Rich dad went on to explain that the rich know that money is an illusion, truly like the carrot for the donkey. It’s only out of fear and greed that the illusion of money is held together by billions of people who believe that money is real. It’s not. Money is really made up. It is only because of the illusion of confidence and the ignorance of the masses that this house of cards stands.
He talked about the gold standard that America was on, and that each dollar bill was actually a silver certificate. What concerned him was the rumor that we would someday go off the gold standard and our dollars would no longer be backed by something tangible.
“If that happens, boys, all hell will break loose. The poor, the middle class, and the ignorant will have their lives ruined simply because they will continue to believe that money is real and that the company they work for, or the government, will look after them.”
We really did not understand what he was saying that day, but over the years, it made more and more sense.
Seeing What Others Miss
As he climbed into his pickup truck outside his convenience store, rich dad said, “Keep working boys, but the sooner you forget about needing a paycheck, the easier your adult life will be. Keep using your brain, work for free, and soon your mind will show you ways of making money far beyond what I could ever pay you. You will see things that other people never see. Most people never see these opportunities because they’re looking for money and security, so that’s all they get. The moment you see one opportunity, you’ll see them for the rest of your life. The moment you do that, I’ll teach you something else. Learn this, and you’ll avoid one of life’s biggest traps.
Mike and I picked up our things from the store and waved goodbye to Mrs. Martin. We went back to the park, to the same picnic bench, and spent several more hours thinking and talking.
We spent the next week at school thinking and talking, too. For two more weeks, we kept thinking, talking, and working for free.
At the end of the second Saturday, I was again saying goodbye to Mrs. Martin and looking at the comic-book stand with a longing gaze. The hard thing about not even getting 30 cents every Saturday was that I didn’t have any money to buy comic books. Suddenly, as Mrs. Martin said goodbye to Mike and me, I saw her do something I’d never seen her do before.
Mrs. Martin was cutting the front page of the comic book in half. She kept the top half of the comic book cover and threw the rest of the book into a large cardboard box. When I asked her what she did with the comic books, she said, “I throw them away. I give the top half of the cover back to the comic-book distributor for credit when he brings in the new comics. He’s coming in an hour.”
Mike and I waited for an hour. Soon the distributor arrived, and I asked him if we could have the comic books. To my delight, he said, “You can have them if you work for this store and do not resell them.”
Remember our old business partnership? Well, Mike and I revived it. Using a spare room in Mike’s basement, we began piling hundreds of comic books in that room. Soon our comic-book library was open to the public. We hired Mike’s younger sister, who loved to study, to be head librarian. She charged each child 10 cents admission to the library, which was open from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. every day after school. The customers, the children of the neighborhood, could read as many comics as they wanted in two hours. It was a bargain for them since a comic cost 10 cents each, and they could read five or six in two hours.
Mike’s sister would check the kids as they left to make sure they weren’t borrowing any comic books. She also kept the books, logging in how many kids showed up each day, who they were, and any comments they might have. Mike and I averaged $9.50 per week over a three-month period. We paid his sister one dollar a week and allowed her to read the comics for free, which she rarely did since she was always studying.
Mike and I kept our agreement by working in the store every Saturday and collecting all the comic books from the different stores. We kept our agreement to the distributor by not selling any comic books. We burned them once they got too tattered. We tried opening a branch office, but we could never quite find someone as trustworthy and dedicated as Mike’s sister. At an early age, we found out how hard it was to find good staff.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY...
THE POWER OF IMAGINATION
In the Information Age and the age of the Internet, millions of people under the age of 30 are getting rich using their imaginations to create apps that change the world—from Facebook to Uber to Snapchat and others. Those with imaginations thrive while those without it are still looking for a job… a job that may soon be replaced by robots and technology.
Three months after the library first opened, a fight broke out in the room. Some bullies from another neighborhood pushed their way in, and Mike’s dad suggested we shut down the business. So our comic-book business shut down, and we stopped working on Saturdays at the convenience store. But rich dad was excited because he had new things he wanted to teach us. He was happy because we had learned our first lesson so well: We learned to make money work for us. By not getting paid for our work at the store, we were forced to use our imaginations to identify an opportunity to make money. By starting our own business, the comic-book library, we were in control of our own finances, not dependent on an employer. The best part was that our business generated money for us, even when we weren’t physically there. Our money worked for us.
Instead of paying us money, rich dad had given us so much more.
Chapter One
LESSON 1: THE RICH DON’T WORK FOR MONEY
Chapter One
LESSON 1: THE RICH DON’T WORK FOR MONEY
Summary
When he was 9 years old, Robert Kiyosaki and his childhood friend weren’t invited to a classmate’s beach house because they were “poor kids” in an affluent school. After being told by his poor dad—his father who was a teacher and made a good living but always struggled to make ends meet—to simply go and “make money,” he and his friend, Mike, did just that: They collected empty toothpaste tubes, which at that time were made of lead. They melted them down and used plaster molds to make counterfeit nickels.
They were soon set straight by Robert’s dad, who told them they should talk to Mike’s dad, who never finished eighth grade but ran multiple successful businesses.
Mike’s dad, the “rich dad” of the book title, agreed to teach them, but on his terms. He had them work three hours every Saturday morning at one of his convenience stores, dusting the food packaging and cleaning. He paid them 10 cents an hour, which Robert usually spent on 10-cent comic books.
Fairly quickly, Robert grew disenchanted with the boring work and low pay. When he told his friend he was going to quit, Mike told him that his dad said that would happen and that Robert needed to meet with him. Robert’s dad as a schoolteacher used lectures, but Mike’s dad was a man of few words and taught in a very different way, which Robert was about to find out.
The next Saturday morning, Robert went to meet Mike’s dad but was kept waiting in a dusty, dark living room for an hour. He was fed up and emotional by the time he got to complain to Mike’s dad, accusing him of being greedy and not showing him respect. When he said Mike’s dad hadn’t taught him anything despite their agreement, the business owner calmly disagreed.
His rich dad explained that life doesn’t teach you with words, but by pushing you around. Some people let life push them around; others get angry and push back against their boss or their loved ones. But some people learn a lesson from it, and in fact welcome life pushing them around because it means they need to learn something.
Those who don’t learn that lesson spend their lives blaming everyone else and waiting for a big break—or decide to play it safe and never risk, or win,