Sixteen years ago I met some people who read this book and put its lessons into practice, getting out of the rat-race and into business for themselves, looking to move into the world of big deals and Kiyosaki-style financial freedom. They even had his boardgame; Cashflow - Get Out of the Rat Race!.

Now, over a decade and half later their lives have been transformed - their business has failed and they live in a van.

That's not to say that there is no useful advice in Rich Dad, Poor Dad, but there's also some that seems pretty get-rich-quick, and I would read more widely if you really want to learn about investing, creating wealth and establishing a solid financial future.

فصلهای ابتدایی کتاب خوب بود و من فکر میکردم ایده های جالبی برای کسب و کار از این کتاب به دست می آورم، ولی نویسنده هیچ درباره کارآفرینی و تولید پول نمی گوید و برای کسب ثروت فقط به سراغ خرید و فروش املاک و مستغلات می رود. تا قبل از خواندن این کتاب فکر نمیکردم که املاک و مستغلات در آمریکا هم به عنوان کالای سرمایه ای محسوب می شود. تمام مثال های نویسنده از کسب ثروت خرید یک ملک با قیمت پایین تر و سپس فروش آن به قیمت بالاتر می باشد. تمام هنرمندی نویسنده برای تولید پول کشف مناطق و محله هایی هست که از نظر قیمت هنوز رشد خود را شروع نکرده اند و انجام چند معامله خرید و فروش در آن مناطق می باشد. این کتاب را فقط به کسانی که به کار دلالی علاقه مند هست پیشنهاد میکنم . کتاب برای فضای اقتصاد ایران که دلالی از سایر مشاغل منفعت بیشتری دارد نوشته شده است.

يتحدث الكتاب عن الطريقة التي يفكر بها الشخص الغني والطريقة التي يفكر بها الشخص الفقير
حيث أن الفقير حتى لو حصل على المال فإنه وبسبب تفكيره يقوم بصرفه بطريقة تجعله يبقى في مكانه دون أن يصبح غنيا
أما الغني فحتى لو مر بحالات فشل أو افلاس فإنه وبسبب تفكيره ينهض مرة أخرى

الكتاب مكتوب بأسلوب رائع حيث يروي كييوساكي كيف أن تربى على يد أب جامعي لكن تفكيره تفكير الفقراء لذلك بقي فقيرا ومات فقيرا
ويقارن كيوساكي بينه وبين أبو صديقه الذي كان كان فقيرا، لكنه كان يفكر بطريقة الأغنياء وقد تعلم كيوساكي على يديه كيفية بناء الأعمال وكيفية التفكير كأغنياء، وبالرغم من أن أبو صديقه كان فقيرا، إلا أن تفكيره بطريقة الأغنياء جعله يجمع ثورة كبيرة ويموت تاركا خالفه أمبراطورية تجارية كبيرة لابنه.

كتاب يجعلك تنظر للمال ولطريقة صرفه بطريقة مختلفة
لكنه لا يعطي الكثير من الخطوات الواضحة لاستثمار المال وبناء الأعمال

Drugi i nie ostatni raz jak czytam tę książkę. Pokazuje jak bogactwo to w głównej mierze mindset. Pomaga mi w „odprogramowaniu” podejścia do pieniędzy zaprogramowanego w moim dzieciństwie.

Updated October 23, 2018
Read this book two years about and most of what the author says still rings true. While I am not in the same financial situation I was two years ago, I am still not making those major changes I need to make. This book is the kick in the ass I need to push through and get things done so I will have a successful 2019.

While I do not agree with everything in this book, at least 60% of it rings true. I learned a lot reading this book and I will be putting a lot of what I learn into practice.

January 11, 2016
This book really gets you to think outside the box. It also get you fired up about your financing and makes you question how you have been dealing with your money in the past. While I did find the book inspiring and it did get me fired up to take control of my finances, I found for the most part, the book did not offer practical steps for a young professional. I also found it was a little too much real estate based. A good read overall.

