, has been around since the time of Plato. I think that Kiyosaki should stand or fall as an author based on whether Rich Dad's ideas are valid--not whether Rich Dad himself is real.
Others have criticized Kiyosaki on the basis that most successful people do get an education and get a good 'day job'--flying in the face of Kiyosaki's advice. I would answer these folks in two ways. One is that many of the world's most successful technology entrepreneurs--including Microsoft's Bill Gates, Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, and Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin--did either drop out of an educational program at one point, or quit a successful 'day job'. Secondly, although a good 'day job' does in fact work for some people, the most successful such people seem to view their employment in an entrepreneurial fashion. When it ceases working for them from an entrepreneurial perspective, they are quick to find a better opportunity--they don't hang around for the security of collecting a good paycheck.
Another criticism is that Kiyosaki, perhaps, is truly successful only at selling books and seminars--he is not necessarily as good as he claims to be at real estate which is where he said he first made his money. He is not that forthcoming about his own financial details, so who knows what the truth of it might be. My own reaction is who cares? He is obviously successful at selling books and seminars--and since many people try and fail to sell similar books and seminars, my conclusion is that Kiyosaki does know something about success.
So the bottom line is this: if you are thinking too much like an employee, this book will help you think differently. This book isn't going to tell you what to do, because then you wouldn't have to think at all--and, as a good mentor (fictional or real), Rich Dad is going to guide you--he isn't going to do it for you. If you already think like an entrepreneur and are looking for specific advice about a specific business, you should look elsewhere, because Kiyosaki isn't about trying to do that.
So I highly recommend this book to get you thinking about your relationship with money. I don't necessarily recommend going out and buying all his books, seminars, and products--because once you've heard his message (which I think this one book is more than sufficient to convey), you need to go out and do the work for yourself. To rely on an endless serious of Kiyosaki products to do the work for you would be to fall into the same kind of lazy thinking that Kiyosaki warns against in this book.
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Summary of Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
Rich Dad, Poor Dad chronicles the story of the authors two dads, his own father, who wa the superintendent of education in Hawaii and who ended up dying penniless and his best friends father who dropped out of school at age 13 and went on to become one of the wealthiest men in Hawaii. Kiyosaki uses the story of these two men and their varying financial strategies to illustrate the need for a new financial paradigm in order to achieve financial success in the new millennium.Personal-finance author and lecturer Robert Kiyosaki developed his unique economic perspective through exposure to a pair of disparate influences: his own highly educated but fiscally unstable father, and the multimillionaire eighth-grade dropout father of his closest friend. The lifelong monetary problems experienced by his "poor dad" (whose weekly paychecks, while respectable, were never quite sufficient to meet family needs) pounded home the counterpoint communicated by his "rich dad" (that "the poor and the middle class work for money," but "the rich have money work for them"). Taking that message to heart, Kiyosaki was able to retire at 47. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, written with consultant and CPA Sharon L. Lechter, lays out his the philosophy behind his relationship with money. Although Kiyosaki can take a frustratingly long time to make his points, his book nonetheless compellingly advocates for the type of "financial literacy" that's never taught in schools. Based on the principle that income-generating assets always provide healthier bottom-line results than even the best of traditional jobs, it explains how those assets might be acquired so that the jobs can eventually be shed. --Howard Rothman
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