Book Review: Rich Dad Poor Dad By Robert Kiyosaki

Where to find: Gramedia, Amazon

What is it about?

This book is very popular, it has been sold in millions of copies. The Rich Dad Poor Dad is the first book I read related to personal finance. This is relatively easy to read, not a very thick book, so it did not take a lot of time to finish reading it. Robert Kiyosaki has written a lot of books about personal finance and how to manage your money.

Among his other books, I think Rich Dad Poor Dad is Robert Kiyosaki’s best book. If you have to choose only one book, Rich Dad Poor Dad is your best pick.

Before when I think about wealth, the only thing that can create wealth is hard work. While hard work is certainly crucial to build wealth, we also need other things such as money management, investment, and sufficient knowledge. This book is also an eye-opener for me about investing money. In this book, Robert Kiyosaki tells the story about a lesson he learns which comes from 2 different perspectives between his real dad (the poor dad) and his friend’s dad (the rich dad).

 

My Favourite Highlights of the book are:

• Pay yourself first

I always save money, to begin with, I used to save money at the end of the month. It was always a small amount of money, not always the same amount of money. After I use my money to pay bills and spend it on the things, I want such as clothes, makeup, shoes, and food. In this book, it turns out that I have doing it wrong. I supposed to “pay yourself first”, which means that I should save money at the beginning of the month, not at the end of the month. When I received my paycheck, the first thing I do is to put an amount of money around 15% to my savings and used the rest of the money to pay the bills and buy the things I want. This allows me to consistently save the same amount of money every month. I forced myself to reduce my unimportant shopping list like clothes, bags, and shoes.

• Cash flow

I don’t think about my cash flow. I do not keep track of my spending. As long as I have money in my savings, I was thinking it is ok to go overboard once in a while. The problem is, that once in a while happen more than once and decreasing my savings. Especially when I saw things on sale or buying something with credit cards that do not feel like a burden when using it but when the bill comes, I realize I spend quite a lot more than I thought.

So basically, Rich people have more than one stream of income. Their asset creates an income for them not from a paycheck. Even though, the liabilities that they have are similar such as credit cards bill, house, and car payments. For me having a house is a must, after all the house will be my asset, right? Well according to the book it is not quite right, a house is either be an asset or a liability. Buying a house is a big commitment and it also one of the reasons you cannot save money. When you receive a paycheck to pay mortgage and credit card bills. In other words, you pay someone else before you pay yourself first.

But if you buying a property to create cash flow, for example buying an apartment to rent to people, that is considered as an asset. Meanwhile, the house we enjoy life in does not create revenue is not an asset but a liability. The reason why it is considering a liability is that;

• It did not generate income for you
• You must pay the mortgage
• You spend more money on maintaining your house
• You have to pay bills like water and electricity.

 

• Investment and mentor

The type of investment mention in the book are:

1. Business that automated
2. Stock
3. Bond
4. Real estate
5. Royalty from intellectual property rights

In his book, Robert Kiyosaki relies heavily on real estate investment.  He builds and rents out apartments. He also mentions about doing stock. In building wealth, one cannot depend only on a paycheck. It requires knowledge about how to grow your money through investment. Robert Kiyosaki is so lucky to have a mentor like his rich dad. The rich dad gives him guidance and trains his mentality to achieve success. But how many of us can be lucky to have a mentor to guide our financial journey?

 

• Overcome obstacle

It is important to educate yourself about financial education. You do not have to register for university and taking finance classes. At least you must learn the basics of personal finance. If you want to do investing, learn about it first. Gather all the information you need, evaluate, and find a necessary seminar related to your investment. In this book, Robert Kiyosaki attends a real estate business seminar where he learns about properties and the seminar is pretty pricey. Since Robert Kiyosaki knows that the seminar is worth it, he finds a way to afford it.

And of course, following that seminar is one way to gain knowledge about the property, the rest have to be done by himself. How he takes the things he learns and starts implementing it. When there is a will, there is a way right? Sometimes, the biggest obstacle between us and success is ourselves.

We do not believe in ourselves; we are too afraid to take a risk. “What if I fail if started a business?”, “what will people say about me?”, “why try something new, I earn enough”, “why should I learn about finance? I already know it”. Without taking a risk how would we know the things we want is going to work or not? The negative mind is the biggest obstacle to live. Instead of saying bad things about yourself, why not gather up your courage and start something? You will never know until you try. And if you fail? So what? Try again and learn from your mistakes.

This book is a wake-up call for me. It made me realize there is so much I did not know yet. There are so many things I have to learn. Most importantly, it gives me a new perspective on my personal finance. Robert Kiyosaki also created a game called “cash flow game” to teach you about the financial strategy that can happen in real life like business, insurance, and investment. The board game a bit pricey tho. I really enjoy the game, you can play the game for 2 hours and still curious to continue playing until you escape the “rate race”. One other book that I will recommend from Robert Kiyosaki is the Cash Flow Quadrant, where you can learn about 4 different mindsets of people towards money.