Let's cut right to the chase: I gained very little from this book. In between the pop-psychology, the right-wing apologism, the chapters that read as paid infomercials for the author's other books and products, and the nauseating repetition, I gleaned precious few tidbits on how to grow your wealth. Adding to the problem is that many of these tidbits seem so broad and crashingly obvious that you begin to wonder if you're being conned. Like a visit to the palm reader who foretells the most mundane of life's coming attractions, Kiyosaki imparts basic wisdoms you could most likely arrive at on your own.

The prescription to build your asset column and pay less in taxes are hardly groundbreaking insights. Nor is the counsel that there's no such thing as a no-risk investment. Neither is the instruction to pay experts for their expertise, and pay them well. It's the steps in between that prove the bottleneck for most of us—the tricky part about acquiring the necessary funds to begin making meaningful moves financially. After the crippling student loans and exorbitant rent payments, those of us who call ourselves millennials have just barely enough to scrape together for living expenses like food and electricity, and far less for shrewd investments in stocks and real estate.

Kiyosaki urges that to become like the rich, we must seize the golden opportunities everyone else missed or passed over. "Great opportunities are not seen with your eyes. They are seen with your mind," he writes (p. 200). If this sounds to you like utterly inactionable intel, you're not alone. I personally need more than folk wisdom clichés before kickstarting my journey out of debt. Besides, golden opportunities don't last long, and chances are that someone more financially secure than you are will have already pounced on it.

He does elaborate here and there on some of his honed practices, such as the scouting he does when surveying local real estate markets, and which assets he prioritizes in his portfolio (real estate and small-cap stocks, in case you were wondering). But most of these chapters are simply too thin on the ground to be of much use. For the most part, it's the larger lessons that Kiyosaki's interested in imparting, some of which may prove helpful to complete novices when it comes to investing.

His framing of cash flow is one of the more insightful areas of the book. He says that most people put their earned or ordinary income toward liabilities and expenses (the "Rat Race" reified by the middle class), whereas the smart investor procures income-generating assets that can cover expenses and, provided those cash flows are sufficiently large, can ultimately obviate the need for debt altogether. So for example, he advises to not buy a house until your mortgage can be paid entirely from asset-driven cash flows (e.g., passive or portfolio income) as opposed to active income. Prior to this, presumably, we would be better off remaining a renter*.

*(Yet in certain cases, namely high-value markets around the country, it can actually be cheaper to own than to rent. In places like New York, Denver, or Washington, DC, the monthly mortgage payment on a suburban house or condo can be cheaper than the rental cost of an apartment in the city. Especially if the market is expected to keep climbing, it can be more prudent to scrape the cash together for a down payment and start building equity than to continue throwing money into a rental black hole that you'll never get back.)

You do learn a few other important items in the realm of finance, including the benefits of a 1031 tax-deferred exchange, the three basic types of income, and the relationship between an income statement and a balance sheet. But this kind of information is easily obtained elsewhere and is fairly common knowledge for anyone who attended business school. The balance of the book is, frankly, filled with folk psychology and teachings lifted straight from Sunday school. In his 10-step guide to cultivating your inner financial genius, one is titled "Teach and you shall receive: the power of giving". Doing his best to channel self-help quack Rhonda Byrne in The Secret, he literally writes:

"If I could leave one single idea with you, it is that idea. Whenever you feel short or in need of something, give what you want first and it will come back in buckets...I know it is often the last thing a person may want to do, but it has always worked for me. I trust that the principle of reciprocity is true, and I give what I want. I want money, so I give money, and it comes back in multiples. I want sales, so I help someone else sell something, and sales come to me. I want contacts, and I help someone else get contacts. Like magic, contacts come to me." (p. 305).

Perhaps the most controversial monetary advice he gives, or at least what cuts against the grain of conventional wisdom, is that a home is not an asset (but a liability), and that the old dogma of saving and diversifying is obsolete. I'm no financial guru, so I won't come right out and declare this bad advice, but it seems to me that in terms of owning a house, it again depends on the market. If the value of your home is going up, you have an asset you can sell at a profit. If the local market is in decline, however, you can potentially be stuck with a property that is worth less than what you owe the bank, at which point it would indeed be strange to continue thinking of that property as an asset.

