How to Apply Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Name: Rich Dad, Poor Dad
Author: Robert T. Kiyosaki

What the rich teach their kids about money that the poor and middle class do not

Robert T. Kiyosaki

8 Key Insights

About This Book

Robert Kiyosaki grew up with two fathers: his own, a highly educated government official who died in debt, and his best friend's father, a man who never finished eighth grade and became one of the richest men in Hawaii. Rich Dad Poor Dad follows the six lessons that second father taught him, from a plaster-of-paris counterfeiting scheme gone wrong to why a paid-off house can still quietly drain your bank account. Kiyosaki, who retired at forty-seven on the strength of these ideas, argues that schools train people to work for money, while the wealthy learn something almost nobody else is taught: how to make money work for them.

About the Author

Robert Kiyosaki is an entrepreneur and investor who built his career around real estate and small-company stock holdings, crediting much of what he knows to his best friend's father, a self-made Hawaiian businessman he calls his rich dad. A graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, he served as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam before working in sales at Xerox and later founding his own companies. He retired at forty-seven, financially independent, and has taught financial education professionally since 1984, using books and the CASHFLOW board games he created to explain accounting, investing, and business ownership to people who never learned them in school.

Biggest Takeaway

You'll start reading your own spending the way an accountant reads a balance sheet, spotting which of your possessions quietly drains your bank account each month before you buy the next one. You'll catch yourself pausing before a raise turns into a bigger car payment, and before fear talks you into a job decision you haven't actually thought through. You'll look at your paycheck and your side project differently, treating one as fuel and the other as the business you're actually building. And you'll stop hiding financial mistakes, using them instead the way a golfer uses a lost ball, as information for the next shot.