“We go to school to learn to work hard for money,” says Kiyosaki. “I write books and create products that teach people how to have money work hard for them.”
When Kiyosaki was nine years old, he approached the father of his best friend, Mike, to teach him how to make money. The
dad gave the young Kiyosaki a menial job in one of the convenience
stores he owned. It was not exactly what Kiyosaki had had in mind.
After three weeks of dusting cans and making just ten cents a week,
Kiyosaki told his friend’s dad he wanted to quit. Kiyosaki had not
learned how to make a fortune, but what he had learned was a lesson far
more valuable, said the father. At the age of nine, Kiyosaki was
beginning to understand the futility of working a job he hated for a
meager salary that would not get him anywhere in life.
That lesson formed
the basis of Kiyosaki’s later career, and is one of the major
components in his teachings. Kiyosaki did not get to where he is today
by going to work every day, being frugal, and saving his money. Instead, Kiyosaki learned to take risks – managed risks – and make his money do the working. “The poor and middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them,” says Kiyosaki. “The rich buy or create assets that work for them so they don't have to.”
In the Industrial Age, the formula for success was to go to school, get
good grades and find a secure job for life. Either the company or the
government would look after your financial wellbeing once you decided
to retire. Today, says Kiyosaki, times have changed: “We are in the
Information Age and more than job security we all need financial
security…You can no longer rely on your employer or your government to
take care of you.”
According to Kiyosaki, key to achieving financial security is in
understanding the difference between an asset and a liability, and
learning to leverage that difference. “An asset puts money in your pocket and a liability takes money from your pocket,” he says. “The rich understand the difference and buy assets, not liabilities.”
In his very blunt words, “Savers are losers.” Kiyosaki sees money just sitting in a bank account as money wasted. Your financial goals should not be to save money, get
out of debt, or invest for the long term, unless you are content being
one of the middle class, he says. But, if you want to be a part of the
rich kids’ club, that kind of thinking is obsolete.
“Today, ‘save money’
is bad advice,” says Kiyosaki, who has made most of his fortune in
shrewd real estate investments, and teaching the rest of the world how
to do the same. “I have a problem with too much money. I can't reinvest it fast enough, and because I reinvest it, more money comes in. Yes, the rich do get richer.”