And one's level of asset diversification depends on one's aversion to risk, though for his part Kiyosaki recommends taking informed risks rather than playing it safe with a balanced portfolio. Any given investment, he writes, "is not risky for the financially literate...there is always risk. It is financial intelligence that improves the odds." In fact it's financial savvy, hard won through experience and failure, that turns what may seem to the uninitiated like gambling into informed investing.

That's all sound as far as it goes, but I think what irked me most of all is Kiyosaki's running theme that what separates the rich from the poor is, principally, financial literacy. Rich people know about loopholes in the tax code, for example, or hire expert accountants and financial advisers who do. The notion that it's basic ignorance and psychological shortcomings that keep you from reaching the next level of financial security is one that's repeated throughout. He writes:

"The main cause of poverty or financial struggle is fear and ignorance, not the economy or the government or the rich. It's self-inflicted fear and ignorance that keep people trapped." (p. 55)

And again on p. 85:

"Illiteracy, both in words and numbers, is the foundation of financial struggle. If people are having difficulties financially, there is something that they don't understand, either in words or in numbers. The rich are rich because they are more literate in different areas than people who struggle financially. So if you want to be rich and maintain your wealth, it's important to be financially literate, in words as well as numbers."

Never mind his banally deplorable blaming-the-victim ethos. And we'll also go ahead and ignore the systemic obstacles and inherent racial and class-based limitations that economically disadvantage tens of millions of people in America and elsewhere. Is it out of the question that Kiyosaki simply got lucky? Perhaps he made some good investing decisions early on that enabled him to acquire the kind of funds necessary to turn those initial profits into larger and larger profits. He even confesses to engaging in ultra high-risk plays initially:

"The stock plays I personally invested in were extremely high-risk for most people and absolutely not recommended. I have been playing that game since 1979 and have paid more than my share in dues. But if you will reread why investments such as these are high-risk for most people, you may be able to set your life up differently, so that the ability to take $25,000 and turn it into $1 million in a year is low-risk for you." (p. 199)

That mileage will vary here should go without saying. And financial intelligence or no, a high-risk investment could bring a middling economic situation crashing down before your investing career gets off the ground. In such a situation, forking over twenty-five big ones to have another go isn't in the cards, no matter how much self-help advice you imbibe over the course of the year.

Or, one could surmise, perhaps he rubbed elbows with the right folks who propelled him along the road to financial independence. One of his self-professed heroes is the "brash" Donald Trump, with whom he's co-written a couple of books. (In a grand mix of irony and farcical flummery, Kiyosaki waxes poetic about how arrogance, which he ascribes to people who rarely read or listen to experts, is detrimental to wealth building, then name-drops Trump as a counter-example to which he aspires. That degree of delusion is priceless, regardless of the date of publication.)

He also takes frequent, irksome potshots at the value of education, though a charitable interpretation here is that Kiyosaki is lamenting how poorly universities prepare us for managing our finances. I heartily agree that personal finance should be a fundamental part of every young person's education in order to help us navigate those more thorny adulting tasks such as obtaining a mortgage, managing a credit card, and investing in the stock market, CDs (certificates of deposit), government bonds, and other common financial instruments. Most millennials are sorely lacking in financial knowledge, and we could benefit greatly from acquiring this knowledge before it's too late.

Finally, the author is just a generally poor writer, which to his credit, Kiyosaki freely and openly admits. This wouldn't be nearly the problem that it is if the advice on offer was of broader utility and if it didn't seem like the repetitiveness of it all was merely a ploy to cover up the thinness of the message. Alas, in the worst cases entire chapters seem to be retreads of earlier discussions. It's even more galling because the exact words and phrasing are used each time a familiar point is raised, thereby avoiding even minimal contact with a thesaurus. And then of course there's the hawking of his other books, seminars (which will run you as much as $5,000 a pop), and licensed board games, and the not-so-humble brags about his marketing prowess, which certainly doesn't help with the conman vibe whatsoever.

