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

The single most 
powerful asset we all 
have is our mind.
If it is trained well,
it can create
enormous wealth.
and 
agreements. If you ask many people 
who trade stocks or other investments 
for a living, they see it done all the
time. Often, millions can be made 
instantaneously from nothing. And
by nothing, I mean no money was 
exchanged. It is done via agreement: a 
hand signal in a trading pit, a blip on
a trader’s screen in Lisbon from a trader’s screen in Toronto and back 
to Lisbon, a call to my broker to buy and a moment later to sell. 
Money did not change hands. Agreements did.
So why develop your financial genius? Only you can answer that.
I can tell you why I have been developing this area of my intelligence.
I do it because I want to make money fast. Not because I need to, but 
because I want to. It is a fascinating learning process. I develop my 
financial IQ because I want to participate in the fastest game and 

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Rich Dad Poor Dad
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biggest game in the world. And in my own small way, I would like to 
be part of this unprecedented evolution of humanity, the era where 
humans work purely with their minds and not with their bodies. 
Besides, it is where the action is. It is what is happening. It’s hip.
It’s scary. And it’s fun.
That is why I invest in my financial intelligence, developing the most 
powerful asset I have. I want to be with people moving boldly forward.
I do not want to be with those left behind.
I will give you a simple example of creating money. In the early 
1990s, the economy of Phoenix, Arizona, was horrible. I was watching a 
TV show when a financial planner came on and began forecasting doom 
and gloom. His advice was to save money. “Put $100 away every month,” 
he said. “In 40 years you will be a multimillionaire.”
Well, putting money away every month is a sound idea. It is one 
option—the option most people subscribe to. The problem is this: It 
blinds the person to what is really going on. It causes them to miss major 
opportunities for much more significant growth of their money. The 
world is passing them by.
As I said, the economy was terrible at that time. For investors, 
this is the perfect market condition. A chunk of my money was 
in the stock market and in apartment houses. I was short of cash. 
Because people were giving properties away, I was buying. I was not 
saving money. I was investing. Kim and I had more than a million 
dollars in cash working in a market that was rising fast. It was the best 
opportunity to invest. The economy was terrible. I just could not pass 
up these small deals.
Houses that were once $100,000 were now $75,000. But instead 
of shopping with local real estate agents, I began shopping at the 
bankruptcy attorney’s office, or the courthouse steps. In these
shopping places, a $75,000 house could sometimes be bought for 
$20,000 or less. For $2,000, which was loaned to me from a friend 
for 90 days for $200, I gave an attorney a cashier’s check as a down 
payment. While the acquisition was being processed, I ran an ad 
advertising a $75,000 house for only $60,000 and no money down. 

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Chapter Five: Lesson 5
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The phone rang hard and heavy. Prospective buyers were screened 
and once the property was legally mine, all the prospective buyers 
were allowed to look at the house. It was a feeding frenzy. The house 
sold in a few minutes. I asked for a $2,500 processing fee, which 
they gladly handed over, and the escrow and title company took over 
from there. I returned the $2,000 to my friend with an additional 
$200. He was happy, the home buyer was happy, the attorney was 
happy, and I was happy. I had sold a house for $60,000 that cost me 
$20,000. The $40,000 was created from money in my asset column 
in the form of a promissory note from the buyer. Total working time: 
five hours.
So now that you are on your way to becoming more financially 
literate and skilled at reading numbers, I will show you why this is
an example of money being invented.