Rich Dad, Poor Dad

For a change, I bought a non-fiction book at Odyssey. I have been seeing this book, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, by Robert T. Kiyosaki, in the best sellers list for quite some time and wanted to buy it. I even saw a Telugu translation of the book and it really build up my expectation.

This is really a fantastic book. Every phrase of praise on the cover of the book is completely true and justified. This is the starting point for anyone wanting to get rich. The ideas presented in the book are really amazing. They are simple and straight-forward. Yet so profound!

He challenges school education throughout the book. According to him, which is very true of course, schools teach students how to work hard for money but not how to make money work for them. That is the basic difference between the rich and the poor and the most important one. The poor and the middle class work hard their lives, earn money, pay taxes, get into credit, work harder to earn more and pay more taxes and so on… this he calls “Rat Race”. The rich do quite the opposite. They buy assets. Their assets work hard for them and generate more assets.

Talking of assets, the single most important formula to get rich in the book is “focus your time and energy in building income generating assets”. This is an extremely important sentence to underline and remember. When you have assets generating income equal to or more than your monthly expenses, you are called Wealthy!

Anyone who wants to get out of the rat race and achieve freedom from having to work hard all their life, needs to understand the above formula. He talks of people who get up early everyday and hurry to work just to pay bills and taxes with a sense of pity in his tone. I couldn’t help visualize myself driving 40 kms everyday through the insane traffic of Hyderabad to go to work that I don’t love. It is my great dream to become a free lancer one day! This book provides me inspiration, to make my dream come true.

This book is all about improving our Financial Intelligence to get rich. Financial Intelligence is comprised of four things:
1. Knowledge of Accounting
2. Knowledge of Investing (Investment Strategies)
3. Knowledge of Markets (Demand, Supply etc.)
4. Knowledge of Law
It requires a lot of focus and intent to acquire the above and lazy people can not do that. We know people who are lazy to exercise their body, but the author talks of people who are lazy to make their brain work. That’s why he says self discipline is important to acquire and put to use the financial intelligence to achieve riches.

There are many other great ideas expressed in this book. The author also tells us what he did in his journey to riches. Most of them are applicable to most people. But he says there can be innumerable such formulae and emphasizes the importance of developing our own methods.

All in all it’s a great book, but mind you, only for ambitious people who are willing to develop and deploy their financial intelligence.