Is Rich Dad Poor Dad Worth Reading Or Is It Just A Bunch of Baloney?
The book title, Rich Dad Poor Dad, might give you the impression that Robert Kiyosaki came from a broken home with a father and a stepfather or that the book talks about the financial rise and fall of one dad.
However, the book actually reflects upon a young man growing up in Hawaii with two fatherly inputs in his life. One was from his own father, a middle class teacher and the other was the wealthy father of his best friend. He reflects upon the lessons he gleaned from both influential men in his life.
The critics of Rich Dad Poor Dad have swung wildly on this book. There are those who love the book and those who hate it, but the truth of the matter likely lays somewhere in between the two extremes.
Love
Those who love this book are typically the average person who works full time and is still struggling to make ends meet. They have erroneously thought all their life that buying certain things would build their wealth. He presents a different picture of the path to wealth and financial freedom than what most people have learned.
You have likely heard the following: go to school, get a good education and then get a good paying job - end of story. That may have worked for our parents or their parents, but the problem is that path no longer works today with many people ending up downsized or working for peanuts their entire lives. Rich Dad Poor Dad raises the idea of being an entrepreneur regardless of your education and many people have found the book and subsequent products to be a great education and inspiration.
Hate
On the other hand there are people who accuse Rich Dad Poor Dad of offering faulty advice at best and at worst being an outright liar. They claim that he has embellished the truth of his childhood and played fast and loose with many financial practices.
The first point his opponents often make is that they have no way of knowing how he made his fortune. He has made quite a sizeable fortune in real estate and the critics are chomping at the bit to know more about it.
Somewhere in the Middle
Somewhere in between is a balanced idea of what the book is about and who can benefit from it. The truth of the matter is not all people are cut out to be entrepreneurs, and that is okay. It is also true that for some people, college degrees and a career in law, medicine or business is all they truly want to do with their lives, and that is fine too.
For the person who has all their finances figured out and already understands how a balance sheet and income statement apply to their personal finances, this book will have very little to offer, unless of course you could use some encouragement to stay on track.
Rich Dad Poor Dad is for the person who is just starting out on their journey to financial freedom. When we first got started, we found Rich Dad Poor Dad to be a great inspiration and that it stretched our minds to think differently – especially about assets that could at times actually be liabilities. The book also affirmed to us that the average person can get rich even if they don’t have a college or university education.
However, although we have found that the concept of creating wealth is simple, it is not always easy. While we agree that a college or university education will not teach you how to become rich, it does significantly impact your ability to earn a good income while you’re figuring it out and expanding your “financial” education.
Regardless of how much is fact and how much is fiction, there is value in the fact that Rich Dad Poor Dad offers another view on how to think about money. It is up to the reader to take away and apply what works for them.
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