Closing Thoughts

All in all, I won't be recommending Rich Dad Poor Dad for those looking to escape the rat race of corporate America. Short on specifics, its focus is more on big picture concepts and gaining the right perspective on investing. It also feels cheap and gimmicky, not to mention mind-numbingly repetitive, and grounded in wish-fulfillment. Instead, I will recommend the following for their more comprehensive treatment of financial topics:

—The Complete Idiot's Guide to Investing by Joshua Kennon (2006)
—The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America by Warren Buffett (1997)
—Warren Buffett Invests Like a Girl by The Motley Fool (2011)
—Warren Buffett’s 3 Favorite Books by Preston George Pysh (2012)
—Beating the Street by Peter Lynch (1994)
—The Money Masters by John Train (1980)
—The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham (1949)
—Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (1937)

Note: This review has been republished from my official website.

نجح كيوساكي نجاح باهر في نقد التفكير السلبي الذي يبقي الفقراء فقراء
اتفق تماما في أن الشهادة الدراسية مهما ارتفعت فهي بالكاد تكفي العوز
كتاب يحاول فيه الكاتب ذو الثروة الكبيرة أن يقول للفقراء والمتوسطين .. هنا طريق الربح والثروة المتاح للجميع وقليل من يفكرون فيه
أنا جديد على مثل هذا الكلام وكثير من تفاصيل الربح والاستثمار لم افهمها ..
لكن يبدو الكلام منطقيا ويستأهل التفكير فيه بجدية
..
تبدلت فكرتي عن الكتب التي تعلم الحصول على ثروة .. هي كتب لديها الكثير لتعلمه

I think the book should be called

"Look how privileged the rich can be,
A book by the rich, for the rich"

The book started off well, the author started by saying just studying is enough and that everyone needs financial education to get financial freedom. And I was impressed.

As the book progressed it got bad and took a turn for the worse.

The author mentions all these opportunities to make money and they are almost exclusively available only for the rich. Time and time again the author clearly states that the rich do this and the poor do this. Not the financially sound and the less informed. He talks about how "rich" do things, clearly meaning financial knowledge isn't everything. The examples that have been given in the book, caters only to the rich. Rich do this, rich do that, whereas the poor just sit around.

For example, this line
"Every time people try to punish the rich, the rich don't simply comply. They react. They have the money, power, and intent to change things. They don't just sit there and voluntarily pay more taxes.
Instead, they search for ways to minimize their tax burden. They hire smart attorneys and accountants and persuade politicians to change laws or create legal loopholes. They use their resources to effect change."

If the idea of the author is to teach the poor how the rich work, the only thing that can be understood from this book is that, Rich get richer. In the above line, the author talks about how the rich take action to pay lesser taxes. He started this book by saying the poor should learn how to pay lesser taxes and if this is how rich pay less, then it clearly is a privilege that the poor do not enjoy. No amount of financial knowledge can help.

The author says people should stop complaining about the economy even and understand that maybe they are the problem.

Take this example that has been given in the book.

During an economic depression, when the house rates dropped, he bought a house for a really low amount and later sold it for a higher price and made a profit.

One of his wonderful ideas to make money is this idea. This once again is reeking of privilege. Only the rich can have money lying around during an economic depression when the rest of the population is trying to make their ends meet.

Some of the lines in the book are sadistic even. Take the following example about what he says about the real estate business:

"I have people ask what happens if the person doesn't pay. That does happen, and it's good news. That home could be taken back and re-sold for a bigger amount and another x amount collected as a loan-processing fee."

"Occasionally someone does not pay. And that is wonderful because there are late fees, or they move out and the property is sold again. The court system handles that."

The intended audience of the book is the general public who are not rich and want to get rich, by becoming financially independent as it has been marketed by the book. Those people are the ones struggling to pay and later having their house taken back.

The author is vehemently against the belief that a house is an asset. And he has been making money in the same business because of the people who consider it an asset.

