Rich Dad Poor Dad: Love It or Hate It?

 Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad is an iconic book in the world of personal finance. Love it or hate it, you have to have heard of it. I recently read it, and man do I have some thoughts. 

There are a lot of positives: the book for me suggests, ‘This is what you can do if you put in the work to do more research. I’m not telling you how to do it, but I will motivate you to do it and tell you it can be done.’

Kiyosaki talks a lot about the principle of not giving up when something seems unattainable but rather thinking, ‘I want this. How can I get it?’ He goes over the fundamental rule of spending on assets that make you richer and not losing all your savings on liabilities that make you look richer. The examples he gives are a crowd-pleaser: how it doesn’t matter where you go to school but rather what you learn through real-life experiences. 

That’s where it all starts going downhill for me. Kiyosaki ridicules people who go to college and applauds those who drop out, advising that your formal education doesn’t matter. It matters- look at the statistics: the life trajectories of an average dropout and a top 10% college graduate are completely different, and so is where they end up at the end of that road. There are always exceptions, and Kiyosaki chooses to limelight them. The book has one supreme focus that I completely disagree with: getting out of the rat race of working a stable 9 to 5 job is the ultimate panacea. 

Would I recommend the book? Absolutely. You should read it to know what the fuss is about and form your own opinions on whether the book is BS or not. At the worst, you’ll end the book feeling inspired to find ways that actually work for you to get to a position of ultimate freedom.