Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

Today I am going to talk about a book called Rich Dad...Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.

This became a best seller during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. Many ideas and businesses faded away when the bubble burst, but this book has kept going because it has market frenzies and everything to do with our private attitudes to money.

The book's title comes from Kiyosaki's two "dads" his real one, who worked hard all his life as an educator in Hawaii, and a friend's father, who ran businesses and worked for himself. At age 9, the young Kiyosaki decided to follow the advice of the "rich dad". and Rich Dad, Poor Dad is the culmination of  those teachings.

The rat race

Many people's parents say, or at least trongly imply, that the reason we have to stay hard at school is so that we can go to the University and then get a secure job.This is seen as the path to financial success, and anything else is too risky or strange to contemplate.

Accepting this conventional wisdom- a wisdom based on fear- most of us end up "working for the man." The average workplace has a sense of quiet desperation about it. People forever complain about their pay or their boss, but the alternative of quitting seems even worse. If they do go, they have another job lined up so that there is a smooth transition from one pay packet to another.

Thanks to your fear, Kiyosaki says, for the rest of your life you are likely to be dependent on a wage and an employer. As you gain a mortgage, consumer debt,  and children, your dependence only increases, and so does your fear of trying something different. Because you can't  take any risks with what you do not have, your retirement is placed in mutual funds that emphasize safety, and also have low rates of return. And because you are working all the time to get raises to keep up with inflation and debt interest, you have no time to discover alternative investments. To cap it off, Kiyosaki says, you are working from January to mid-May just to pay your taxes. If you end up with enough to get in by in your retirement, you will have done well.

This is the "rat race."

Assets and liabilities

Do you know that there is a difference between money and wealth?  Money is a result of wealth or real value, and sometimes only a symbol of it. What is real is what has generated the money: business with revenues greater than costs, a property with rent greater than mortgage and upkeep, a creative work that earns loyalties.

The poor and the middle class labor under the idea that money (usually a pay packet) is what matters. This equals "security." But the rich don't focus on pay from a job- they are more interested in something that makes money, and that will do so even when they are not around. Instead of looking for jobs, they scout for assets that will be a source of  income.

The fundamental difference  between the rich and the poor and middle classes is that the rich know the difference  between an asset and a liability. Anything that generates money- that actually puts it in your pocket- is an asset.  Everything else you own that you think is an asset, be it your home, your car, or your expensive set of golf clubs, is most probably a liability. It takes money ouf of your pocket.

You can tell someone who doesn't know much about money because they boast about how much they earn in their job. For the savvy, job earnings are almost an irrelevance. What matters is the income coming in from assets that don't even need you to be around to generate cash.

Literate and educated

Would you describe yourself as literate? Your answer may be, 'Of course." But do you know how to read a balance sheet? Rich Dad told Kiyosaki that accounting was a "story in numbers," and if you could read these stories you had a great advantage. Financial literacy was important as word literacy. "Illiteracy, both in words and numbers is the foundation of financial struggle" he said.

People frequently ask Kiyosaki, "How do I start getting rich?" The questioner is then disappointed to hear his response.Before making any investments, educate yourself on all the options and opportunities. The more you know, the better your decisions will be. Lack of financial education team with the desire for quick riches lead to disaster. "Most people. in their drive to get rich, are trying to build an Empire State Building on a 6-inch slab." he says. What sort of knowledge foundation do you have?

One of Kiyosaki's fascination points in the myth that specialization leads to path to wealth. The idea goes that if you know more and more about something, you will be paid more for your knowledge. The danger with this is that it may blind you to the business aspects of your profession. Most of us "become what we study." That is, if you study cooking, you become a chef; if you study medicine, you become a doctor or a specialist. As you start to know about your field, you do become more valuable- to whoever employs you. Kiyosaki warns that you can spend so much time educating yourself that you forget to "mind your own business".

Make sure that financial knowledge is not left out of your learning.

Personal development and building wealth

The key to controlling money is controlling your emotions. How many people have won the lottery or gained a big windfall, only to lose it again within a year or two? In these situations, any deficiencies in financial education or self-discipline are magnified.

Becoming rich involves self-discipline and the ability to separate the emotions of fear and greed from a good investment decision. It may seem strange, but self-knowledge is vital to your financial future. That prosperity is intertwined with personal growth is one of the secrets of wealth in the twenty-first century.

Kiyosaki's poor dad was alarmed when he joined Xerox as a salesman. Middle-class, educated people did not go into sales. But Kiyosaki was a shy person and thought that sales training would make him less so. He knew that successful people were not as afraid of rejection, and that to get ahead in life you have to be good at selling, whether it was yourself or a thing. Once he was being interviewed by a journalist, an author herself, who asked him how she could be more successful at it. He told her to quit journalism for a year and take a sales job. He had given her the choice either to be a bestselling author or a best-writing author. She didn't like the idea.

Kiyosaki has taken many courses and seminars; one which cost him $300 made him $1 million when he applied its ideas. If he does not stimulate his mind and learning, he knows he will stand still. Opportunities comes from new ideas. Money spent on self-improvement is always a wise investment.

Final comments

This book makes you think. It makes you reflect not merely about investments and assets, but about your whole attitude to work and life. We have all heard it said that the stock market is driven by "fear and greed." Kiyosaki claims that, for most of us, fear is the key influence in our personal economic lives. We are shaped by our attitude to money, and our attitude to money is shaped by our fear. If we could change our attitude to risk and wealth, we could begin to think, act and live like the rich. But first we must become financially intelligent.

Some of the main concepts have been described here, but only some. If you are serious about long-term improvement of your financial situation, and are willing to admit that you know little, you should buy Kiyosaki's book.