Rich Dad, Poor Dad is Robert Kiyosaki’s and Sharon Lechter’s first best-selling book. It advocates financial independence through investing, real estate, owning businesses, and the use of finance protection tactics.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad is written in an anecdotal manner aimed at making finances interesting.[citation needed] The most central element stressed by Kiyosaki and Lechter is the advocacy of owning the system or means of production, rather than being an employee of someone else.
The book takes the form of a story. It is largely based on Kiyosaki’s own upbringing and education in Hawaii, although the degree of fictionalization is disputed. Because of the heavy use of allegory, some readers believe that Kiyosaki created Rich Dad as an author surrogate (a literary device), discussed further in the criticism section below. Many readers believe that the “Rich Dad” in the book is actually the founder of Hawaii’s widespread ABC Stores.
The Poor Dad in the story is based on Kiyosaki’s real father, a PhD holder and graduate of Stanford, Chicago, and Northwestern University, all on full scholarship, who was the head of the Education department of the state of Hawaii. In the book, he is greatly respected until he decides, late in his career, to take a stand on principle against the governor of Hawaii. This leads directly to Poor Dad losing his job, and his inability to find comparable work ever again. Because he has never learned to handle money, instead depending on the government (his employer) for support, he dies in severe debt.
In contrast to this character is Rich Dad, his best friend Michael’s father. Rich Dad dropped out in 8th grade, but became a self-made multi-millionaire regardless. He teaches Kiyosaki and Michael a variety of financial lessons, and insists that the boys learn to make money work for them to avoid spending their whole lives working for money, like Rich Dad’s employees, as well as Poor Dad, and indeed most of the people in the world. There is a lot of this book that is hard to swallow as truth, and one needs to be aware that it is allegorical.
Anthony Robbins holds a seminar called ‘Wealth Mastery’ and one of the keynote speakers is a gentleman called Keith Cunningham. During the seminar Cunningham claimed to be Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad. This is highly unlikely not only because of the similarity in age between Cunningham and Kiyosaki, but also because Kiyosaki had stated in his books that Rich Dad had died in 1994. Some have claimed that Rich Dad was a person named Richard Kimi, the deceased founder of Sand and Seaside Hawaiian Hotels.
The book highlights the different attitudes to money, work and life of these two men, and how they in turn influenced key decisions in Kiyosaki’s life.
Kiyosaki and Lechter say the rich think differently in how they define simple words like assets and wealth, and how they fund their luxuries. They define an asset as any item which produces income (such as rental property,stocks or bonds), and a liability as anything which produces expense (such as one’s own home, new widescreen TV, exercise machine, new garden tractor, motorcycle, computers, processed foods, swing sets, barbecue grill, tools, letting your property rundown and a new car every two years).
No one disputes that the rich buy “income-producing assets”. Kiyosaki and Lechter argue that the poor buy worthless items that they think are assets, which clearly do not earn anything, and may have no market value.
According to Kiyosaki and Lechter, wealth is measured as the number of days the income from your assets will sustain you, and financial independence is achieved when your monthly income from assets exceeds your monthly expenses. Each dad had a different way of teaching his son.
Rich Dad Poor Dad’s collection consits of:
- Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
- Cashflow Quadrant: Rich Dad’s Guide to Financial Freedom
- Rich Dad’s Advisors: The ABC’s of Real Estate Investing: The Secrets of Finding Hidden Profits Most Investors Miss (Rich Dad’s Advisors)
- Rich Dad Advisor’s Series: Own Your Own Corporation: Why the Rich Own Their Own Companies and Everyone Else Works for Them (Rich Dad’s Advisors)
- Rich Dad’s Before You Quit Your Job: 10 Real-Life Lessons Every Entrepreneur Should Know About Building a Multimillion-Dollar Business (Rich Dad’s)
- Rich Dad Poor Dad for Teens: The Secrets About Money–That You Don’t Learn in School! (Rich Dad Poor Dad)
- Rich Dad’s Retire Young, Retire Rich
- Why We Want You to Be Rich: Two Men, One Message
- Rich Dad’s Guide to Becoming Rich…Without Cutting Up Your Credit Cards
There is also Rich Dad Kindle Version available for downloads.
