Rich Dad Poor Dad is a starting point for anyone looking to gain control of their financial future

A person can be highly 
educated, professionally 
successful, and 
financially illiterate.
truth. Fear is the main reason that people say, “Play it safe.” That goes 
for anything, be it sports, relationships, 
careers, or money.
It is that same fear, the fear 
of ostracism, that causes people 
to conform to, and not question, 
commonly accepted opinions or 
popular trends: “Your home is an asset.” “Get a bill-consolidation 
loan, and get out of debt.” “Work harder.” “It’s a promotion.” 
“Someday I’ll be a vice president.” “Save money.” “When I get a raise, 
I’ll buy us a bigger house.” “Mutual funds are safe.”
Many financial problems are caused by trying to keep up with the 
Joneses. Occasionally, we all need to look in the mirror and be true to 
our inner wisdom rather than our fears.
By the time Mike and I were 16 years old, we began to have 
problems in school. We were not bad kids. We just began to separate 
from the crowd. We worked for Mike’s dad after school and on 
weekends. Mike and I often spent hours after work just sitting at a 
table with his dad while he held meetings with his bankers, attorneys, 
accountants, brokers, investors, managers, and employees. Here was 
a man who had left school at 13 who was now directing, instructing, 
ordering, and asking questions of educated people. They came at his 
beck and call, and cringed when he didn’t approve of them.

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Chapter Two: Lesson 2
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Here was a man who had not gone along with the crowd. He was 
a man who did his own thinking and detested the words, “We have 
to do it this way because that’s the way everyone else does it.” He also 
hated the word “can’t.” If you wanted him to do something, just say,
“I don’t think you can do it.”
Mike and I learned more sitting in on his meetings than we did 
in all our years of school, college included. Mike’s dad was not book-
smart, but he was financially educated and successful as a result. He 
told us over and over again, “An intelligent person hires people who 
are more intelligent than he is.” So Mike and I had the benefit of 
spending hours listening to and learning from intelligent people.
But because of this, Mike and I couldn’t go along with the 
standard dogma our teachers preached, and that caused problems. 
Whenever the teacher said, “If you don’t get good grades, you won’t 
do well in the real world,” Mike and I just raised our eyebrows. 
When we were told to follow set procedures and not deviate from the 
rules, we could see how school discouraged creativity. We started to 
understand why our rich dad told us that schools were designed to 
produce good employees, instead of employers. Occasionally, Mike 
or I would ask our teachers how what we studied was applicable in 
the real world, or why we never studied money and how it worked. 
To the latter question, we often got the answer that money was not 
important, that if we excelled in our education, the money would 
follow. The more we knew about the power of money, the more 
distant we grew from the teachers and our classmates.
My highly educated dad never pressured me about my grades, but 
we did begin to argue about money. By the time I was 16, I probably 
had a far better foundation with money than both my parents. I could 
keep books, I listened to tax accountants, corporate attorneys, bankers, 
real estate brokers, investors, and so forth. By contrast, my dad talked 
to other teachers.
One day my dad told me that our home was his greatest investment. 
A not-too-pleasant argument took place when I showed him why I 
thought a house was not a good investment.

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Rich Dad Poor Dad
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