Book Review:
Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert T. Kiyosaki
Most people who are interested in the realm of investments and finance would no doubt have already read, or at least heard of this book. For some, it is the book that deserves both a bold and an italic (see what I did?).
What’s It About.
The book has a very simple premise: Kiyosaki’s paternal father, a.k.a. Poor Dad, although a highly educated PhD school teacher, is not very street smart, and possesses a negative outlook toward money and wealth creation. His friend’s father, a.k.a. Rich Dad, although not as highly educated as Kiyosaki’s father, knows one important truth – how to create wealth! The book is then sort of like a collection of the lessons Kiyosaki learnt from his ‘Rich Dad’ while growing up, and the tension between the old and the new mindset.
The books was quite interesting, jumping between topics of real estate, investments, etc, while attempting to stay within the general theme of how different classes of people see wealth.
One of the chapters made the point of seeing yourself as a business – if you had to make both an income statement and a balance sheet of yourself, how would it look it? I found this useful, but not terribly mind-blowing. It was, however, a good visual illustration of how individual elements (such as mortgage, dividends, credit card bill) were classified and associated with each other.
Some other interesting nuggets (stolen from wikipedia):
wealth is measured by the number of days the income from your assets can sustain you
financial independence is achieved when your monthly income from assets exceeds your monthly expenses.
There are also a few other lessons he shared in the book, but I shall not in the interest of time and attention span write too much about it.
Mostly Motivational.
For me, my key gripe with the book is that it’s mostly motivational. Sure, it helps a bit, but I would have preferred to learn some hard, tangible, skills by the end of the entire book. In contrast, a book I really enjoyed reading (and will again) was Pat Dorsey’s The Five Rules For Successful Stock Investing. Perhaps I will do a short review for that in future.
Something interesting to note – there might not actually have been a Rich Dad in Kiyosaki’s life after all. A quick google search would show that Kiyosaki has always been very shadowy about the identity of who Rich Dad is – even to the point of associating him with Harry Potter, i.e. nothing more than a myth. For some, such news might be a terrible blow as the whole character of Rich Dad is nothing more than a figment of Kiyosaki’s imagination… Why would he do it? Your guess is as good as mine, but you gotta give him credit for such great marketing – I’ve lost count of the number of books the Rich Dad dynasty has unleashed on mankind! As a businessman, that is certainly something to cheer about.
He’s also quite buddy-buddy with Donald Trump… co-authoring at least two book together (which I will never read). I’m not really a fan of Donald Trump.
tl;dr.
This book works for folks who aren’t investors, or feels that they need some help in finding a relevance of investing in their lives. It does, however, do a rather decent job of walking you through a framework to see the world with. However, it’s not my cup of tea and I didn’t really enjoy reading it as much as other books. Perhaps I was expecting something more substantial, but I don’t think that was the purpose of this book anyway.
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