According to the rich dad in the book, it's the poor people's fault for putting up with this. Having a hard time at work? Struggling to make ends meet with the current income? Why are you putting up with it? The author doesn't realize that not everybody has options just lying around the corner. Some of us have to do what we have to do until we have an opportunity.

The author says he "cringes" when people aim to get a secure job. But he clearly states that he himself did the same thing at Xerox Corp and invested wisely. After his diatribe about hating people who work for the government or a corporate job, when I read this, I couldn't help but see the hypocrisy.

I could go on and on.

Bottom line:

What this book does teach:
• How many opportunities do the rich have to make more money

What this book does not teach:
• Explodes the myth that you need to earn a high income to become rich
• Teaches you what to teach your kids about money for their future financial
success

I would ask people to stay the hell away from this book.

I loved this book because it was a simple intro to buying real estate, much as  The Wealthy Barber was a simple intro to personal finance.

I remember one of my favorite parts was where he examines the statement by many people that shows that the stock market has beaten the real estate annually in a historical comparison. Kiyosacki pointed out though that if you look at return on your money real estate wins hands down because you only have to put in 10% of your own money. So if you buy a 100K house with 10K, borrowing the 90K, and it appreciates to 105K after a year - you've got a 50% return.

Un clásico sobre la autoeducación financiera.

✔️ Puntos fuertes: consejos, lenguaje sencillo y la idea de instruirte en el mundo financiero para lograr entender las finanzas.

❤ Te gustará si: quieres iniciarte en la educación financiera.

.
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الأب الغني والأب الفقير ، ولا يقاس الغنى هنا
بالمال بل أسلوب التوجيه والتربية " الإقتصادية "
إن أمكن وصفها بذلك .

‏
يركز الكاتب على ضرورة التحرر من قيود الوظيفة
أو ما أطلق عليه لقب " عبودية الوظيفة "والدخل
المحدود إلى تجربة حرية الإستثمار الخاص ولا يقلل
الكاتب من أهمية الوظيفة بل على العكس إذ يمكن
للوظيفة الأمنة أن تكون سبب مساعد على الخوض في
خضم التجارة .
وعرف الكاتب الأصول المالية بأنها كل ما يأتي بالمال
لصاحبه ، بينما الخصوم هي كل أوجه الإنفاق التي
تستهلك ميزانية المرء .
بالمختصر يمكنك أن تعمل من أجل المال ، ولكن
الأفضل لك أن يعمل المال من أجلك .
.
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#تمت
#أبجدية_فرح 3/5
#الأب_الغني_والأب_الفقير

I wanted to read this since I taught about financial intelligence in public health. I told my students that they needed to learn what the difference between an asset and a liability was—all without actually reading the book.
During that class I got some thoughtful faces looking back at me. Even if I didn’t fully understand what I was teaching, I knew I was giving people a new perspective on money that they never thought about.

What if their teachers in high school took ten minutes to explain what I just did? Why didn’t they? These questions were going through my head afterwards. I am afraid that if I asked Robert to give me an answer, he would have a conspiracy theory for me. I’m glad he didn’t speculate in the book, because Robert has some iffy idols whose opinion on the matter is clear (ahem, Donald Trump).

There is no doubt that this book is a cash grab (kinda-sorta, depends on the efficacy of his seminars and CASHGRAB game), but for someone like me who actually has no financial intelligence and is desperate to start, I liked it! I learned a lot and realized that I should invest in learning about these things. I should take seminars and read more books, and at no point will I suddenly graduate from self-taught finance class. I have to do this for my whole life!

But this obligation is one that doesn’t scare me. Staying at my job with my 1-2 hour commute for 50 years scares me. Living with my parents for 10 years scares me. Never being able to afford to do field work ecology again scares me. But learning never scares me. I love the revelation that, just because I’m not in school, doesn’t mean I’m off the hook. Nerd like me? I LOVE that.

So this book did take a weight off my shoulders, that even if I never really learn how to harness the power of money (because I’m not going to compromise and invest in BIG OIL like Robert did