The Financial Lessons In Rich Dad Poor Dad

A book written in 1997 by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter may be outdated for 2021 but Rich Dad Poor Dad was the first book I purchased with the intent to learn and gain understanding and clarity. In your early teenage years around fifteen or sixteen you start to look for extrinsic motivation from someone you look up to whether it be peers, family or online personas you see on your screen daily. When I was a young teenager I found inspiration from others, The book Rich Dad Poor Dad was popular among the people who inspired me and so I bought the ebook. The self help novel explores how to use money as a tool for developing wealth and provides life lessons taught by poor dad and rich dad.

The lesson filled novel is told from the perspective of poor dad's son/narrator. Poor Dad was the narrator/author's biological dad. He was intelligent and educated. He believed in studying hard and getting good grades, then finding a good paying job. Yet, despite his beliefs, poor dad didn’t do well financially. Rich Dad was the father of the author's best friend. He had a similar work ethic to his real dad, however rich dad believed in the opposite. He believed in financial education, learning how money works, and understanding how to make money work for you. All while being a middle school dropout, the rich dad eventually became a millionaire by putting the power of money to work for him. In chapter one the rich dad says, “The poor and middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them.” “It’s fear that keeps most people working at a job: the fear of not paying their bills, the fear of being fired, the fear of not having enough money, and the fear of starting over. That’s the price of studying to learn a profession or trade, and then working for money. Most people become a slave to money and then get angry at their boss.” Notes the narrator.

The most influential lesson learned in this novel to me is something we all think about. Working all your life for someone else is not fulfilling and leads to financial struggle. The well educated poor dad worked for money because a job meant everything to him. While rich dad became a millionaire by working to learn. The author says “I recommend to young people to seek work for what they will learn, more than what they will earn. Look down the road at what skills they want to acquire before choosing a specific profession and before getting trapped in the Rat Race.” Latter in the book the author joins the Marines after graduating from college and learned the essential business skills of leading and managing people. He later joins Xerox as a salesperson, overcame his fear of rejection to become one of the top salespeople in the company, then left the corporate world to form his own business. Throughout the lesson filled novel the author makes countless decisions that would guide his life to being rich and not poor like his dad. The decisions the author made devastated his biological poor dad as noted earlier in my writing “He believed in studying hard and getting good grades, then finding a good paying job” job security is important to poor dad. Rich dad was congratulatory to every decision the author made as along the way he was learning skills, how to lead others, money management, and making money work for him.

I could write a book on this novel and the lesson taught within it. But the key takeaways remain; keep motivated, take risks, continue to learn and be a generalist; know a little about everything. To me the novel wasn’t about being rich or poor it was about experiencing life and becoming stable in what it is you’re passionate about. Novels let us into the worlds of the authors and let us create our own story while following along with theirs whether it be a fiction novel or nonfiction.