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

Play CASHFLOW Classic 
on the web at 
www.richdad.com
What did you learn about 
your true behavior from 
playing the game
Some people playing CASHFLOW gain lots of money in the game, 
but they don’t know what to do with it. Even though they have money, 
everyone else seems to be getting
ahead of them. And that is true in
real life. There are a lot of people who 
have a lot of money and do not
get ahead financially.
Limiting your options is the same 
as hanging on to old ideas. I have a 
friend from high school who now 
works at three jobs. Years ago, he 
was the richest of all my classmates. When the local sugar plantation 
closed, the company he worked for went down with the plantation. 
In his mind, he had but one option, and that was the old option: 
Work hard. The problem was that he couldn’t find an equivalent job 
that recognized his seniority from the old company. 

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Rich Dad Poor Dad
97
As a result, he is overqualified for the jobs he currently has, so his
salary is lower. He now works three jobs to earn enough to survive. 
I have watched people playing CASHFLOW complain that the right 
opportunity cards are not coming their way. So they sit there. I know 
people who do that in real life. They wait for the right opportunity.
I have watched people get the right opportunity card and then
not have enough money. Then they complain that they would have 
gotten out of the Rat Race if they had had more money. So they sit
there. I know people in real life who do that also. They see all the great 
deals, but they have no money.
And I have seen people pull a great opportunity card, read it out 
loud, and have no idea that it is a great opportunity. They have the 
money, the time is right, they have the card, but they can’t see the
opportunity staring them in the face. They fail to see how it fits into 
their financial plan for escaping the Rat Race. And I know more 
people like that than all the others combined. Most people have an 
opportunity of a lifetime flash right in front of them, and they fail to 
see it. A year later, they find out about it, after everyone else got rich.
Financial intelligence is simply having more options. If the
opportunities aren’t coming your way, what else can you do to 
improve your financial position? If an opportunity lands in your lap 
and you have no money and the bank won’t talk to you, what else can 
you do to get the opportunity to work in your favor? If your hunch 
is wrong, and what you’ve been counting on doesn’t happen, how can 
you turn a lemon into millions? That is financial intelligence. It is not 
so much what happens, but how many different financial solutions 
you can think of to turn a lemon into millions. It is how creative you 
are in solving financial problems.
Most people only know one solution: Work hard, save, and
borrow. So why would you want to increase your financial intelligence? 
Because you want to be the kind of person who creates your own luck. 
You take whatever happens and make it better. Few people realize that 
luck is created, just as money is. And if you want to be luckier and 
create money instead of working hard, then your financial intelligence 
is important. If you are the kind of person who is waiting for the right 

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Chapter Five: Lesson 5
98
thing to happen, you might wait for a long time. It’s like waiting for all 
the traffic lights to be green for five miles before you’ll start your trip.
As young boys, Mike and I were constantly told by my rich dad that 
“money is not real.” Rich dad occasionally reminded us of how close we 
came to the secret of money on that first day we got together and began 
“making money” out of plaster of paris. “The poor and middle class work 
for money,” he would say. “The rich make money. The more real you 
think money is, the harder you will work for it. If you can grasp the idea 
that money is not real, you will grow richer faster.”
“What is it?” was a question Mike and I often came back with. 
“What is money if it is not real?”
“What we agree it is,” was all rich dad would say.
The single most powerful asset we all have is our mind. If it is 
trained well, it can create enormous wealth seemingly instantaneously. 
An untrained mind can also create extreme poverty that can crush a 
family for generations. 
In the Information Age, money is increasing exponentially. A few 
individuals are getting ridiculously rich from nothing, just ideas