Why We Want You To Be Rich. Robert T. Kiyosaki
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pressing questions are:
1. What can we do?
2. What are the solutions to these problems?
3. Is our financial IQ high enough to solve these problems?
4. How do we avoid becoming victims of these problems?
5. How do we protect our families from falling victim to these problems?
Many of today’s financial problems exist because we did not solve the problems when they first arose. Rather than increasing the financial IQ of the population, we taught people to expect the government to solve their personal problems for them. This is why no politician dares touch Social Security and Medicare…even though most of us know these programs are doomed.
Now I can hear some of you readers saying, “We need to take care of those who cannot care for themselves.” And I agree with that. We, as a civilized society, should take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. However, most of us can take care of ourselves if we have to and if we have been trained to.
It’s time to raise our financial IQ.
Changing Demographic
Because of the low financial IQ solutions we used in the past, today our demographic population is changing from
What the diagram shows is that the rich are getting richer, and everyone else is getting poorer, even though many people are making more money. Unfortunately, the United States is not the only country heading in this direction. Many world economies are becoming two-class societies: the rich and the poor…classes or masses.
The April 16, 2006, Sunday edition of The New York Times ran a frontpage article with the headline:
“Revival in Japan Brings Widening of Economic Gap”
The second paragraph of the article states:
“Today, in a country whose view of itself was once captured in the slogan, ‘100 million, all-middle class society,’ catchphrases harshly sort people into ‘winners’ and ‘losers,’ and describe Japan as a ‘society of widening disparities.’”
In other words, the middle class is being wiped out. Today in Japan, you are either rich or poor, a financial winner or a financial loser. The same thing is happening in America and in many European countries.
The Price of a Low Financial IQ
In my conversations with Donald Trump, we agreed that we cannot solve today’s complex financial challenges with yesterday’s financial intelligence. If we as a nation attempt to solve Social Security and Medicare by giving people more entitlement payouts, the golden goose will be cooked and eaten, and there will be no more golden eggs.
The reason why we write, speak and create educational games and other products is because we want people to become rich and solve their own financial problems rather than expect others to solve their problems for them. We both agreed that by giving people money, we only made the problem bigger, harder to solve and more dangerous.
Simply said, America is on its way to becoming a well-educated nation of rich people and poor people. The middle class is becoming extinct. The problem is our nation is filled with people like my poor dad—a good man, well-educated, hard-working, yet expecting the government to take care of him when he retired.
There are many definitions for intelligence. One of the more practical ones I learned from my rich dad is, “Intelligence is the ability to solve problems.”
– Robert T. Kiyosaki
We’ve mentioned that in a few years, the first of approximately 75 million baby boomers will begin to retire. This is the first generation that has contributed fully to Social Security and Medicare. The problem is, the money they contributed is gone, disappeared into a Ponzi scheme.
There are two more problems: Since we do not teach much about money in schools, many of those 75 million do not know what a Ponzi scheme it is. Secondly, since most did contribute fully, they deserve to be paid. But if each (of the 75 million baby boomers) begins to collect just $1,000 a month in Social Security and Medicare benefits, the total added to the U.S. government’s payroll is $75 billion a month. This is similar to the cost of one Hurricane Katrina or one Iraq War—every month. The good news is you still have time to prepare and avoid becoming a victim of the coming financial hurricanes…but not much time.
In Sunday School, I was taught:
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day. And that is what we as a nation have been doing. This is the entitlement mentality of Social Security and Medicare.
Teach a person to fish and you feed him for life. This is what Donald and I have been doing. We want people to learn to be rich and teach others to be rich.
In Teach To Be Rich, a product I created to assist our CASHFLOW Clubs in teaching others to be rich, I talk about how some people do not want to give people fish or teach others to fish…instead they sell people fish. Many of these people are stockbrokers, real estate brokers, financial planners, bankers and insurance agents. They are in the business of selling…not necessarily teaching or giving. When you put the two words, sell and fish, together, you get the word selfish. And even though most people in the business may not be selfish, enough are to make the word ring true. I use it here to emphasize the importance of staying on your guard to be aware of the differences between those who give—the teachers—and those who sell.
Donald and I are concerned that most people do not choose to learn to manage their own money or learn to invest their own money. Instead of learn, they simply turn their money over to experts and then hope and pray their experts are truly experts.
In Donald’s book, How To Get Rich, he has this to say about financial advisors…people who sell fish. The chapter heading says it all:
Be Your Own Financial Advisor
The chapter begins with:
“Many people go out and hire financial advisors, but I have also seen a lot of these advisors destroy people.
“Athletes, in particular, make a great deal of money at a very young age. Too often, some manager squanders the athlete’s fortune and they wind up in their thirties with nothing left but their past glory—and are forced to get jobs just to survive.”
We Want to Teach You to Fish
Donald Trump and I do not sell fish. We do not sell investment advice or tell people what to invest in. We are teachers. We want you to learn how to become rich, invest your own money and become your own financial expert. We want to teach you to fish for yourself.
Rich Dad’s Secret
As I mentioned before, many rich people are secretive. I didn’t realize how much so until my rich dad’s family asked me to keep their name out of Rich Dad Poor Dad. Many rich people would rather be anonymous. They either do not want to be known and/or they do not want to share their financial secrets. That is why I was pleasantly surprised to find Donald Trump to be so open about his wealth and willing to share his keys to financial success.
In her book Buffettology, Mary Buffett writes:
“F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that the very rich are different from you and me. He was right. But they are different in the strangest of ways, the oddest being the code of silence that they demand of family and friends. While married to Peter (Warren Buffett’s son), I was instructed more than once not to speak to anyone outside the family about Warren and his investment operations. Writing